by Matt Rand
“Mexicans, eh?”
“Nope. Americans—pure Spanish blood. Old Don Manuel Gandara got a land grant from the Mexican governor nigh onto a hundred yeahs ago, when Mexico and all this section b’longed to Spain. Family’s allus lived heah. Our co’hts held the title was good and they own a gosh-awful big spread nawth of heah. Alfredo Gandara, them feller’s pappy, is a fine old gent, but the boys is sorta wild.”
Rance walked up the street, pondering what he had heard. The Gandaras had aroused his interest. Their bearing was proud, almost arrogant, as might be expected of descendants from the Spanish conquerors.
“Fine fellers us’ally, that kind,” mused the Ranger, “‘less somethin’ starts them off on the wrong foot. Then you can expect most anythin’ from them, and the chances are then you’ll get somethin’ you don’t expect.”
Rance entered a small building marked “Sheriff’s Office.” A big fleshy man with handlebar moustaches and moth-eaten hair looked up from a table with a grunt. He wore a disgruntled expression and a shirt that needed washing. In a rickety chair beside the window sat a small twinkle-eyed individual hiding behind a grin.
“Howdy,” said the Ranger, “I wanta see Sheriff Bethune.”
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with yore eyesight, is theah?” grunted the big man.
“Nope,” replied Rance. “Ears is workin good, too. Why?”
“You been lookin’ at me the last couple minutes.”
“Oh, so yore the sheriff. You oughta wear a badge.”
“That’s what I been tellin’ him,” broke in the little man. “How’s people gonna know who not to shoot when they ain’t no ’dentifyin’ marks to see. I ’vised him to fasten it to the end of a pole. Folks what shoots sheriffs allus shoots at the badge and he’d be safe that way—if the pole was long enough.”
“Will you shut yore mouth and keep still!” growled the sheriff. “I don’t see what the hell I ever made you a dep’ty for, anyhow. All yore good for is to talk smart and eat often.
“What you want?” he demanded of Rance.
Hatfield handed him a letter from Captain Morton. The sheriff read it with numerous grunts and passed it to his deputy.
“You’ve come to a helluva place,” he rumbled. “If it ain’t one damn thing it’s five or six. Ev’thin’ was fine in Tonto county until that damn gold strike last year. Now this town’s ’bout ten times bigger’n it was and all the hellions what oughta been hung and ain’t is heah. The Gandara boys usta get rambunctious now and then but they waren’t hard to handle ’fore things got to boomin’. Now they’re on the prod all the time.”
“Wheah’s the town marshal?” asked Rance. The sheriff swore in disgust.
“Drunk, I s’pose. He’s allus drunk, or gettin’ that way, or gettin’ over it. Gamblers and saloon-keepers got him ’lected. He’s ’bout as much help to me as that damn dep’ty over theah.”
“Name’s Turner—Tumbleweed Turner,” chuckled the deputy. “Don’t mind Johnny, Ranger, he’s got indigestion, and warts under the seat of his pants, but he’s harmless.”
Rance left the office with the sheriff’s promise to cooperate to the best of his ability.
“Honest and dumb,” was Rance’s verdict. “That dep’ty’s got brains. Grins and talks funny to cover up what he thinks. Them twinklin’ eyes of his give me a goin’-over that didn’t miss a thing.”
CHAPTER 5
If Coffin had been tumultuous under the afternoon sun, it was trebly so now that the purple shadows were leaping down from the fanged walls of The Black Hell. The daylight rumble was rising to a wild roar. Men who had just been having a drink or two were now getting grandly drunk. The roulette wheels were spinning at a mad clip. The trickle of gold across the bars had swollen to a rushing stream. The dance halls were swirls of color.
Rance sauntered from one place of amusement to another. There was a definite object in his apparent aimless wandering. He was searching for a man, a tall gangling man with watery blue eyes and yellow hair.
“He looks like a splinter with sheep wool stuck on top of it,” Tumbleweed had said, describing “Muddy” Waters, the town marshal.
Rance wanted to talk with Waters. “He ain’t wuth a damn, but he knows more ’bout the wide loopin’ and drygulchin’ jiggers heah than anybody else ’round,” declared Sheriff Bethune. “Mebbe you can get him to say somethin’.”
Midnight approached, and Rance had not found the marshal.
“Heerd him say he was goin’ over to the ‘Here It Is,’” a bartender told the Ranger. “Yeah, that’s the big place on Lucky Cuss Street. You can’t miss it.”
Rance remembered the saloon as the one in which he had witnessed the shooting that afternoon. While still some distance away he ran into Sheriff Bethune and Tumbleweed Turner.
“Heah the Gandara boys is raisin’ plenty hell,” said the sheriff. “They jest ’bout busted the bank at Garner’s place, got all the gals drunk at the Golden Place dance-hall and then headed for the Here It Is. Peter Yuma’s gang hangs out theah and if them two outfits get t’gether theah’s liable to be some real trouble.”
“What’s Pete Yuma’s gang?” Rance wanted to know.
“I’d sorta like to know the answer to that one myself,” growled the Sheriff. “Pete and the two Warner boys and Dirty-shirt Jones and Polecat Perkins owns the Busted Bridle mine. They hardly ever do no work but allus have plenty of money. Coupla jiggers by the name of Saunders and Paulson dropped inter town last week and got thick as sheep dip with Pete’s outfit right away. They got money, too, and ain’t scared to spend it. They’re pop’lar. That’s the Here It Is ’crost the street; let’s drop over.”
The big saloon was blazing with light and booming with music. Song, or what passed for it, roared through the windows, drowning the clink of glasses, the whisper of cards and the click and thump of dancing feet.
“Looks like a big night,” observed Tumbleweed. “She’s—good gosh!”
A gun cracked inside the saloon. Then a regular hail-on-a-tin-roof rattle of exploding six-shooters. Yells and screams raised the slab-shingles on the roof. Furniture crashed. Shattered glassware jingled. The walls of the big building seemed to bulge with the uproar. Men and women were scooting out the front door like singed bats from the place General Sherman said war was. A gentleman in a hurry took a window, glass and sash, with him. He passed Rance and the sheriffs with part of the frame still draped around his neck.
“The Gandaras and Pete Yuma’s gang!” he howled. “They’re fi’tin’ like mad dawgs! They done killed the marshal!”
Rance Hatfield crossed the street at a run. “C’mon!” he barked over his shoulder to the sheriff, “this ain’t funny no more!”
He went through the door, hurling men aside; after him plowed the sheriff and Tumbleweed.
The room was thick with smoke, through which guns spurted flame. Men were crouched behind tables and posts blazing away at other men holed up back of the bar. Two silent figures lay on the floor near the middle of the room. A third writhed and groaned beside the wall.
Rance Hatfield’s voice rang above the roar of gunfire:
“Stop it, you loco hombres!”
A slit-eyed man back of a post whirled, his gun barrel stabbing toward the door. Rance felt the wind of the passing bullet, heard a grunt behind him and the thud of a falling body. Then his own gun lanced flame. The man by the post crumpled up. Rance leaped to the end of the bar, a gun in each hand.
“Get the dead wood on that other bunch, Tumbleweed,” he shouted.
The men back of the bar were “caught settin’.” The Ranger’s guns could sweep them like a stream of water from a hose. Their hands went up.
“The Gandara boys, all six of ’em,” Rance muttered. “Now—”
Three shots ripped from behind a post on the far side of the room. Crashing and jangling, the three big hanging lamps went out. Darkness like the inside of a black bull swooped down.
Rance, knowing what to expect, hurled him
self sideways to the floor. Buffets stormed through the space he had just left. He heard the thud of running feet. Glass crashed. Doors banged.
“Wonder if they got Tumbleweed?” he muttered. A voice bawling from somewhere in the darkness reassured him:
“You all right, Hatfield? Fine! Wait’ll I make a light. ’Fraid they done for pore old Johnny.”
By the time Tumbleweed got a light going, however, the sheriff was sitting up, wiping blood from his face and swearing. He had been neatly creased just above the left ear.
“Oh, hell,” grunted Tumbleweed. “If I’da knowed they hit you in the haid I wouldn’ta worried none. Nothin’ theah a bullet could hurt.
“This heah jigger won’t do no more shootin’, though,” he added, bending over a silent figure. “Drilled plumb center.”
“Uh-huh, and looks like they’re gonna hafta ’lect a new marshal,” said Rance Hatfield. “This is Waters, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s pore ol’ Muddy,” said Tumbleweed, gazing down into the face of the dead man. “Wheahd he get hit?”
“Place a man ain’t got no bus’ness gettin’ hit,” replied Rance, turning the body over and pointing to a gaping wound between the scrawny shoulder blades. “Looks to me like he was shot ’fore the real row started.”
A voice spoke at Rance’s elbow.
“Guilermo Gandara shot the marshal, feller.”
Rance turned to face the speaker, a little wizened man with soft brown eyes.
“What you know ’bout it?” asked the Ranger.
“I works heah,” said the little man, “waitin’ on tables. I seed it all. Guilermo and Pete Yuma was arg’fyin‘; had their hands on their guns. Muddy was try in’ to make peace ’tween ’em. Jest as he was turnin’ ’round to face Pete, Pete pulled his gun. Guilermo pulled his jest a mite faster. Muddy jumped to grab Pete’s hand jest as Guilermo shot. Bullet musta hit Muddy ’stead of Pete. Anyhow Muddy whirled ’round and tumbled down. Then ev’body started shootin’ and I got up and git.”
Rance glanced about. “Any one of them three fellers on the floor Pete Yuma?” he asked. The deputy shook his head.
“Guess this heah feller has ’bout got the size of it, then,” said Rance. “Callate Guilermo didn’t ’tend to shoot Muddy.
“But this ain’t no ord’nary killin’,” he added soberly. “After all, Muddy was a peace officer tryin’ to do his duty, and he was killed try in’ to do it. Guilermo’ll hafta come in and stand trial.”
“Good gosh!” exclaimed Tumbleweed. “Him and the rest of them young hellions is headed for home now, licketty-split. Tryin’ to get one of ’em and bring him back heah would be like haulin’ a rattlesnake out of a hole by his tail.”
“Guess yore right,” agreed Rance. “S’posin’ you get the sheriff’s haid looked after and then see what Pete Yuma and his outfit is doin’.”
“All right,” nodded Tumbleweed, “what you gonna do?”
“Oh, I got a little puhsonal bus’ness to look after,” said the Ranger.
Rance went to the stable where he had left his horse. El Rey was glad to see him and said so in horse language. Rance took time to clean his guns before he saddled up.
“You take the trail what Lucky Cuss Street runs inter and foller it nawth to wheah it branches,” a sleepy hostler told him in reply to a question. “Take the branch to the left, the one what runs through Blue Rock canyon. Silver Valley is jest the other side. That’s the Cross-G spread.”
Dawn was breaking when Rance entered Blue Rock canyon. Silver Valley was glorious with morning when he pulled up at the northern mouth of the gloomy gorge and sat gazing at the big white casa set in its grove of shimmering cottonweeds.
“So that’s the Gandara hacienda,” he mused. “A fine lookin’ dugout, all right. Well, heah goes.”
Straight to the wide-spreading veranda he rode. El Rey was trained to stand and Rance left him with hanging reins.
The big front door stood open. Rance entered without knocking, walked down a broad hall and stopped before a door back of which he could hear voices. He pushed the door open and stepped into a lofty dining room.
Six men were seated at the table, eating breakfast. They stared in astonishment at the tall Ranger framed in the opening.
“Which of you fellers is Guilermo Gandara?” asked Rance.
The tallest and darkest of the men rose to his feet, eyes questioning.
“I’m Guilermo,” he said. “Why?”
Rance spoke quietly, choosing his words:
“Gandara, you killed a man in Coffin this mawnin. From what I can find out it was a sorta accidental killin‘; but th’ man was a peace officer and yore goin’ back to Coffin with me to stand trial.”
Guilermo Gandara’s jaw sagged, his eyes widened. He seemed incapable of speech.
“Y-you say I’m goin’ back to Coffin with you?” he finally managed to stutter.
“That’s what I said. You ready to ride?”
A rush of hot blood darkened Guilermo’s face still more. His eyes switched from Rance to his brothers. “Boys, you heah that? He’s gonna take me to Coffin! Well if this don’t beat—”
He whirled back to the Ranger, hands sweeping down. Gripping the butts of his pearl-handled guns, he froze motionless.
Rance Hatfield’s Colts had slid from their sheaths in a blur of movement too swift for the eye to follow. The black muzzles, steady as rocks, yawned toward the table. The Ranger’s voice, hard and cold, bit at Guilermo:
“Yore goin’ to Coffin with me, ridin’ or under a blanket! Take yore choice!”
The men at the table sat tense. Guilermo still stood with whitening fingers gripping his guns. The eyes of all six were brightening, narrowing. Rance read the signals right. He had seen that chill litter birthing in the eyes of men before. Death was twirling his rope over the room.
A door on the far side of the table opened and a man entered—a strikingly handsome old man with snowy hair and vividly blue eyes. He halted on the threshold, a look of utter amazement on his face.
“What the hell’s goin’ on heah?” he demanded.
One of the Gandara twins answered him.
“Pappy, this feller says he’s gonna take Guilermo to Coffin to stand trial for a killin’.”
The old man’s gaze centered on Rance.
“Who the devil are you?” he barked.
“I represent the Territory of Arizona,” Rance told him, his eyes never leaving Guilermo. “I’m a Ranger and I’m arrestin’ yore son for killin’ Marshal Waters at Coffin. I don’t think they’ll anythin’ much come of it, but he’s gotta go to Coffin and stand trial.”
The old man’s face changed. He turned to Guilermo.
“I told you you was gonna get in real trouble some day with yore hell raisin’,” he said. “You go ahead with this officer and don’t arg’fy. I’ll get to town this aft’noon and straighten this mess up. Get goin’, now.
Guilermo’s hands dropped from his guns. “All right, pappy,” he nodded. “What you say goes.”
“I’d like to change my clothes and shave ’fore I ride,” he said to Rance. “You can come and watch me while I do it.”
Rance glanced at the proud, handsome face, and bolstered his guns.
“It ain’t necessary for me to go long, I guess,” he said. “I’ll be waitin’ outside, with my hoss.”
A subtle change evidenced in the attitude of the Gandara boys. Much of the hostility faded from their eyes. They relaxed.
“You better have some breakfast, feller,” said one as Rance turned to the door.
“Thanks,” said the Ranger, “but I ain’t hungry. I’ll wait outside.”
He sat down on the edge of the veranda and rolled a cigarette.
“Real folks livin’ heah,” he told the black.
For several minutes he smoked thoughtfully. He turned at the sound of a step, the cigarette dropped from his fingers and he stood up, eyes staring.
A girl had stepped out onto the veranda,
a small girl with
big black eyes, dark curly hair and a sweet red mouth. She was as astonished as the Ranger.
“Howdy, Ma’am,” said Rance. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you right last time, so I’m doin’ it now.”
“Where did you come from? W-what are you doing here?” she asked.
“I’m waitin’ for a feller,” Rance replied to the second question, ignoring the first. “You live heah?”
She did not answer. Her gaze had left the Ranger and was fixed on El Rey. Once again Rance saw the color drain from her cheeks.
“That horse—” the words were little more than a whisper—“where did you get it?”
“I traded with a feller for him,” Rance replied. “I got the best of the trade.”
Hoofs clattered. Guilermo Gandara rode around a corner of the house.
“All right, feller, I’m ready,” he told Rance. “Hello, Gypsy,” he greeted the girl, “how’s tricks?”
Without waiting for a reply he trotted down the drive, leaving Rance to follow at his convenience.
Rance flipped the reins over El Rey’s neck and mounted. He smiled down at the girl.
“Adios, Señorita,” he said. “Glad you didn’t have a quirt with you this mawnin’.”
Color rushed back to her cheeks. Rance raised his wide hat, nodded and rode away, leaving her staring after him.
CHAPTER 6
“Feller, you sho’ have qualified to ketch rattlesnakes by the tail,” said Tumbleweed Turner that night. “No wonder the Rangers is makin’ a name for themselves all over the Terr‘-tory, if that’s a sample of the things they do. You sho’ started this heah pueblo buzzin’.
“Co’hse it was plumb sartain from the beginnin’ the coroner’s jury would turn Guilermo loose,” he went on, “but get-tin him ’fore the jury was what counted. He didn’t seem to hold no hard feelin’s ’gainst you. Who-all didja see up to their place?”
“Guilermo’s pappy, his brothers and his sister,” Rance replied.
“Sister?” Guilermo ain’t got no sister.”
“Thasso? Well, theah was a mighty purty black-haired gal theah when I left.”