by Matt Rand
“Oh,” said Tumbleweed in an understanding voice, “you musta run inter Gypsy Carvel. She ain’t them boys’ sister—she’s their cousin. Old Alfredo, their pappy, had a sister. She married Jim Carvel—died when the gal was born, I b’lieve. Jim got killed last yeah, I fergit jest how. She’s lived with the Gandaras ’most her life.”
For an instant Rance Hatfield stared with dilated eyes. Then he quickly turned away, so that the deputy might not see his whitening face.
“Jim Carvel!” he whispered through stiff lips. “Jim Carvel her father. God! If that ain’t hell! What goes over the devil’s back sho’ comes home under his breast!”
He lay a long time before going to sleep that night, staring at the ceiling with somber eyes.
“Hell, how could I tell her!” he growled. “She wouldn’t believe it nohow. Don’t guess nobody would, fer that matter. Funny, ain’t it, how a lie comes home to roost? Even a good lie—that is if theah ever is any sich thing as a good lie. When I told that one I thought it was plumb good, but now I ain’t so sho’, I ain’t so sho’!”
His mind went back to the scene in the little Carvel ranch-house more than a year before. The house had been cold and silent when Rance rode up to serve the warrant on Jim Carvel. Inside he found a dying man with a gun lying beside him. Jim Carvel had shot himself.
“Don’t know why I did it,” Carvel mumbled. “Now I wish I hadn’t. When I saw you ridin’ up I figgered—‘Hell, what’s the use! They’ll make me stretch rope for killin’ Hoskins, even if he did have it comin’ to him and I shot in self-defense! Yeah, Ranger, I sho’ wish I hadn’t done it. It’ll jest about kill my kid—she’s livin’ with her uncle right now. Carvel folks has allus had guts—guess I’m the fust one to show yaller. Sorry—”
Touched by the dying man’s story, Rance had done an impulsive thing. In his official report concerning Jim Carvel he had written—“Killed while resisting arrest!”
Rance had always felt justified in that white lie. But now—“Oh, hell!” he growled and went to sleep.
CHAPTER 7
Rance began to ride much in the vicinity of Silver Valley, but he did not visit the Cross-G ranch-house. Not due to any unfriendliness shown him by the Gandaras, however. Several times he had met one or more of the boys in town. They had appeared to hold no animosity. Old Alfredo, on the single occasion he had encountered the ranch owner in Coffin, had spoken pleasantly.
“Fine old jigger, that,” Rance had confided to El Rey, “but he ’pears like he’s got trouble on his mind. Sorta sad and worried lookin’ all the time.”
From the rugged slopes of El Infierno Negro to the west, the Cross-G ranch-house could be seen. Rance spent a great deal of time on those slopes, where he could see and not be seen.
“If the hunch I’m follerin’ is a good one, sooner or later she’s gonna ride south,” he told the black horse, “and when she does, why—we’re headin’ south, too.”
Late one afternoon of golden sunlight dripping down a sky like a veil of bluebirds’ wings his patience was rewarded. Earlier in the day the Gandara boys had ridden off toward Coffin. Old Alfredo had departed in the direction of his great north range. Then, just as the western peaks were ringed about with saffron flame, Rance saw a trim little figure ride away toward the purple mountains of the south. Even at that distance he could make out a blanket roll behind the saddle and the slim lines of a rifle in the saddle boot.
Rance spoke to El Rey, and the big black nimble-footed down the rocky slope.
For some time Rance rode at a fast gallop; then, knowing he was closing the distance between him and the girl, he reined in somewhat. From a hilltop he caught sight of her, a dot on the white trail ahead.
“Stretch yore legs a little more, hoss,” he ordered. “Gonna come night ’fore long and we don’t want her to give us the slip.”
Soon the trail swerved slightly to the west and Rance felt easier. This was the Canyon Trail that wound through steeply walled gorges for many miles.
“Ain’t but one way for her to go now,” he nodded with satisfaction. “All hole-in-the-wall travellin’ till you cross the line, and for a long time after.”
He nodded his satisfaction again when he reached the barbed-wire fence that marked the line and found the strands had been cut and roughly joined again.
“Right on the trail,” he grunted. “Now we gotta close up a bit and take our chances.”
It was a moonless night of a myriad stars burning golden in the black robe of the sky. Sounds travelled far in the silence and Rance pulled up from time to time and listened intently for the click of hoofs.
Finally he heard them, fainting away into the distance. He rode swiftly for a little while, pulled up again, and again caught the distant clicking—nearer this time.
“If she happens to stop and hear us, and gets that rifle to workin‘—well, theah’ll be one good Ranger round heah, ’cordin’ to her way of thinkin’,” he muttered. “Hoss, step light and easy!”
The golden stars began paling to silver. A wan something, like the shadow of an unborn dream, fled across the sky. It was the first breath of the coming dawn. Rance lounged wearily in the saddle, peering ahead with eyes that ached from constant strain. El Rey snorted disgustedly and quickened his pace. The Ranger pulled him to a halt on a hilltop and sat gazing into a great pool of shadows far below.
Coppery spears of light shot up from the east, caromed off the sky’s curve and stabbed into the shadow-pool. It fled into tile nothingness and Rance saw a small, lonely figure riding wearily up a distant slope. He waited until it had vanished ever the crest, then he urged El Rey to a fast gallop.
The huge black thundered down the trail, flitted across the hollow and toiled up the opposite rise. Again Rance halted him on the hilltop. Ahead wound the trail, a ribbon of dusty silver, deserted.
Rance swore in exasperation and fell to searching the flanking hills with a glance that missed nothing. His eyes brightened as they centered on a narrow, almost imperceptible gap only a few hundred yards down the slope from where he sat.
“That’s the only place she coulda sidetracked to, hoss,” he said, twitching the bridle.
A faint track ran through the gorge, with over-hanging cliffs shouldering it on either side. Rance rode cautiously: the girl could not be far ahead. The gorge began to widen and his caution increased.
“Here’s wheah we take to the hills, feller,” he decided, turning the black to the right.
El Rey picked his way daintily between rocks and tree trunks. He avoided patches of thorny mesquite and dense manzanita thickets. Rance suddenly sniffed, and swallowed hungrily.
“Coffee bilin somewheah dost, sho’ as hell,” he muttered. “Easy, boss’ Now what d’you know ’bout that?”
The downhill growth had abruptly thinned out. Rance could see into a narrow valley, grass grown and wooded. Clustered under the widely spaced trees of a grove were a score or more of roughly built huts. Before the largest of these stood a tired horse. Beside the horse a girl and a golden-haired man conversed earnestly.
The girl appeared to be urging the man to some course of which he disapproved. He shook his head repeatedly, shrugged his shoulders and gestured. Finally he patted her on the shoulder and turned toward the cabin. She followed him in and the door closed behind them. Rance sat motionless for a long time, but they did not reappear. He spoke to the horse and rode slowly up the slope.
All through the long day Rance lay concealed on the hillside, watching men come and go in the valley.
Once a row of some kind broke out and there was much shouting and cursing, in the midst of which the golden-haired man appeared in the doorway of his cabin. Rance saw the swift gleam of a thrown knife. There was a scream followed by a tense silence. The golden-haired man turned back into the cabin, closing the door behind him.
“Cavorca, yore a fangin’ sidewinder,” Rance muttered as he watched two men carry a limp form into another cabin, “but you sho’ know how to handle them
hellions what ride for you.”
Rance saw nothing of the girl during the day. Cavorca appeared once or twice for a brief period, apparently receiving reports from men who had ridden in, and giving orders. Toward evening Rance slipped up the hill to where he had hobbled El Rey, to see that the black horse was getting his quota of grass and could reach the little stream of water that trickled down the rocks. He dozed a little as the air grew cooler.
Just as dusk was falling the girl appeared. A man brought her horse to the cabin door. Manuel Cavorca stood beside the saddle and she seemed to make a last appeal. He shook his head and she rode down the valley, her slim shoulders drooping despondently.
“That sidewinder wouldn’t do anythin’ decent for his own mother, I bet,” growled the watching Ranger. “Wonder what she wanted of him, anyhow?
“I know damn well it waren’t anythin’ but somethin’ he’d oughta do!” he added in the tone of a man arguing with himself.
Darkness fell, and still Rance Hatfield lay watching the lights now gleaming in the valley. He munched cold food taken from his saddlebags and tried to find soft spots in the rocks.
One by one the lights winged out, except for a single glow in the cabin of Manuel Cavorca. Rance waited another hour and rose to his feet, loosening his guns in their sheaths.
Silently he drifted down the slope. He weaved between the dark cabins, reached the one occupied by Cavorca and hesitated an instant. He hated to make a noise, but he dared not risk fooling with the latch. He lunged with a big shoulder, the door flew open and he leaped into the room.
Manuel Cavorca sat at a table, the light of an oil lamp striking bronze glints in his yellow hair and deepening the blue of his eyes. He started up as Rance confronted him, then sank back under the threat of the Ranger’s gun. Recognition tensed his mouth.
“So!” he purred in his silvery voice. “My Ranger friend, eh! And what do you here, amigo, in Mexico?”
“I’ve come for you, Cavorca,” said Rance quietly.
“This is not Arizona. You have no authority here.”
“Yeah, but I have,” drawled the Ranger, “plenty. Right heah!” He gestured with the big gun.
“One shout from me and my men will tear you to pieces,” said Cavorca.
“One little cheep from you and they won’t find anythin’ but pieces of you when they get heah,” Rance countered. “Stand up and face the wall.”
Death was looking out from the Ranger’s gray eyes. Manuel Cavorca read that bleak stare aright and did not hesitate. Rance took a rope that hung from a wall peg, bound him securely and slipped a gag into his mouth. He laid the outlaw’s pearl-handled guns on the table beside a knife he took from a sheath at the back of Iris neck. Then he raised the trussed-up form to his shoulder and left the cabin.
During the day Rance had noted the position of a lean-to stable where several horses were stalled. He laid Cavorca beside the trail at the mouth of the gorge and slipped back to the stable. He soothed a horse with voice and hand, cinched a saddle onto its back, slipped a bit between its jaws and led it to where he had left Cavorca, its hoofs making little or no sound on the grass. Leaving the cayuse tied to a tree, he went after El Rey.
With Cavorca’s feet bound securely to the stirrups he rode away from the silent valley. Outside the gorge he removed the gag and untied the outlaw’s hands.
“Don’t see no sense in makin’ you any more uncomfortable than nec’sary,” he explained. “All right, keep ahead of me.”
Daylight found them not far from the border, where the trail swept in a wide curve around a great hollow. Neither Rance nor his prisoner saw, at the edge of the growth far ahead, where the trail straightened out again, a weary little figure leading a badly lamed horse.
Across the curve the click of hoofs drifted to the girl’s ears. She glanced over her shoulder, whirled and stood staring in astonished dismay. A low cry seeped past the little hand clenched against her red lips. For a moment she stood stricken, then she flashed into action.
Urging the crippled horse into the growth, she tied him to a branch. Overlooking the trail was a tall, sloping rock. She scrambled to the top of this, crouched behind a ledge and rested her rifle in a shallow crack.
On came the clicking hoofs. Two horses ambled around the bend.
“Alto ahi! Hands up!”
Rance halted where he was. His hands tensed, then slowly rose to a level with his shoulders. There was no sense arguing with that black rifle muzzle looking him between the eyes. Cavorca halted also.
“All right,” said the Ranger, “we done halted. What next you want?”
“You ride ahead,” replied the voice. “Keep your hands up! Manuel Cavorca, pull your horse aside.”
Rance touched El Rey with his knees and the black moved slowly forward. Cavorca grinned exultantly into the Ranger’s face.
Rance did not answer.
“Halt!” called the voice before he had gone a dozen paces. Then it rose in a scream of breaking nerves:
“Ride, Manuel, ride. Back into Mexico! No! No! Don’t you touch him! I’ll shoot you if you do,!”
Rance glanced over his shoulder and saw Cavorca, his face convulsed with hatred. There was a knife in his hand. Where it had been concealed Rance had no idea.
“I mean it, Manuel!” screamed the hidden voice.
Cavorca hissed a curse and swung his horse around. Heedless of his feet bound to the stirrups, he urged the animal to a gallop. Rance sat motionless, his hands still raised. The drum of hoofs droned to a whisper, died away. From the rock beside the trail sounded a scuffle and scramble. Rance lowered his hands, turned El Rey and sat waiting.
Curly head held high, eyes defiant, Gypsy Carvel stepped into view, the rifle swinging loosely under her arm.
“All right,” she said. “I’m ready. You can take me to jail for helping your prisoner to escape.”
Rance regarded her somberly for a moment. Then a grin quirked his lips and set little lights to dancing in his gray eyes.
“Guess we’re a coupla law breakers, ma’am,” he said. “You see, we’re still in Mexico, and I ain’t got a bit of authority in Mexico. I was jest doin’ a little job of wideloopin’ on that jigger.”
“Oh!” said the girl.
The smile left the Ranger’s face. “But it’s sho’ got me puzzled why you’d help a murderin’ sidewinder like that to get loose,” he added.
Her head went up again. “He’s no worse than people who murder with the law protecting them!”
Rance opened his lips to reply, and bit back the words unspoken; they would be but wasted effort, he decided.
“Wheah’s yore hoss?” he said instead.
Twilight was falling when they reached Silver Valley, El Rey carrying double, the girl’s horse loping along behind.
“Adios, until our next fight,” Rance nodded as she slipped to the ground.
“Wait,” she said. “You must be very hungry, and it is a long ride to Coffin.”
“Much ’bliged, ma’am,” he answered, turning El Rey’s head, “but I don’t hanker to eat with folks what figger me a paid killer.”
Gypsy Carvel’s soft lips trembled slightly and there was a dejected droop to her dark head as she walked up the drive to the big white casa.
CHAPTER 8
Rance found Coffin roaring as never before. The rickety board walks were thronged with laughing, singing, shouting men, most of them grandly drunk. Horsemen galloped up and down the streets, yelling and shooting holes in the sky. Even the fights had taken on a joyous note; men actually seemed to get pleasure out of being knocked down! The smell of whiskey, the glitter of gold and the haze of powder smoke rose like a swamp miasma to blot out the stars.
The Ranger entered a saloon to find out what it was all about. A perfect stranger seized his hand and pump-handled it with vast enthusiasm. A girl he had never seen before threw her arms around his neck.
Rance freed his hand from the whooping miner’s grip and touseled the girl’s hair
.
“What the blazes is going on?” he demanded.
“Another strike!” howled the miner. “The biggest ever! Have a drink on me!”
“They hit it rich in Silver Valley, yesterday—way up to the northern end clost to El Infierno Negro,” a bartender explained. “The hull damn town’s gone crazy!”
Rance looked grave. “On the Cross-G spread?”
“Yeah,” said the drink juggler. “Old Alfredo and his boys rode in yest’day and filed claims and then ’vited ev’body to head up theah and stake out workin’s. Real people, them Gandaras!”
“They sho’ are,” agreed Rance.
“You’ll find ’em down at the Here It Is,” said the bartender. “They’re celebratin’.”
Rance found the Gandara boys in the big saloon, buying rounds of drinks for the house. They welcomed him boisterously.
“Ain’t no use of ever testin’ me anymore, Ranger,” chuckled Guilermo. “T’morrer I’m gonna buy me the jail and the co’ht house!”
Old Alfredo was seated at a table, grinning at the antics of his sons. He nodded to Rance to join him.
“Sho’ glad to heah of yore good luck, suh,” Rance congratulated him.
“Yeah, she come in handy,” Alfredo admitted. “Things ain’t been so good in the cow bus’ness lately, what with them two dry yeahs and the big blizzard last winter. We can use a little extra money right now. We been doin’ a little quiet perspectin’ for quite a while. I figgered that them Dry Bone Coulee deposits had oughta crop up again on our side the hills, and I figgered it right. I took up claims for me and the boys, and one for my niece. Theah’s another one I’m tryin’ to hang onto for my youngest kid—the one what went away—but I’m scairt I won’t be able to, him not bein’ heah to register it. Makes me feel bad, too.”
Rance nodded sympathetically. “You ain’t got no idea wheah he is, then?”
Old Alfredo shook his head. “Nope. Last heerd tell of him he was somewheah in Mexico. He was a wild younker and got inter some bad shootin’ scrapes and lit out coupla yeahs ago.
“Funny thing,” the ranch owner went on, “he was the only one of the boys what looked like his maw. The rest of the boys sorta take after me—big and dark—guess the Spanish blood hangs on purty strong. She had blue eyes and yaller hair and waren’t very big. I’d hoped the kid would marry Gypsy Carvel, his cousin, but they didn’t seem to take to each other that way. More of a brother and sister feelin’, but they sho’ thought a heap of each other. I sometimes think Gypsy knows wheah he is and won’t tell.”