The Second Western Novel

by Matt Rand

  “Whew!” whistled Rance Hatfield as he fought his way into a saloon. “If all I owned was this heah town and Hell, I’d sell her and live in Hell!”

  From saloon to saloon he went, and ever the mad pace grew madder and the wild night wilder. The’ bartenders no longer pulled corks—they smashed the necks of the bottles and gushed the raw whiskey over the splinters into glasses with hands already pawing around them. The roulette wheels spun faster and faster. Men shoved their winnings back onto the red or the black without counting them, roared exultantly if they won again, shrugged and grinned if they lost. Dice clicked, cards whispered one against the other. The stiff white collars of the dealers were no longer white nor stiff. Their faces, formerly white and cold as the collars, were flushed and mottled and streaming sweat. Only the silk and tinsel of the dance halls seemed to gleam the brighter as the hands screeched around the clock.

  “Funny how much better lookin’ a dance hall girl gets after you’ve looked at her a few times through the bottom of a whiskey glass!” Rance chuckled as he swung a slim, flaming-haired partner across the sanded floor.

  Suddenly the Ranger stiffened. A face had drifted past, a swarthily handsome face topping a tremendous spread of shoulders.

  “What’s the matter, cowboy?” asked the girl.

  Rance ignored her. Some hidden monitor in a corner of his brain was clamoring for attention.

  “Now wheah’ve I seen that jigger before?” he muttered. “Why’d he give me such a start?”

  He followed the big man with an intent gaze. The other glanced straight into the Ranger’s face. Recognition flamed in his eyes, he whirled about and Rance saw a jagged livid scar slanting down his neck. Tomaso Fuentes!

  A mad thrill shot through the Ranger’s brain. Tomaso Fuentes! Not even Cavorca himself was more wanted by the Arizona authorities. Fuentes was red to the elbows in American blood. His frequent raids across the Border were things of terror and horror. Once let the Territory of Arizona lay hands on him and his conviction and execution were swift and sure. Capturing Fuentes would be a Ranger triumph as great or even greater than the capture of Cavorca.

  Rance hurled the girl from him and bored across the room, shoving cursing dancers aside, driving straight for “un Gran General,” who was driving just as straight for the outer door.

  Rance jerked his gun but dared not shoot. There were too many men and women in the way. That did not bother Fuentes, however. He slewed sideways, flame gushed from his low-held hand.

  A girl screamed, a wild shriek of agony. A man went down, coughing and spitting. Rance gritted his teeth.

  “The hyderphobia skunk! Just let me line sights on him—jest once!”

  Fuentes shot again, and Rance felt the wind of the bullet that knocked the back-bar mirror into a thousand splinters. Fuentes knocked a girl down, clubbed a man with his gun barrel and tore the swinging doors off their hinges going through. Rance hit the board sidewalk a split second later.

  Up the street was a swirl and eddy where “un Gran General” ripped the crowd apart, his big shoulders and his flailing gun barrel clearing a path for him. The angry revelers, closing in his wake, hampered the pursuing Ranger. Men struck at Rance, others sought to seize him, not knowing what it was all about. He tore free from their clutching hands, fended their blows as best he could and grimly stuck to Fuentes’ trail.

  “Un Gran General” had gained a long lead, but now the crowd was thinning. Rance risked snapping a shot or two over their heads with the only result that his quarry ran the faster.

  Up the long slope of the mountain toward the mines, where the lights were fewer, the street practically deserted. Ahead loomed the gaunt buildings of the great Alhambra mine. To the left were those of the Golconda. To the right straggled ramshackle structures of smaller diggings.

  Rance knocked Fuentes’ hat off with a whining slug. The fugitive ducked frantically, swerved to the right and darted into a shaft housing. Rance heard the watchman’s challenge, then a groaning yell, a clash of levers and the whine of moving machinery. He barged the door open and leaped into the dimly lighted building.

  Directly in front of him yawned the mine shaft. High over his head the huge barrel of an old-fashioned windlass, its speed controlled by crude but efficient grippers, turned slowly. In the gloom of the shaft a wire rope swayed and jerked.

  “Sidewinder started the cage, jumped in and’s goin’ down the shaft!” Rance panted.

  He leaped to the lever that controlled the descending cage. Before he reached it the rope ceased swaying. The cage was at the bottom of the mine.

  “Damn!” swore the Ranger. “’Fore I can get that contraption up and down again he’ll have time to dig a hole through to China. Heah goes nothin’!”

  Measuring the distance across the yawning shaft he gathered himself together and leaped. He caught the rope with one hand, slipped, dangled, got another grip just as his fingers tore loose. He wrapped his legs around the swaying cable and went down hand over hand through the black darkness.

  He hit the cage top with a crash, lost his grip and rolled off to the ground, the breath almost knocked out of him.

  A gun blazed a yard-long lance of fire and a bullet screeched through the space a standing man would have occupied. Rance jerked his gun, sent two bullets smashing at the flash and rolled frantically aside. An answering slug knocked rock splinters into his face.

  Deafened by the roar of his own guns, he dimly heard the thud of running feet. He leaped erect, tripped over a projecting timber end and went sprawling. By the time he regained his feet once more the quick thudding had died away in the distance. The gloomy passages of the mine were silent save for the soft drop of water and the groan of timbers settling under the terrific compressing force of the mountain resting upon them.

  For an hour or more Rance prowled through the underground galleries fruitlessly. Fuentes had found either a snug hiding place or another exit. Rance was inclined to think the latter. Finally he made his way back to the shaft.

  The cage had been drawn up, but a few yells brought it down again. The watchman, with a sore head and a sawed-off shotgun, greeted Rance when he reached the surface. He peered closely at the Ranger, the ten-gauge ready for business.

  “Wheah’d you come from, and wheah’d that damn greaser go?” he demanded.

  Rance told him as much as he thought necessary. The watchman commented vigorously and profanely.

  “Chances are the horned toad found the tunnel openin’,” he concluded. “Yeah, theah’s one; hits the air over dost to the Alhambra workin’s. Mebbe he’d been heah b’fore and knowed wheah to look. We work a lot of Mexicans. What’s good for this gun-barrel headache?”

  The first kiss of dawn was blushing the mountain tops as Rance made his way back down the slope. A merciful darkness still shrouded Silver City crouching like a drunken hag over a broken gin bottle. Sodden figures lay in the streets. The sobbing moan of a dying man quavered up from somewhere among the shadows. There were huddled forms under the gambling tables, beside the drenched bars, stark in blotchy doorways. Bits of tawdry tinsel and torn silk littered the dance-hall floors. The hanging lamps smoked and guttered, ghastly in the welling torrent of golden light from the east. A vile stench tainted the air.

  But clean and sweet and lovely with an unearthly loveliness, the desert stretched its shimmering arms to the dawn. The great mountain blazed rose and red and scarlet and gold as its purple sleeping robe slipped down its majestic form. Water leaped silver and white. A whisper of wind danced across the crags and the sand. A bird sang—and it was day!

  CHAPTER 17

  Rance found Pedro in his room, pacing the floor with excitement. He burst into voluble Spanish.

  “Hold on! Hold on!” cautioned the Ranger. “Take it easy, feller, I can’t make head or tail what yore talkin’ about.” Pedro gulped, ceased his prancing and returned to English.

  “The sheriff and his posse. They pursued Cavorca.”

  “Yeah, I know,”
said Rance. “Fat chance they had of catchin’ up with him.”

  Pedro gestured expressively. “Thees sheriff, he not so dumb. He attempts not to catch up with Cavorca. Instead he rides to the west, circles the Canyon Trail and rides north on it, figuring that Cavorca would turn into the Canyon Trail and ride south.”

  “Not so dumb, that,” agreed Rance. “Did he meet him?”

  “Yes and no,” explained Pedro. “Cavorca he not dumb, either. He have scouts riding ahead. They see the sheriff and his posse. They warn Cavorca. The bandits ambush the posse and kill or wound several. Not enough, however. Now the south mouth of Dead Man’s Canyon is closed to Cavorca. He dares not ride back north.”

  “How you learn all this, Pete?”

  “The sheriff sent a man here for food and help. Everybody drunk. Not yet has help been sent to the sheriff.”

  “Uh-huh, and while they’re foolin’ around, Cavorca’ll squirm out someway,” growled the Ranger. “C’mon, Pete, you and me is ridin’.”

  Several miles north of Mexico the Canyon Trail enters the gloomy gorge from which it gets its name. The inner walls of Dead Man’s Canyon are steep and rocky, clothed with dense chaparral and manzanita. From the ragged rims the ground falls away abruptly in almost straight-up-and-down slopes. The canyon, in fact, splits the crest of a mountain whose precipitous sides are its outer slopes.

  Night was not far away when Rance and Pedro entered the gorge. El Rey had not fully recovered from his flesh wound and Rance forked a sturdy brown pony hired from the livery stable. The Mexican rode a bay.

  “Heah that?” exclaimed the Ranger. “They’re shootin’ it out in theah, Pete.”

  Faint fire-cracked explosions tossed back and forth between the rock walls, punctuated by duller thuds.

  “Six-shooters and rifles both goin,’” deduced Rance. “The sheriff musta got tired of waitin’ and decided to close in on ’em.”

  Pedro nodded and for some minutes the pair rode in silence. Rance turned to his companion, jaw tight, eyes gleaming under his black brows.

  “Pete,” he said, “you and me is gonna bust up the party and give the sheriff the break he’s needin’.”

  “Si, Capitan, but how?”

  “This way. Cavorca will be worried ’bout his back trail. He’ll know if the sheriff gets help it’ll come this way. Chances are he’ll have scouts posted to warn him if another posse is comin’. He don’t dare lead his gang back this way with the sheriff campin’ on his tail. Once in the open country he’s sunk and he knows it. I’m bankin’ on the scouts gettin’ rattled if they see or heah anybody comin’ from the nawth. You and me is goin’ in hell-bent-for-leather, shootin’ and yellin’.”

  “Si, Capitan, a good plan.”

  “Uh-huh, if it works. If it don’t—well, hope El Rey gets a good new boss!”

  The popping of pistol shots grew louder. Rance loosed his guns, gathered the reins in his left hand. Ahead loomed a projecting buttress of rock where the canyon curved.

  “All right, Pete, heah we go!”

  Spurs drove home. The horses shot forward, stormed around the turn.

  “Come on, fellers, heah they are!” whooped Rance.

  Pedro gave a yell that would have put an Apache buck to shame. The guns of both let go in a crackling fusillade.

  Answering shots from the canyon side kicked up puffs of dust at their feet. There was a startled yelping amid the chaparral, then a clatter of hoofs.

  “It’s workin’!” exulted Rance. “Shoot, Pete, shoot!”

  On they swept, iron hoofs striking showers of sparks from the rocks. Rance stuffed shells into his empty gun while Pedro took potshots at the fleeing scouts.

  “Ha!” shrilled the Mexican. “Capitan, look!”

  The hillside was suddenly a-swarm with frantically fleeing men. They rose from behind boulders, darted from clumps of manzanita. Some tried to urge their horses up the steep slope, others held their hands high in the air and howled for mercy. Puffs of smoke zoomed up from the canyon ahead. A deep voice bellowed orders.

  “Sheriff’s, tellin’ his men not to shoot them what gives up,” Rance shouted.

  More hands went up. Rifles and revolvers clattered on the rocks. The bandits had had enough.

  “Maldito!” shrieked Pedro. “Cavorca! Cavorca!”

  Rance saw the outlaw leader break cover at the same instant. Straight up the slope he urged his magnificent golden sorrel. Beside him rode a slim little figure on a bright roan. Rance groaned as the posse in the canyon sent a volley after the fleeing pair.

  The slender rider beside the golden-haired bandit suddenly threw up fluttering little hands and pitched headlong from the saddle.

  “God!” breathed the Ranger.

  Manuel Cavorca glanced down at the crumpled little form in the mesquite. For an instant his grip seemed to tighten on the reins. Then a feeble hand gestured frantically toward the saffron-flaming crest of the gorge. Cavorca bent low over the sorrel’s neck and sent him leaping up the boulder strewn slope.

  “The dirty sidewinder!” grated Rance. “Left her! High-tailin’ it to save his own wuthless hide.

  “Pete!” he barked, “don’t let him cut back this way. Block the nawth end!”

  Up the slope went the chunky brown pony, snorting and slipping.

  “If I only was forkin’ El Rey!” groaned the Ranger.

  The brown horse was doing the best he could, but the sorrel gained steadily. A lucky smooth stretch gave the pony a momentary advantage, but the sorrel had almost reached the crest when he was still a hundred yards behind.

  Cavorca twisted in the saddle. His blue eyes glinted along a pistol barrel. Rance saw the puff of smoke and heard the thud of the bullet reaching its mark at the same instant.

  Down went the brown horse, dead with hardly a struggle. Rance kicked his feet loose and hurled himself free. He struck the ground hard, but was on his feet in a single rolling bound, just in time to see Cavorca vanish over the crest.

  “Gonna ride down the outer slope—he’ll never make it,” gasped Rance, floundering and stumbling up the hill.

  But Cavorca did. Rance reached the lip of the canyon as the sorrel went down a final hair-raising stretch, “sittin’ on his tail.” Cavorca turned, waved a derisive hand and vanished amid the thick growth.

  Slowly, haltingly, the Ranger walked back into the canyon, his tortured eyes dreading what he knew they would all too soon see. The old sheriff panted up to meet him.

  “Cavorca get away?”

  Rance nodded dully. The sheriff wiped his damp forehead with a red handkerchief.

  “His gal’s down theah,” he gestured, “by that clump of mesquite. Dyin.”

  With a face of stone, Rance Hatfield walked to the mesquite clump. Under a blanket a slight figure writhed and moaned. The Ranger hesitated, then strode to the blanket.

  “God-amighty!”

  With incredulous gaze he stared into a dark lovely face from which two great hate-filled eyes glared up into his. Lips that had been rose-red were now grey with pain. The dying girl hissed a sentence in Spanish.

  Rance knelt. “Señorita, who are you?”

  The dark, agonized eyes blazed. “Me, I am Teresa. Perro! Did you keel my man?”

  “Yore—yore man? You mean Cavorca?”

  “Si, Manuel, my sweetheart. I am hees woman.”

  Slowly the Ranger shook Iris head. “Cavorca got away,” he replied softly.

  Joy replaced the hate and suffering in the black eyes. “Madre de Dios, gracias! Now I die happy.”

  Rance bent lower, voiced a question:

  “Teresa, wheah is Gypsy Carvel?”

  Hate flamed in the dark eyes once more. The girl levered herself up on stiff arms.

  “Geepsy! She ees—”

  Blood gurgled in the slender throat, choking the words. The tense arms relaxed.

  Rance caught her and eased her gently back upon the blanket. For a long moment he stared into the half-open eyes. Then he softly drew a
corner of the blanket over the quiet face.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Well, we rounded up the gang, anyhow,” said the sheriff as he and Rance rode back to Silver City together.

  “Uh-huh,” grunted the Ranger pessimistically, “and Cavorca got away. Like cuttin’ the haid off a tapeworm and bottlin’ the body. Haid goes right on growin’ ’nother body.”

  “You figger Cavorca’ll get ’nother outfit?”

  “Shore he will, and he won’t waste no time ’bout it, either. He’ll be out to even up t’day’s score in a hurry.”

  The sheriff looked worried. “Mebbe he’s got his belly full of Silver City,” he offered hopefully.

  Rance was not impressed. “Mebbe, but the chances are he’ll figger he jest got a unlucky break this time—which is ’bout the truth of things, come to think on it. Chances are he’ll still callate Silver City’s easy pickin’s.”

  They rode in silence for some time. The Ranger broke it at last.

  “What’s botherin’ me most right now, sheriff, is Tomaso Fuentes. That slash-necked sidewinder didn’t ride all the way to Silver City, takin’ chances on the Border Patrol pickin’ him up, jest to hoss it in a dance hall. He’s stewin’ up some kinda kittle o’ hell or I’m a sheepherder. I sho’ wish I knowed if he left town.”

  Rance found Silver City suffering from a headache, but busy. The thunder of the stamp mills shook the air. Buildings vibrated to the faint boom of blasts set off far beneath them in the timbered galleries of the mines. Ore wagons jammed the streets, their drivers lifting the hair from the mules’ backs with profanity that caused the air to smell of sulphur. Carts loaded with portly silver bricks stuck in the ruts and were cursed and levered out.

  “One thing the outlaws don’t have no luck stealin’,” a mine official told Rance. “We cast them bricks in two-hundred-pound weights. They don’t go so well on the back of a hoss.”

  The days six-sevened into weeks and another payday approached, but nothing was heard or seen of either Manuel Cavorca or Tomaso Fuentes. Nor of Gypsy Carvel.