Bushwack Bullets

by Walker A. Tompkins

  "I've come to kill you, Siebert."

  "Because I killed Dev?"

  "That's right. This gun in my holster is the gun Dev Hewett shot you with, Siebert. I'm givin' you my other gun—and I'm givin' you to the count of five to start foggin' it muy pronto."

  No trace of alarm crossed the old man's face.

  "You've been drinking, Hap," he said softly. "Why should you bait me into a gun fight—on account of a quarrel I might have had with your father eighteen years ago? I hold no ill will for you, Hap. As for your father, he deserved—"

  With a choked cry, Hap Kingman snapped his six-gun legacy from holster, fingers coiled about a stock that had thirteen death-notches on its metal backstrap.

  "Use that gun, Siebert!" the cowboy screamed berserkly. "Fill your hand—"

  The sharp explosion of a gun broke off the cowboy's outburst, a gunshot that seemed to come from near at hand and from a great distance, at the same time.

  Even as Hap Kingman stared at the cattleman seated on the wheelchair before him, he saw a crimson rose blossom over George Siebert's heart, saw blood spread and gush over the white linen of Siebert's shirt front.

  Then, his eyes glazed with death, the boss of the Mexitex Syndicate toppled limply forward to thud at Hap Kingman's feet, the cowboy's .45 six-gun clattering from his lap as he fell.

  Numb with horror, Hap Kingman swung his gaze around to find the source of the mysterious shot that had felled Siebert before his very eyes.

  Then a clatter of boots and a chime of spur rowels behind him made Hap Kingman spin about, to face Anna Siebert, daughter of the slain rancher.

  The girl's eyes widened in horror as she stared at her father's corpse.

  Then, lifting her shot-loaded quirt, she sprang at the stunned cowboy with a single word screaming from her lips:

  "Murderer!"

  7

  HAP HIRES A LAWYER

  Hap Kingman saw the shot-loaded end of the quirt zipping at his head, sensed the power in Anna Siebert's arm as she gripped the tiny whip by its rawhide lashes and aimed it like a blackjack at his temple.

  But the incomprehensible murder of George Siebert a few clock-ticks back had left Kingman incapable of coordinating his muscles to defend himself.

  The blow fell, with the thwacking sound of steel shot against bone.

  Like a candle snuffed out in a gale, the cowboy's senses left him. He plunged into a swirling vortex of fire, then skidded into a black abyss of oblivion.

  He was not conscious of Anna Siebert's scream, which brought startled Triangle S cowpunchers racing from barn and bunkhouse.

  His numbed ears did not register the shouts and curses of the syndicate riders, as they saw George Siebert's crumpled body, with the girl bending over the corpse, fighting back the tears.

  Even the hoarse yells of "String the devil up!" made no impression on Kingman's brain. He was out, cold. Blood dripped slowly from a raw welt over his temple, where Anna Siebert's quirt handle had thudded home.

  "No, boys!" whispered the heiress of the Triangle S Ranch, as she saw irate cowhands seize the limp body of the insensible man, saw her foreman deftly fashioning a five-roll handman's knot out of a lariat. "No. We'll take him to town, and hang him legally. We… we can't have a lynching bee on the Triangle S. Even… even daddy wouldn't want that."

  And so Hap Kingman was hustled into a jouncing buckboard and driven to Mexitex town, and the news of George Siebert's murder was soon being discussed over every poker table and whiskey glass on both sides of the Rio.

  It was a full hour after he had been lodged in Sheriff Bob Reynolds' calaboose that Hap Kingman's brain began to flicker back to consciousness.

  For a long hour he lay in a tossing stupor, fireworks dazzling his optic nerve, his pulse booming like a bass drum somewhere inside him.

  He was dimly aware of the hoary-headed old medico, Doc Harry Hanson, visiting the cell and bandaging his bruised skull.

  After the doctor had left, the jail keys jangled outside his cell again and Hap Kingman opened his eyes to see the vulture-necked figure of the lawyer and judge, Russ Melrose.

  Melrose seated himself on the jail cot beside the prisoner and laid a gnarled, blue-veined hand on the cowboy's knee.

  "What happened, son?" whispered the lawyer. "It isn't hard for me to guess that things went loco over at the Triangle S after you killed Siebert. How come you didn't make your getaway?"

  Hap Kingman shook his head dazedly.

  "I don't know. The girl… standing there. Conked me colder'n a catfish. That's all I know."

  Melrose made a clucking sound with his tongue.

  "Don't worry, Hap. I don't reckon a jury will hang you for killing Siebert, not when they hear what I got to tell 'em. Maybe we can plead insanity and get you off with a life sentence in the penitentiary. Quien sabe?"

  Hap Kingman sat with his head in his hands for many minutes, collecting his scattered wits.

  Suddenly he looked up, to stare at the lawyer.

  "Melrose, I didn't kill Siebert!"

  The lawyer closed one eyelid in a knowing wink.

  "We can't make that plea stick, son. After all, Anna Siebert witnessed that mu—that killin'. We wouldn't have the chance of a snowball in hell if you plead not guilty. Perty girls have a way of swinging juries—even when the defendant is innocent. Which you're not."

  Hap Kingman got shakily to his feet and commenced pacing tiger-like up and down the narrow confines of his cell.

  "Russ, this may sound loco as an opium dream, but it's God's truth. I didn't kill Siebert!"

  Melrose took a cheroot from his vest pocket and lighted it.

  "That is remarkable—coming from you, Hap. Didn't you ride out to the Triangle S with the avowed intention of killing Siebert?"

  Kingman nodded desperately.

  "Yes. I handed him a gun, told him to use it. I gave him an even chance to blow me wide open, Melrose."

  "But you beat him to the draw?"

  Dismay swirled in Hap Kingman's brain as he struggled to piece together the hazy fragments of his memory, the events which transpired immediately prior to Anna Siebert's knocking him out with a quirt handle.

  "I didn't shoot. Someone else shot Siebert. I didn't get a chance to fire that gun my dad left me eighteen years ago."

  Melrose shook his head stubbornly.

  "I saw the gun, Hap," whispered the lawyer. "Sheriff Reynolds just got through showin' it to me. He's holdin' the gun for evidence. It's got a fired shell under the hammer."

  Kingman's jaw dropped, and then he remembered.

  "I loaded the gun, and fired one shot to see how the trigger handled. But that was back at the Flyin' K. That shell wasn't the one that killed Siebert."

  Russ Melrose regarded the prisoner through pluming clouds of cheroot smoke. He did his best to hide the gleam of satisfaction which smoldered in his pale eyes. He replied:

  "Why do you keep insisting that you didn't shoot Siebert? Somebody did. At point-blank range. His body's over at Doc Hanson's morgue right now, with a bullet hole in his ribs you could poke a stirrup through."

  In desperation, Hap Kingman struggled for an explanation. And then, in a flash of inspiration, a possibilty struck him.

  "Listen, Melrose. I heard the shot that killed Siebert; it came from a distance. What would prevent somebody hidin' in the chaparral up on top of Manzanita Hill, and pluggin' Siebert?"

  Melrose grinned skeptically.

  "That yarn wouldn't hold water with a jury, son."

  Kingman continued pacing up and down the cell, a growing suspicion taking root in his brain.

  "It had to be that. Manzanita Hill overlooks the porch of the Triangle S ranchhouse where Siebert was sittin'. Sombody hid up there, and ambushed Siebert. That accounts for the sound of the shot comin' from somewhere else."

  Russ Melrose stood up, adjusting his coat lapels preparatory to leaving the jail.

  "That explanation might hold water if the murder wasn't witnessed by George's
daughter, Hap."

  "It's got to be true, Melrose. I can't prove it, but it's got to be true. There's no other way it could have happened."

  "Are you sorry," asked the lawyer, "that Siebert is dead?"

  A lifelong torrent of anger mottled Kingman's face with color.

  "Not by a damned sight. But I hate to stretch hang rope for a murder I didn't commit, that's all."

  A deputy sheriff came at Melrose's call and unlocked the cell. Peering at Kingman through the bars, the lawyer said:

  "I won't be sitting on the judge's bench when your case comes to trial, Hap. I'll have to be one of the witnesses, seeing as how I know you were threatening Siebert's life. They'll call in a judge from Del Rio to try the case."

  Hap Kingman stared at the cadaverous attorney, a numb despair beginning to jell his heart.

  "However," continued Melrose, "if you like, I'll take you on as a client. I'll be your defense counsel. It's up to you."

  The cowboy spread his hands in a gesture of despair.

  "I know I haven't a chance of beatin' the gallows, Melrose. But if you think I got a chance, you be my lawyer."

  Russ Melrose nodded, turned on his heel, and accompanied the deputy sheriff out of the cell block.

  The Yaqui County courthouse in Mexitex was jammed to capacity three days later when Hap Kingman's murder trial opened. Cattlemen from outlying ranches, including the full personnel of George Siebert's syndicate; bartenders and gamblers, storekeepers and miners from surrounding mountain country all joined the welter of humanity inside the stuffy courtroom.

  Amos Peddicord, a potbellied judge from the neighboring city of Del Rio, brought the courtroom to order. The first day was spent in the monotonous selection of a jury to try the case, Lawyer Russ Melrose stubbornly objecting to most of the men called on grounds that they were prejudiced.

  Hap Kingman's friends were legion. The entire range seemed stupefied by the news of Siebert's murder, and there was outspoken comment to the effect that, for some reason or other, Hap had been framed. It was not compatible with the likable cowboy's character that, for no motive at all, he could have ridden out to the Triangle S on a mission of death.

  Finally a jury composed of twelve supposedly disinterested cattlemen and Mexitex citizens had been sworn in, and the second day of the trial found everything in readiness.

  Anna Siebert was the first witness called by the prosecution.

  The bereaved girl avoided Hap Kingman's gaze as she took the stand, was sworn in, and told her brief, tragic story in a voice that shook at times with emotion.

  "He seemed all agitated when I saw him—asked me where my father was," the girl testified. "No, he wasn't drunk. Just… just angry. His eyes were—like a lion's."

  "Did you hear your father quarreling with Kingman?"

  "I heard indistinct voices. I was inside the house. Just as I was going out on the porch, I heard the shot."

  The prosecuting attorney rubbed his spade beard thoughtfully.

  "Did you… er… actually see Kingman shoot your father?"

  Anna Siebert paused, brow knitted in thought. The tense courtroom held its breath, intent on her words which might possibly be the keynote of the entire trial.

  "No. No—in honesty I cannot say I did. But I… I came around the corner just as my father toppled dead from his wheelchair. An instant after the shot was fired."

  "Was smoke coming from the defendant's pistol?" Judge Peddicord asked sharply.

  Anna Siebert looked puzzled.

  "I really can't say. I don't remember. There was a wind sweeping across the porch—if there was much smoke, I would have remembered. It must have blown away. I don't know."

  Hap Kingman's heart raced with new hope. He glanced at Russ Melrose, who nodded imperceptibly. The girl's testimony bore out what the cowboy already knew was true. The shot that had killed her father came from somewhere removed from the ranchhouse porch.

  "What did you do when you saw your father was killed?"

  "I happened to be carrying a quirt. I struck Kingman over the head with it. Then I screamed for the men to come and help me. But it was too late. Daddy was… dead."

  No further testimony was brought out during Melrose's brief cross-examination.

  One by one, several Triangle S punchers testified to finding their veteran employer dead. Then Doc Hanson, the county coroner, gave his technical report regarding the cause of Siebert's death—a bullet in the heart. Death had been instantaneous.

  After a noon recess, Hap Kingman himself was placed on the stand. His plea—"Not guilty"—caused a near riot in the courtroom, bursts of cheering from his friends being counteracted by angry yells from Siebert's Triangle S cowhands.

  When Judge Peddicord had calmed the courtroom on threat of clearing out the public during the duration of the trial, the prosecuting attorney fired a point-blank question at the cowboy on the stand:

  "Did you have any reason to have killed George Siebert?"

  For a long moment, Hap Kingman was silent. His eyes shot from Anna Siebert, at the prosecution table, to his lawyer, Russ Melrose. Then, gripping the arms of the witness chair, the cowboy said in a voice like dripping ice:

  "Yes. I went out to the ranch to kill Siebert. But I didn't kill him."

  The prosecuting attorney looked startled. Judge Peddicord sat up with a jerk. An air of tension filled the courtroom.

  "Why did you want to kill Siebert? Had he ever wronged you in any way?"

  Smoldering hate made pools of light behind Hap Kingman's slitted lids.

  "Siebert killed my father. Murdered him. Eighteen years ago, when I was a little tike. Siebert shot my mother in cold blood. I remember it. And I swore to kill Siebert some day."

  Again the judge had to pound his gavel for silence. Even the prosecuting attorney seemed overwhelmed by the drama which gripped the courtroom.

  "You see," continued Hap Kingman, "my father was Dev Hewett. I'm not a Kingman. The old sheriff and Mrs. Kingman raised me and Everett. It wasn't until… until the day of the murder… that I found out who killed my parents eighteen years ago. When I found out it was Siebert… I… I went out to kill him."

  "You understand you are on trial for your life, Mr. Kingman!" cried the shocked judge. "Can you prove what you are saying?"

  Hap Kingman pointed a shaking finger at Russ Melrose.

  "Ask my lawyer. He knew my dad. Ask him if Siebert didn't murder Dev Hewett! Ask him if Dev Hewett didn't will me his six-gun to kill Siebert with!"

  The panting cowboy was dismissed from the stand, and the Mexitex courtroom had the unprecedented excitement of seeing a defense lawyer sworn in as a witness for the prosecution. The county attorney rubbed his palms together in glee at the prospect of grilling the buzzard-necked attorney.

  In halting words, seemingly torn from his throat against his will, Russ Melrose gave an eloquent portrayal of history—how the dying outlaw, Dev Hewett, had put his son in Melrose's keeping. How that son had grown up, adopted by Sheriff Les Kingman, to be Hap Kingman, now on trial for his life.

  "I tried to dissuade the defendant from going out to Siebert's until he'd thought things over," finished Melrose lamely. "But he'd been brooding all his life, wanting revenge against Dev Hewett's killer. I figure he was crazy when he shot George. Hap really isn't a murderer at heart. He's a good boy, an upstanding citizen."

  Above the hubbub which grew to pandemonium in the courtroom, the voice of Dr. Harry Hanson was lifted.

  "May I question the witness?" yelled the cow-town medico, when he was finally recognized by the court.

  Russ Melrose paled, as he saw the agitation in Hanson's face. Then he relaxed, as he heard Peddicord sustain the prosecution's objection that the medico could be quizzed in due turn.

  The court took an adjournment, and Hap Kingman was taken back to jail by Sheriff Reynolds.

  Russ Melrose left the courthouse and hurried to his living quarters over the Purple Hawk Saloon. There he downed three fingers of whiskey, to quiet
his shaking nerves.

  He had hardly finished doing so when a rap sounded at his door and Doc Hanson stepped in.

  "There's somethin' damned fishy in the air, Russ!" snapped the coroner, drawing up a chair and staring at the unnerved lawyer. "Why did you get up in court and state on oath that Hap Kingman was the son o' Dev Hewett?"

  The lawyer smirked.

  "I only told the facts," he said. "Dev Hewett put Hap in my keeping, before he died. That was eighteen years ago. I saw to it that Hap got a good home with Sheriff Kingman."

  Doc Hanson snorted with contempt.

  "Well, you're loco, Russ. I happen to know that Dev Hewett's son was named Everett. I reckon I'm the only person, outside of yourself, who knows that Everett Kingman, Hap's twin brother, is really Everito Hewett, the mestizo son of that outlaw that Siebert shot while Hewett was rustlin' beef."

  Melrose gulped hard, thankful for the fiery whiskey that was steadying his nerves. He continued staring at the rawboned little doctor.

  "Futhermore," said Hanson, "I was the doctor who was with Hap's mother when she died, in my office. At that very moment, Dev Hewett's corpse was on a slab in my back room."

  The doctor stood up, pointed an accusing hand at Melrose.

  "You're trying to railroad your own client into a hang noose, Melrose. I don't know what your crooked game is, but I intend to air what I know at court tomorrow. You baited Hap into thinkin' he was Dev Hewett's son, so's he'd kill George Siebert. And I got a hunch you had good reason for wantin' George murdered."

  Melrose thrust a hand into his coat pocket, closed fingers about the haft of a knife he carried there. Unseen inside the pocket, the lawyer's fingers opened the knife.

  "By the time I'm through testifyin' to what I know to be true," challenged Doc Hanson, his hand on Melrose's doornob, "that murder charge will be blown wide open. An' I wouldn't be surprised, Melrose, if your career as a crooked shyster blows up with it!"

  Hanson turned to leave, then jerked under the shock of the hard-flung knife which zipped across the room to embed itself to the hilt between his shoulder blades.

  Before the coroner had time to topple floorward, Melrose had leaped to his side to cushion his fall.