Bushwack Bullets

by Walker A. Tompkins

  Yanking the knife from Hanson's back, the lawyer stabbed the medico again and again until he was sure that life was extinct in the only witness who knew the secret of Hap Kingman's strangely tangled past—

  8

  SURPRISE BY NIGHT

  Only a cruising Texas moon and a low-winging night owl witnessed the dire actions of Russ Melrose long after midnight had come and gone.

  The west wall of the Purple Hawk Saloon was blotted in shadow when the lawyer cautiously opened the window of his room and proceeded to lower a bulky object wrapped in a canvas tarp to the ground below, by means of a reata.

  Sliding down the rope which he had tied to a bedpost, Melrose shouldered the canvas-shrouded corpse of Harry Hanson and made his way like a black phantom down the shadow-clogged alleyway which led toward the river.

  There were no eyes to see him as he carried his grisly burden along the high adobe wall of a livery barn and thence out of. sight inside the board fence of the long-abandoned Texas Queen Copper Co.'s smelter.

  Memories almost two decades old swarmed in Melrose's brain as he staggered on with the gruesome load, skirting the slag dump of the defunct mining outfit. He was retracing the footsteps he had made eighteen years before, that grim night of death when he had invaded the Allen prairie schooner.

  The futility of that murderous journey had tormented Russ Melrose's dreams in those years. All the reward he had, for filling two graves in boothill, was a worthless goldmine chart—a map which was still kept in his office safe.

  Reaching the dwarf willows along the Rio Grande's bank, Melrose opened the shroud and filled the extra space around the coroner's stiffened corpse with chunks of copper slag and smooth rocks.

  Then he lashed the mummy-shaped bundle with rope, and carried it out on a low wooden wharf built out from the copper mining company's land.

  Bullfrogs stopped croaking momentarily, startled by the splash of the dead doctor's weighted body plunging into the deepest pool along the north bank of the Rio.

  Relief ballooned Melrose's cheeks, as he saw the corpse vanish into the murky depths, saw the ripples gradually smooth out again.

  Not until Judgment Day would Harry Hanson's body be seen or heard of again. The catfish might nibble through rotting canvas, but it was doubtful. Coroner Hanson's disappearance would tickle the imagination of the town for a while, but a year from now it would be forgotten, a curious incident in the lurid annals of Yaqui County.

  "A year from now!" Russ Melrose whispered the words like an oath, as he made his way back through the moon's witch-glow, heading for his hotel.

  A year from now, he would be in control of Siebert's cattle kingdom. He, Russ Melrose, would quit the law business forever, to ramrod the destinies of Yaqui County. And maybe, someday, be the governor of the Lone Star State.

  His sleep that night was untroubled by the fact that a man had died by his hand in his very bedroom. The murder of Harry Hanson had put the last obstacle out of his way, toward the realization of his dreams of a cattle empire.

  When Judge Peddicord called the court into session again at nine o'clock, Russ Melrose was on hand alongside of the defendant, Hap Kingman.

  If the lawyer's face had blue pockets under the eyes and he seemed a trifle the worse for loss of sleep, no one appeared to notice. After all, Melrose was about to lose a case, a damaging blow to his prestige. Melrose was famous for arguing guilty criminals out of a death cell—for a price.

  "The way things went yesterday—you acting like a blabber-mouthed idiot and forcing me to testify against you—I don't think we can hope for a verdict of not guilty," Melrose whispered to Kingman. "We'll have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court, and hope for a life term."

  The cowboy shrugged. He twisted in his chair, to search the sea of spectators' faces for a trace of Everett Kingman, the boy he had grown up with.

  He had seen no trace of Everett, had not seen him since they had listened to Mrs. Kingman's will being read in Melrose's office.

  A pang of disappointment came to Hap Kingman. He and his blond-haired brother had never gotten along particularly well, but it grieved him to know that the only kin he had—even kin by adoption— was not on hand for the concluding day of his trial.

  "I'm not afraid to die," grunted Hap Kingman. "All that galls me is dyin' without findin' out who took a pot shot at George Siebert. That's all."

  The prosecuting attorney summed up his case against Hap Kingman, showing the notch-butted six-gun to the jury—the gun which had been Dev Hewett's legacy to his orphan child. The prosecutor, knowing he had the case in the bag, made no capital of the mysterious notches on the backstrap of the six-gun.

  He dwelt heavily on the fact that a fired shell was in Kingman's gun; that while Anna Siebert had not actually witnessed the murder of her father, circumstances pointed inexorably to the defendant's guilt.

  That, and Hap Kingman's frank avowal that he had ridden out to the Triangle S with the intention of killing George Siebert, plus the fact that Hap was the half-breed son of a notorious killer of a generation before, were the keynotes of the prosecutor's case.

  Russ Melrose, summing up the defense for his client, made an extremely poor showing. He pointed out that the county coroner, Doc Hanson, had been on the point of asking him some questions the day before.

  What was Hanson trying to bring into the record? Did the coroner know something that might shed some light on the case? If so, where was Hanson now?

  A search of the courtroom failed to reveal the coroner. An illiterate Mexican in the audience played into Melrose's hand by vouchsafing the suggestion that the doctor must be on the Mexican side of the river, delivering a baby for Señora Rosita Inez y Castabello, twenty miles up the Rio.

  At any rate, Doc Hanson was absent from Mexitex. If he had had any important knowledge of the case on trial, the prosecutor sneeringly pointed out to the judge, then he would have at least taken the trouble to be on hand.

  Russ Melrose, his shoulders slumping in well-feigned resignation, let the case for the defense rest.

  With judicial brevity, Judge Peddicord of Del Rio summed up the case, counselling the jury not to let personal prejudices or friendship for either George Siebert or the defendant have any sway on their verdict.

  When the twelve jurymen filed out, Hap Kingman was conscious, for the first time, that Anna Siebert was watching him closely. Tenderness and pity seemed to have replaced the hate and grief in her eyes, as she returned the cowboy's glance.

  The room froze with excitement when the door of the jury chamber opened, scarcely five minutes after they had gone into conference. Their decision was plainly written on their faces.

  As if from a great distance, Hap Kingman heard the spokesman of the jury croak out the inevitable verdict:

  "We find the defendant, Hap Kingman, guilty o' murder in the first degree, as charged by the State o' Texas—"

  The cowboy was once more conscious of Anna Siebert's following eyes as the sheriff led him, handcuffed, to a position in front of Judge Peddicord's bench.

  But there was no trace of concern or alarm in Hap Kingman's bearing, as he locked glances with the cow-town judge and heard Peddicord address him:

  "You have heard the verdict of a jury of your peers, Mr. Kingman. Does the defendant have anything to say in his own behalf before sentence is passed?"

  Kingman straightened his shoulders, turned, and with his eyes burning into Anna Siebert's, he said mechanically:

  "I've done a lot of thinkin' since I woke up in the calaboose. I can see where I shouldn't have harbored hate all my life against the man who killed my parents in cold blood. It was a force stronger than my own good character, I reckon."

  He saw Anna Siebert avert her gaze, press her hands to her face.

  "I reckon George Siebert paid plenty for what he did. I understand he didn't know a moment's rest, from his leg wound, since the day he shot Dev Hewett. And I'm sorry for the grief that an innocent girl is sufferin' now."
/>   Turning back to the judge, Hap Kingman raised his voice and said defiantly:

  "I'm still sayin' it wasn't my bullet that killed George Siebert, yore honor. I admit I can't prove that, never could. All I'm hopin' is that, after I'm gone, maybe the real killer will be brought to justice. And I'm hopin' someday Anna Siebert can say, 'I'm sorry I called Hap Kingman a murderer.'"

  The judge cleared his throat noisily, and slammed his bone-handled gavel on the bench.

  "By virtue of the authority vested in me by the people of the Commonwealth of Texas, I hereby sentence you to be hanged by the neck until dead, date of said execution to be tomorrow at the hour of high noon. May the Almighty God have mercy on your soul."

  The low sound of Anna Siebert's muffled sob was the only noise that disturbed the ghastly quiet of the Yaqui County bar of justice.

  9

  SURPRISE BY NIGHT

  Sleep refused to come to Hap Kingman, as he lay on the blanketless cot of his jail cell.

  Throughout the long hours leading up to midnight he had heard the sound of revelry in the Mexitex saloons, as carousing Triangle S punchers celebrated the death sentence which had been imposed.

  Disinterested spectators at the trial had greeted the verdict with applause, likewise. The slaying of a crippled man in a wheelchair did not set well with Westerners.

  The town's squalid hotels and shabby rooming houses were jammed to capacity with visitors waiting overnight to be on hand for the morrow's hanging.

  Visitors were denied the condemned man, although Hap knew that Anna Siebert had tried to get to him late that afternoon.

  In the excitement following the verdict, no tongue voiced the question about what had become of the county coroner, old Sawbones Hanson. It was unlikely that anyone outside of Melrose, the defense lawyer, even noticed the old medico's absence.

  The jail was shared by some drunken cowboys who had tanked up beyond their rated alcoholic capacity at the Purple Hawk and had been jailed by Sheriff Bob Reynolds, and by a Mexican, who was being held by the border patrol for unlawful entry into the United States. The latter tried to soothe Kingman's fast-fleeting hours of life with his guitar and uncertain baritone.

  The din lulled after midnight. The sky was overcast and there was a hint of rain in the atmosphere, as the cow town turned in with hopes that Kingman's day of execution would not be marred by an unseasonal shower.

  Two hours before daylight was due, four ghostly figures materialized from the direction of the Rio Grande and made their stealthy way to the jail house.

  They wore the serapes and cone-peaked sombreros of Mexicans, and their zapato-clad feet made no sound as they skirted the jail house to make sure no guards were posted at the rear door.

  Entering the sheriff's office, the four found grim-faced Bob Reynolds propped up against the cell block door with a sawed-off shotgun across his knees.

  "Que estan?" demanded the sheriff, blinking in the glow of his low-wicked desk lamp as the four Mexicans stood facing him, their stolid faces blank of expression. "If you greasers have come to visit that guitar-playin' alien, you can rattle your hocks. No visitin' allowed as long as Señor Kingman is bein' held here. Go on—vente! Vamoose!"

  The Mexican quartet turned to go, and Bob Reynolds settled his chin on his chest to resume his doze.

  Things happened fast, then.

  One of the Mexicans hurled out his poncho, draping it over the sheriff's head and shoulders, while a second pounced for the gun on Reynold's lap.

  A third whipped a six-gun from under his serape and the heavy butt smashed against the sheriff's skull, the blow padded by the smothering poncho which the leader had wrapped about the lawman's neck.

  It was all over in an instant.

  Stretching out the unconscious sheriff, one of the Mexicans frisked Reynolds to produce a ring of jail keys.

  A moment's sorting through the keys and the Mexican unlocked the cell-block door and padded inside, scratching a match and peering into each cell in turn.

  The drunken cowboys were sleeping off their jag. The guitar-playing alien, faced with a prison term if he was deported by the border patrol, grinned smugly as he recognized fellow countrymen.

  But the Mexican leader struck a new match and proceeded around the cells until he came to one where a chap-clad cowboy was smoking a cigarette in the solitude of his steel-barred cage.

  "Señor Kingman?"

  "Yeah."

  "Bueno."

  Hap Kingman's jaw dropped with an oath of surprise as he saw the Mexican unlock his cell door and motion for him to come.

  Unprotesting, his heart leaping with a new lease on life, the condemned buckaroo hurried out after the Mexican, his eyes widening with surprise as he saw the knocked-out sheriff.

  "What in hell—"

  The Mexicans motioned for him to be silent. One of them blew out Reynolds' lamp, while the others padded silently out into the night.

  Before the lamp went out, Hap Kingman caught sight of Dev Hewett's cedar-butted Colt Peacemaker lying on the sheriff's desk—the .45-calibered legacy that had been the exhibit in his murder trial.

  Kingman caught up the six-gun and thrust it inside the waistband of his bullhide chaps, before accompanying his rescuer outside.

  The Mexicans moved off toward the river, padding along the jail wall in Indian file.

  Not asking questions, unable to fathom who these swarthy-skinned benefactors could be, Hap Kingman crept along with them.

  Skirting wide to avoid the low bridge which formed the official port of entry across the Rio Grande, the spokesman of the Mexican four turned to whisper to Kingman:

  "Be very careful, señor. If the federalistas know we cross the border, it is muy malo."

  Kingman nodded. He knew the vigilant eye of the border patrol would be on the alert for border hoppers, at any hour of the twenty-four.

  Through the blackness of the Texas night, Kingman followed his mysterious helpers to dense willows at the river's edge, and out across the mud to where a crude raft had been moored to a protruding boulder.

  The four crawled aboard the raft, Kingman in their midst.

  With stout poles, the Mexicans shoved the raft silently out onto the freshly-swollen current of the muddy Rio.

  The river caught the craft, turning it slowly in the flood.

  Kingman crouched on his haunches, his pulse racing.

  He saw the lights of Mexitex slip from sight as the current bore them downstream, around the curving shale cliffs.

  Not until the muddy stream had carried them a full mile from town did Hap Kingman venture the question that had been hammering at his mind:

  "Who are you, anyway? I didn't know I had any Mexican amigos who would risk their hides to—"

  The strange hombres grunted for him to be silent, to wait.

  On and on the raft drifted. Two miles. Three. Chihuahua's rugged hills glided by to the southwest; at Kingman's left elbow were the low Texas cliffs.

  He recognized the pile of rocks which marked the boundary between his own Flying K Ranch and the range belonging to George Siebert's vast syndicate.

  Then, at a point opposite the Triangle S Ranch and fully five miles by crowflight from the border town, the Mexicans began poling the raft out of the sluggish current, toward a cactus-crowned bluff on the Mexican bank.

  The sickle-shaped moon broke through the scudding clouds as the raft grated on a sandbar, to reveal heavy, dank brush choking the edge of the Rio Grande.

  The Mexicans, grunting for Kingman to follow, splashed ashore through ankle-deep mud and burrowed into the chaparral.

  The mouth of a low cavern loomed against the chalky gray cliff, and as Hap Kingman followed wonderingly in the steps of his deliverers, he saw a sombreroed figure bowleg his way out to meet them.

  Kingman halted, as he saw the chap-legged figure dismiss the Mexicans with a grunt of approval.

  "Howdy, Hap. How does it feel to have a hangman's rope yanked offn your throat?"

 
Hap's jaw sagged in astonishment. The speaker was his missing foster-brother, Everett Kingman.

  10

  OWLHOOT ORDERS

  The rescued cowboy rushed forward to thrust out a hand to Everett Kingman. The coal of the latter's cigarette ebbed and glowed in the darkness, and Hap saw the pale glitter of his brother's teeth exposed in a smile.

  "What… what does this mean, Everett?" whispered the cowboy. "I don't get it. How'd you find this cave? Who are those Mexicans?"

  Everett Kingman flicked his quirly butt into the mud, ground it out under heel. Then he took Hap's arm.

  "Come inside—can't risk the patrol riders spottin' us from the American bank," his brother stated. "There's a lot you don't know, Hap. You may as well know now."

  Puzzled by Everett's enigmatical words, Hap Kingman allowed himself to be led into the black maw of the cavern at cliff's base. The inky throat of the tunnel turned at right angles after a few yards, opening into a limestone chamber as big as a house.

  Light was provided by a number of lanterns. Hap Kingman was startled to see that the cave was outfitted for human occupancy, with bedrolls on mattresses of dried brush, and mangers built of planks for a half dozen horses at the far end of the subterranean room.

  "I'll be damned!" The wondering cowboy chuckled, as Everett led him up to a crude pine table littered with playing cards and whiskey bottles. "Looks like a reg'lar robbers' roost, or somethin'."

  Everett grunted, seating himself on a powder box in lieu of a chair and waving his brother onto another box.

  "This is where you'll hole up until this jail break blows over, kid," grunted Everett, lighting up a tapering black-paper Mexican cigarette.

  Hap Kingman grinned with relief. Not until now could he bring himself to believe the fantastic fact that he was not going to trip a gallows trap at high noon tomorrow.

  "How'd you work it, anyhow?" he asked. "I wondered why you weren't at the trial. And I reckon I can never repay you for savin' my life, Everett."

  Low guffaws from the Mexicans who squatted about a tiny fire nearby made Kingman's eyes swing to study the peculiar grin on his brother's face. It was not a pleasant grin.