Bushwack Bullets

by Walker A. Tompkins

  Rushing to a table, the Mexican whipped up a leaflet which had been left at his door—a leaflet similar to hundreds which the rurale police had distributed to the native population of Mexitex.

  Fernandez unfolded the paper, and the guttering flames of an oil lamp showed it to be a reward poster written in Spanish:

  1,000 PESOS REWARD!

  For the capture, dead or alive, of the American

  outlaw who broke jail in Mexitex, named

  HAP KINGMAN

  Convicted of murder.

  The poster was signed by Sheriff Bob Reynolds.

  Juan Fernandez stabbed a hand under his serape and drew forth a long-barreled .45 revolver. The other men rushed at his heels as Fernandez headed for the door with a hoarse whisper:

  "That gringo vaquero was Hap Kingman—I saw him at the courthouse trial, es verdad!"

  Outside, Hap Kingman was busy tightening the latigo of his saddle, preparatory to mounting his horse.

  He turned as he heard bare feet slogging out of the door behind him, then gasped as he felt Juan Fernandez jab a six-gun barrel into his ribs.

  "What's the idea, Fernandez?"

  The Mexican's tequila-fouled breath was hot on Kingman's face as the smuggler snarled:

  "You are my prisoner, señor. I am taking you across the border to the Americano sheriff, Señor Bob Reynolds. maños arriba, señor—or I will kill you now, pronto!"

  Even with the muzzle of a cocked gun reamed in his short ribs, Hap Kingman felt a swift, hot urge to lash out a fist to Juan Fernandez's jaw in the darkness, and take his chances of the Mexican's trigger finger not blasting him into eternity.

  Then, staring off beyond the smuggler's shoulder, he saw the burly forms of Fernandez's peon friends trooping out the jacal door behind their host, lamplight glinting on knives and gun barrels.

  Even if he could overpower Fernandez, he could not hope to get in saddle and make a getaway.

  "Maños arribas! Get those hands up, señor!"

  The gringo cowpuncher took his hands out from under the saddle skirts where he had been knotting his latigo, and slowly raised his arms.

  He felt Fernandez empty his holsters of their guns, frisk him deftly for hidden knife or gun.

  Then, backing off a step, the Mexican said to his friends in gutteral Spanish:

  "Bring the contrabando, Julio. We will take it to the federalistos, also. There may be a double reward for capturing Señor Kingman, if they know he is a smuggler likewise!"

  The Mexican addressed as Julio rushed inside the shack to emerge a moment later with the saddlebags which Hap Kingman had delivered, per Señor Giboso's orders.

  Cold despair had turned the cowboy's spine to an ice pole. Moments before, a new life had loomed before him. He had divorced himself of any connection with Señor Giboso or the diabolical outlaw gang with which his brother Everett had been linked.

  Getting across the border at some remote spot along the Rio Grande would have been relatively easy. He knew that anywhere in the cow country, from Mexico to Montana, he could earn a living. In some far-off spot where George Siebert had never been heard of, he could begin life anew. After all, there was nothing more to tie him to Mexitex.

  He would gladly relinquish his rightful claim to a part of the Flying K ranch. He had no living relatives that he knew of. The only motive he might have had for remaining in Texas would have been to clear his name of the unjust charge of murder which lay upon it.

  But that had all been changed now. He was in the grip of an illiterate, drunken peon, whose greedy eyes saw in his visitor a walking fortune—a gringo with a reward on his scalp. And Hap Kingman knew it would take little provocation for Juan Fernandez to pull trigger and deliver his prize as a corpse instead of on the hoof.

  "You win, Fernandez," said the cowboy bitterly. "Let's get goin'."

  Señor Fernandez waddled out of the foul-smelling shack with a braided rawhide riata. The three Mexicans who had been eating supper with Fernandez made quick work of tying Kingman's wrists tightly behind his back and lashing his arms to his sides with many turns of the rope.

  That done, Fernandez ordered his prisoner to walk up the Avenida de las Palmas, in the direction of the low bridge which linked the south half of Mexitex with the American side of the Rio Grande.

  Julio led Kingman's lather-flanked horse, and carried the alforjas laden with contraband. Fernandez and the other Mexican marched at Kingman's either elbow, guns drawn, making sure that their quarry make no attempt at bolting into a dark side street.

  Reaching the adobe-walled headquarters of the Mexican rurale police, on the south end of the Rio Grande bridge, they were halted by a uniformed customs official.

  A swift interchange of Spanish occurred, but Kingman paid scant attention. He was a man suddenly without hope, without a future—destined to a quick finish at the bottom end of a hangman's rope.

  The Mexican officials chattered excitedly and led Kingman and his horse and his peon guards over to the border patrol headquarters on the American side.

  A moment later, Hap Kingman found himself staring at Inspector Gordon Chamberlin, a young border patrolman with whom Kingman had gone to school and played baseball in years past.

  "Jumpin' juniper, Hap!" cried Chamberlin, as he held a lantern up to stare into the cowboy's bleak face. "How come you were captured on the Mex side of the Rio?"

  Juan Fernandez and his reward-thirsty partners chattered excitedly to Chamberlin, whose face registered disbelief as he turned once more to the trussed-up cowboy.

  "Fernandez here said you were one of Señor Giboso's compadres," said the border patrolman incredulously. "How come he says that, Hap?"

  The cowboy jerked himself out of his torpor and shrugged.

  "I'm in a jam, all right, Gordon. What's the chances of gettin' up to the jailhouse where I won't have to rub shoulders with these smelly greasers?"

  Chamberlin turned to the Mexicans, who insisted noisily that they be allowed to accompany their prisoner until he was safe in the custody of gringo law.

  Thus it was, ten minutes later, that Inspector Chamberlin escorted Hap Kingman into the jail office. There, a deputy sheriff locked the cowboy in the same cell he had occupied during his trial for George Siebert's murder.

  Half an hour later the cell-block door opened to admit three important visitors—Chamberlin, representing the United States Customs; Sheriff Bob Reynolds, his temple still bandaged as a result of the jailbreak episode; and Kingman's lawyer, Russ Melrose.

  The sheriff was carrying Señor Giboso's saddlebags, which had been unbuckled and their contents examined. The faces of all three were serious as they entered Kingman's cell and stood facing the cowboy.

  Hap glanced at Russ Melrose who was running the point of his tongue across his lips with jerky nervous movements. Kingman's capture after his getaway seemed to have put the cow-town lawyer into a fever of excitement, the nature of which Kingman had no way of guessing.

  "Well, Hap, you're back again," commented Bob Reynolds. "As it turned out, your Mexican pards were a bit premature in getting you out of the calaboose. Another few hours and you would have gained a new trial with regards to George Siebert's murder."

  Kingman jerked erect, stunned at the sheriff's unexpected words. At the same time he saw Russ Melrose fidgeting nervously.

  "Juan Fernandez tells us you brought him these saddlebags tonight, Hap," said the lawyer. "You got any way of explaining that?"

  Kingman started to speak, but the sheriff cut him off with a curt rebuke to the lawyer:

  "You aren't trying the prisoner, Russ. If there will be any questionin' Hap, me or the inspector here will do it. As Hap's legal counsel, you got a right to listen in an' advise Hap not to talk if you want. But don't you do the questionin'."

  Melrose subsided, but his heart relaxed with inner relief at the adroit manner in which he had switched the subject from George Siebert's murder charge.

  "About these saddlebags," said Chamberlin. "Those Mexie
s tried to say you brought them from Señor Giboso, the smuggler. Is that correct, Hap?"

  Kingman, elbows on knees, rested his chin in his palms and stared moodily at the cell floor.

  "I reckon so, Gordon. Leastwise I got those saddlebags from Señor Giboso."

  Gasps of astonishment greeted Kingman's cool confession.

  "I don't get it, Hap," said the border patrol officer finally. "Why should you even know Señor Giboso, let alone act as a messenger for him?"

  Kingman started to speak, then clamped his lips.

  If he explained why he had been cast in the role of a smuggler's accomplice, it would necessitate bringing the name of his foster-brother Everett into the open.

  Despite the fact that Everett had held him a virtual prisoner in the Rio Grande cave during the days that Sheriff Reynolds had been combing the country for him, Hap could not speak openly. The ties of long association with the man who had been his twin brother, in the eyes of the rangeland, were too strong to be broken thus easily.

  "I… I can't tell you that, Gordon."

  The young border inspector tapped Señor Giboso's saddlebags with a forefinger.

  "Did you know what was inside these bags, Hap?"

  Kingman paused. "I didn't open 'em," he said, "but I judge they contained contraband. Dope of some kind."

  Sheriff Reynolds laughed throatily.

  "That's puttin' it mild. There's a young fortune in morphine and opium in those bags, Hap."

  There was a moment's silence, broken only by Russ Melrose's laborious breathing.

  "How come you delivered this stuff to Juan Fernandez, Hap?" asked Chamberlin finally.

  "Because," said Kingman hopelessly, as he felt the grim meshes of the law tightening about him, "because Señor Giboso told me to deliver 'em to Fernandez. Don't ask me why I contacted Señor Giboso, becuse I… I can't answer that."

  Russ Melrose cleared his throat noisily.

  "You might as well know, Hap," snarled the lawyer, "that I'm washing my hands of you. I'm not your legal adviser from here on out. If there's anything I don't cotton to it's having dealings with a man who traffics in such stuff at dope."

  Kingman, his heart tightening in a knot within him at the hopelessness of his situation, said nothing.

  "Fernandez claims he never saw you before, to speak to, and that he isn't an accomplice of Señor Giboso's," said Gordon Chamberlin. "He says you must have delivered that contraband to his house by mistake. And the fact that he turned over the dope to me seems to bear out the truth of what the Mexican says."

  "Yeah," added the sheriff. "The reward posted for your capture was as good on your dead carcass as on the hoof, Hap. If Fernandez was a dope smuggler, he could have kept the dope and shot you, and we'd never've been any the wiser."

  Kingman smiled bitterly. He believed he knew the reason why Juan Fernandez was acting as he was. Fernandez had no intention of being branded as one of Señor Giboso's men, in the presence of the Mexicans who had been guests at his home when Kingman had delivered Señor Giboso's dope shipment to him.

  "Hap," said Sheriff Reynolds, "you're outside o' my jurisdiction now. I don't mind sayin' it's a surprise to me that you have been revealed as a smuggler, of all things. But I got to hold you now, for the U. S. Customs. And they treat smugglers rough when they got the goods on 'em."

  Kingman made no reply as the three men left the jail room. Hap thought that he might be carrying a brother's loyalty too far, in protecting Everett. But he would hang for his original crime, the murder of George Siebert, for which he had been found guilty. There was no use going to his grave with the knowledge that he had mired his own brother in trouble also.

  If Everett chose to lead a smuggler's career, retribution might catch up with him sooner or later, anyway.

  12

  HANGING BEE

  Lawyer Russ Melrose left the jail hurriedly, his brain whirling with apprehension.

  The news of Hap Kingman's jail break had been enough to rob the lawyer of sleep during the night's that had followed. He believed he knew the cowboy well enough to know that Hap, even though free of the gallows, would make an effort to find out who had really killed George Siebert, and why.

  And if that information came to light—

  "I got to make sure that Hap's out of the way," decided the lawyer as he made his way toward his living quarters in the upper floor of the Purple Hawk Saloon. "If he finds out that Anna Siebert cleared him of murder guilt by finding a .30-30 bullet in her father's brisket, instead of a six-gun slug—"

  Instead of going upstairs to his rooms, the lawyer shouldered his way into the tobacco-clouded barroom of the Purple Hawk. The gambling tables were being patronized by most of Mexitex's rougher characters, border riffraff.

  Coarse-visaged men bellied the long pine counter of the Purple Hawk's bar—men straddling the law in many cases, and among them several hombres who would now be breaking rocks in a penitentiary, or filling unmarked graves on boothill, had it not been for Melrose's ability to defend guilty men in court.

  Melrose made his way to the bar and took a position alongside a cinnamon-whiskered lobo known as Fanner Sobolo, his nickname arising from his skill at fanning the guns which he carried in thonged-down half-breed holsters at either hip.

  "Howdy, Melrose!" gruffed Sobolo, his tongue thick with liquor. "What's new?"

  Melrose ordered a drink of rotgut. Toying with the glass of amber liquor, the lawyer remarked casually:

  "Well, Hap Kingman's been captured."

  His voice carried along the bar, and instantly a hush descended over the drinkers. Men began crowding close, as the startling word was carried from mouth to mouth along the bar.

  "You don't say!" gruffed Fanner Sobolo. "Well, no use me keepin' my eyes peeled for that busky, I reckon. I was hopin' I could get my gunsights on Kingman. I could use the dinero posted on his noggin."

  Melrose turned his back to the bar and hooked a heel over the brass rail.

  "Yeah, Hap Kingman was captured over on the other side of the Rio," the lawyer went on, his eyes flashing over the faces of his listeners. "He was smuggling dope for Señor Giboso, no less. Got caught carrying contraband!"

  Within the minute, gamblers had left their tables and were crowding about the bar, the news on every tongue. The jail break of Hap Kingman had been the most exciting morsel of news in Mexitex for many months.

  "I won't be defending Kingman this time," the lawyer went on. "He told me he didn't murder George Siebert, and I took him at his word. But he don't deny being a smuggler—and that's one breed of snake I won't go to court for."

  Fanner Sobolo fingered a crooked nose, his red-rimmed eyes thoughtful.

  His nose hadn't been crooked six months ago. It had been broken by Hap Kingman's fist, when the gunman, killing mad with whiskey, had tried to shoot up a fiesta dance in the schoolhouse.

  It had been Hap Kingman who had braved the drunk's guns and had beaten him to a raw, trembling hulk in the hand-to-hand combat which had followed.

  Russ Melrose knew that Sobolo had not forgotten that incident. He knew that Sobolo had sworn revenge. He had seen Fanner Sobolo at Kingman's trial, and knew that Sobolo had paid for drinks on the house the evening after Kingman had been sentenced to death by a Del Rio judge.

  "Kingman is over in the hoose-gow now," grunted Melrose. "I just came from there. And Kingman says he thinks the customs authorities will give him a new trial. That being the case, his prior conviction may not hold water. Kingman's liable to get off without losin' any skin from his neck, after all."

  Fanner Sobolo turned to the bar, seized his glass of redeye, and downed it. Then, wiping his mouth with the back of a hairy hand, Sobolo snarled out:

  "I say the dirty skunk ought to be lynched. An' damned if I ain't ready to tie the hang knot!"

  The lawyer hooked thumbs in armpits and smirked at the saloon toughs gathered about him.

  "Talking about a lynching bee is easy, Fanner. But I doubt if any man in this town
has guts enough to see a hanging through. And it takes a lot of men to yank a prisoner out of jail and string him up. I got my doubts, Fanner, about you being able to muster up enough men to lynch Kingman—not that he doesn't deserve lynching."

  Fanner Sobolo bristled at this challenge. His whiskey-inflamed mind was far more reckless than was usual in the man who made no bones about the fact that his triggerless guns were for hire.

  "Yeah?" bellowed the lobo. "How about it, men? Are we goin' to sit tight an' see Hap Kingman beat the rope? Is Hap Kingman going to draw a prison term for smugglin'?"

  The barroom resounded to the hoarse calls of Cain from the drunken crowd of riffraff. Russ Melrose knew that lynch mobs needed only a leader to start them on a jailward march, and he knew that Fanner Sobolo wielded a savage influence over the barflies who congregated in the Purple Hawk.

  "I'll furnish the rope to swing that son!" bawled a drink-thickened voice in the crowd. "What are we waitin' for, Fanner?"

  Sobolo gulped down another shot of redeye, and slapped his chest like a gorilla.

  "Let's go, compañeros! This town's been sp'ilin' for a hangin', an' nothin' would please me more than to see Hap Kingman doin' an air jig!"

  Russ Melrose grinned excitedly as he saw the slab-muscled killer stride toward the batwing doors, his ugly crowd of saloon hangers-on trooping behind him.

  Lynch fever was quick to spread through a mob, and the Purple Hawk's gang of hoodlums was in a receptive mood. Towns had been shot up on far less provocation than Fanner Sobolo was now offering.

  A coil of rope looped over one forearm, Fanner Sobolo strode out into the night and headed for the nearby jail.

  Two minutes later, Sobolo had presented himself at the door of Sheriff Reynolds' office, to find the sheriff gone and the jail being guarded by Grandpa Neeley, a scrawny old jailer in his middle seventies, who was too old for regular duty.

  "What's this?" piped Neeley, opening the door in response to Sobolo's knock and quaking inwardly as he scanned the sea of upturned faces outside. "What you want, Fanner?"