To Kingman's relief, Anna nodded.
"Yes, thank God. On the day your trial ended, Hap, our syndicate trail herd reached El Paso. The stock was auctioned off for top prices. By now my foreman, Joe Ashfield, will be riding back to Mexitex with more than enough to pay off Melrose."
Kingman started to grin with relief. Then he sat up with a jerk. For the first time since his grim fight with Señor Giboso, he recalled the murder plan which the smuggler had outlined to Everett Kingman.
"Holy smoke," groaned the cowboy, his face blanching. "Anna, I got terrible news. Melrose is plannin' to waylay Joe Ashfield and get that dinero. I heard him tell Everett that—"
The girl went white as Kingman told her briefly that Señor Giboso had instructed Everett to do so.
Despite the grim light which this turn of events placed on Anna's future, the two devoured the breakfast which a mestizo served them.
They were still eating when a knock at the front door brought the Mexican servant shuffling into the room. He opened the door to reveal a towering figure on the threshold.
"Bob Reynolds!" cried Anna Siebert, as the raw-boned Sheriff from Mexitex removed his Stetson and strode inside. "You've—"
Reynolds' glance shot from Anna Siebert to her guest at the breakfast table. Then his arm plummeted to his side and came up with a long-barreled Peacemaker.
18
DEPUTY'S BADGE
Hap had leaped to his feet at the sheriff's entrance. He stood now, leak and tense, arms climbing ceilingward before Reynolds drop.
"I came out to question you about who it was who saved Hap Kingman from that lynch mob last night," said Reynolds, "but I see the answer before me. I suspected as much."
Hap saw Anna Siebert step swiftly between the two, but he made no move to take advantage of her being in the line of fire.
Reynolds shoved her aside as he took a pair of handcuffs from his chaps pocket.
"No, Bob—don't arrest him till you've heard from me."
The mustached lawman paused a moment, eyes alert for a treacherous move from Hap Kingman.
"Anna girl," he said finally, "I was the hombre who went for Doc Hanson the night you was brung into the world. I was the hombre who told George that your mother had passed on, bringin' you into the world. We've always been amigos, you an' me. But you can't ask me not to arrest an escaped prisoner."
"You'll be glad not to arrest him when you've heard us out, Bob," she said pleadingly. "Take his gun, but don't handcuff him."
She stood aside as the sheriff extended a hand toward Hap Kingman.
"Hand me yore smokepole butt first, kid," said the sheriff. "An' no spooky moves."
Hap Kingman removed gun from holster and handed it, stock foremost, to the sheriff. The latter's brows arched in amazement as he read the name "Russell Melrose" engraved on the ornate ivory handle of the Colt.
"How'd you git the lawyer's shootin' iron, Hap?" he queried. "Has he been out here?"
The three of them sat down. Before either Anna or Hap could speak, the sheriff thrust Kingman's gun into the waistband of his chaps and said to the girl:
"Was it you an' your Triangle S riders who killed Fanner Sobolo an' rescued Hap last night?"
"Yes. We saw you get rocked by that mob. There wasn't anything else to do but save Hap, if we could."
The sheriff chuckled.
"You'd made yore getaway an' the lynch mob was mysteriously vanished from the plaza by the time Dan Kendelhardt woke up an' put a plaster on my sore noggin." Reynolds grinned. "Well, you say you got somethin' to tell me. If it's to clear Hap of killin' George, I'll believe that. But don't forget that the U.S. Customs men are still holdin' a smugglin' charge on him."
Anna Siebert seated herself in front of the old lawman and outlined in crisp detail the startling narrative which Hap had told her concerning Russ Melrose's dual life.
There was a long silence after the sheriff had finished inspecting Melrose's hobnailed boot, as he tried to comprehend the bewildering mess of evidence Hap Kingman had unearthed.
"This takes my breath, sort of," he said. "I reckon there's no use ridin' down to the Rio to check on Hap's story, because Señor Giboso an' Everett have no doubt flew the coop. But—even if Melrose has the gall to show up in Mexitex again— we haven't anything to really jail him on. Not yet."
He reached to his side and handed Hap Kingman the lawyer's revolver. With a grateful smile, the cowboy replaced it in his holster. He knew it was a vote of confidence from Reynolds.
"The thing that disturbs me the most," Reynolds went on, "is what Hap said about Señor Giboso orderin' Everett to ambush Joe Ashfield an' get that syndicate dinero. If Melrose gets that money, he'll be able to take over your syndicate."
The girl nodded broodingly. As the heiress to the murdered syndicate boss, the affairs of the big range organization weighed heavily upon her.
"I wouldn't be surprised if Melrose carries through his scheme to ambush Ashfield," the sheriff continued. "Tell me this—will your foreman be accompanied by all your riders? If he is, Everett wouldn't dare try to ambush him."
Terror came into Anna Siebert's eyes.
"That's just it, Bob!" she cried. "Joe will be riding alone, over the Sierra Seco short cut from the Marfa stagecoach road. My other cowboys are picking up a herd of feeders at Fort Luego and won't get back to the ranch for another couple of weeks."
The sheriff and Hap Kingman exchanged worried glances.
"Ashfield won't be expectin' trouble," muttered the sheriff.
He paused a minute, thinking. Then he looked up quickly.
"Anna, if I remember right, your men always bed down at the Drover's Hotel in Marfa, on their way home. Is that right?"
"Yes. They always have."
"Then here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to send Hap up to Marfa, to warn Ashfield about Melrose's plan."
Kingman nodded approval.
"I figger you've still got time to get to Marfa, and wait at the Drover's Hotel until Joe Ashfield shows up there," said the sheriff. "Once forewarned, Joe can get through O.K. He an' you can travel by night across the Sierra Secos where Everett would be holed up."
"Or Melrose might abandon the whole idea, knowing that Hap overheard his orders to Everett," suggested Anna Siebert.
The sheriff waggled his head.
"Wish I could think so, Anna, but we can't afford to risk it. Not with the whole syndicate at stake, an' Melrose holdin' trumps."
Sheriff Reynolds fumbled in a pocket of his chaps and produced a nickel-plated star, which he handed to Kingman.
The latter turned it over curiously. "What's this for?" Kingman asked, puzzled.
"An hour ago I was all fixed to hogtie you an' take you back to the calaboose, Hap." The lawman grinned. "Now I'm offerin' you a job as special deputy, to ride to Marfa an' be Joe Ashfield's bodyguard on the return trip. How about it?"
Hap thrust the emblem of frontier law into his pocket, and stood up. His heart thumped with a warm new thrill as he shook hands with the man who had once been cast in the role of hangman with Hap as his victim.
"I'll see Ashfield through hell an' back, sheriff. When do I start?"
"Now. You got a horse outside, I take it?"
"On the far side of Manzanita Hill. With alforjas all packed an' ready."
"Good. I got another gun out in my saddlebags for you."
Anna Siebert bade the new deputy good-bye at the door, and watched the two men as they walked out to the sheriff's horse, tied to the hitch rack beyond the low wall of the yard.
As Reynolds handed Hap the .45 Frontier Colt which he had stowed in his saddlebags, the cowboy recognized it as the cedar-butted weapon which Dev Hewett had owned—the six-gun legacy which the dying outlaw had willed to his son eighteen years before—and which Reynolds had previously taken from Hap.
"Why in hell couldn't that no-account brother Everett o' yours been the whelp o' Dev Hewett?" wondered the sheriff. "Then he'd be mixed up in all this. I've always
liked you, Hap. I've seen you grow up. You got good stuff in you. Sheriff Kingman would be proud of you."
Hap Kingman scowled, as a new thought occurred to him.
"Here's hopin' nobody in Marfa figgers I'm a desperado on the dodge, and prevents me from seein' Ashfield when he gets to that hotel. Mebbe you better give me a note to show people you really made me a deputy, Reynolds."
The sheriff rummaged in a saddlebag and produced a sheet of paper, on which he scribbled a brief statement and signed it. As he folded the sheet and handed it to Kingman, the cowboy recognized it as one of the hundreds of posters distributed through Yaqui County offering a reward for his own capture.
Then, with a final handshake for good luck, Hap Kingman strode off up Manzanita Hill to get his horse and get started for the cow town of Marfa.
Anna Siebert joined the sheriff as the latter prepared to leave.
"We've only got Melrose's word for it that Dev Hewett was Hap's father," she told the sheriff. "Do you suppose anyone in Mexitex knows the details of how Les Kingman happened to adopt Hap and his other brother?"
Mounting, the sheriff looked down at her.
"Only the doctor who attended Hap's mother when she died of gunshot wounds. Harry Hanson."
"And Dr. Hanson is still missing?"
"Haven't seen hide nor hair of him since the day before Hap's trial was ended. Darned if it doesn't smell peculiar. Ain't like the coroner to just up an' disappear thataway."
Hap Kingman ride into the cow town of Marfa near sundown the day following his departure from Siebert's ranch.
He had no particular worry about meeting the Triangle S foreman, Joe Ashfield, or the other syndicate trail drovers who were homeward bound. He had a speaking acquaintance with Ashfield, having been a Flying K rep on cattle drives where Ashfield acted as trail boss.
At the time of Kingman's twenty-first birthday, when he had come with his brother Everett to Russ Melrose's office, there to hear their foster-mother's will and to learn the startling disclosure regarding his own ancestry, Joe Ashfield had been nearing El Paso, hazing the syndicate beef to railhead.
This meant that Ashfield knew nothing of the tangled events which had transpired in Mexitex during his absence. It would even come as a shock to Ashfield to know that his boss, George Siebert, was dead. By the same token, Ashfield would not know of Kingman's murder trial and subsequent adventures with the law.
Arriving in Marfa, Hap turned his Triangle S pony over to a livery barn for grooming and graining. The first thing he saw was a placard tacked among others on the livery-barn wall—a reward poster mailed to the Marfa sheriff by Bob Reynolds, for the capture of Hap Kingman, dead or alive.
Being a stranger in Marfa, however, the cowboy had little cause to worry. In the event some person recognized him and summoned the Marfa sheriff, it would be a simple matter to present Bob Reynolds' letter of introduction, and to produce the deputy sheriff's badge which proved he was no longer riding outside the law.
He went first to the Drover's Hotel, a rambling frame building patronized by stockmen. There he engaged a room, after making inquiries which informed him that Joe Ashfield had not as yet arrived in Marfa on his return trip from El Paso.
Then Hap visited a barber, to get rid of that quarter inch of beard which stubbled his chin.
A good meal followed—the first real one in several days.
Then he returned to the Drover's Hotel, prepared to wait until the returning ranch foreman passed through Marfa. As the cow town was the only settlement between El Paso and Mexitex, Kingman knew there was little likelihood of his missing the homeward-bound Triangle S foreman.
He had not long to wait. The next evening a knock sounded at his door and he found the lanky, red-headed trail boss of George Siebert's ranch standing in the corridor outside.
"Como 'sta, Hap," greeted the foreman, shaking hands. "The ramrod o' this hotel tipped me off that you been here roostin' until I showed up."
"That's right, Joe," answered Kingman, pulling up a chair for the trail-weary foreman. "I got bad news for you."
Carefully withholding all details of his own connection with the case, Kingman informed the Triangle S foreman of Siebert's murder.
"Poor Anna," was Ashfield's first reaction to the shocking news of his boss' death. "This'll be tough on her. She's all alone, now, an' runnin' the syndicate is a man's job."
Kingman reached in his pocket and drew forth the deputy's star.
"Bob Reynolds figured you needed a bodyguard, Joe." The cowboy grinned. "Not that you couldn't take care of yourself, but you had no way of knowin' your life may be in danger on this trip back to the home spread."
Ashfield looked startled. "My life in danger? How come?"
"You're carryin' over ten thousand dollars with you—money belongin' to the syndicate. At least, ten thousand is the Triangle S cut of the beef herd you just auctioned in El Paso. And the hombre who killed Siebert is liable to want to glom his mitts onto that dinero, in order to prevent Anna from payin' off that mortgage."
Ashfield leaped to his feet.
"You mean that turkey-necked lawyer, Russ Melrose, would try to ambush me? He's the one who holds Triangle S paper!"
Hap nodded.
"Can't go into details, but that's how things stack up."
Ashfield unbuttoned his shirt to expose a leathern money belt strapped about his middle.
"Closer to thirty thousand bucks o' syndicate dinero I'm packin'," he whispered hoarsely. "An' me not even dreamin' that I might get myself ambushed."
Ashfield grinned, and stuck out a hand.
"I ain't takin' offense at you bein' sent along to guard me like as if I was a tenderfoot, Hap." He chuckled. "Startin' in the mornin', I reckon me an' you ride together. An' if Anna hasn't done it already, I'm thankin' you for riskin' yore hide to ride along with me."
Next morning, by prior arrangement, the two breakfasted before sunrise in a Chinese restaurant on Marfa's main street. By daylight they were both in saddle and heading southward on the stagecoach road to Presidio.
By midafternoon they left the protection of the well traveled road and headed in a short cut across the Sierra Seco mountains in the direction of Mexitex.
Hap Kingman maintained a steady silence regarding Russ Melrose, not knowing how much he could speak without betraying the sheriff's confidence. Kingman knew that Joe Ashfield was a trustworthy man, a cowpoke who had been with George Siebert for over twenty years. But the more he entered into explanations, the more likelihood of revealing his own part in things.
The thirteen notches, on the .45 Colt heirloom which he carried, took on a sinister implication to the puncher. A notched gun butt was the mark of a wanton killer, a man who boasted of his victims.
Such a man had been Dev Hewett.
"Plenty o' hoodlums roamin' wild in this part o' the Sierra Secos, Hap," commented Joe Ashfield, as the Triangle S foreman threw out an arm to encompass the upflung badlands about them. "Reckon it might be a wise idea to separate a little bit. I'll go on ahead, an' you stay enough behind so that if we're jumped by ambushers, we wouldn't git cut down together."
Hap Kingman's eyes ranged about the boulder piles and cactus clumps on all sides of them—a veritable paradise for an ambushed gunman to hide in—and agreed that the foreman's precaution would be wise.
Two men, riding close together, would offer a much better target than if they separated by some trail.
Accordingly, Joe Ashfield spurred on ahead. They were following a little-used game trail which snaked off through the Sierra Secos and would cut many miles off their trek.
Hap Kingman, his eyes trained to eagle keenness by his many hunting trips into these desolate uplands, scanned the surrounding malpais constantly.
During past years, Joe Ashfield had always returned to the home ranch by this route. If Russ Melrose had any ambush intentions, therefore, attack would occur somewhere along this trail; of that Kingman was positive.
For miles they rode, s
paring their horses, hands on gun butts, nerves and wits alert for a smudge of dust or a moving dot on the landscape which would indicate the presence of another rider in the area.
The westerning sun forced the men to lower their Stetson brims, and made the job of keeping a lookout difficult.
Hap Kingman, holding his forearm up to shield his vision against the oblique rays of the sun, suddenly stiffened in saddle as he saw a tiny puff of smoke issue from an ocotillo cactus clump midway up a slope whose base they were skirting.
He opened his mouth to yell a warning to Ashfield, riding fifty yards in advance, but the words froze in the cowboy's throat as he saw the Triangle S foreman suddenly pitch up his arms and topple sidewise in the saddle.
At the same instant there was wafted to Kingman's ears the sharp, flat report of a high-calibered rifle.
Spurring off the trail toward the shelter of a nearby outcrop of granite, Hap Kingman saw a second and third puff of smoke issue from the ambusher's hide-out up the hillside.
Close on the heels of the whiplike sound of the gunshots, he saw Joe Ashfield's body twitch under the impact of tunneling slugs.
A dry feeling was in Kingman's mouth as he saw the Triangle S foreman pitch out of saddle, his sombrero tumbling off as his head hit the ground.
And then Kingman was appalled to see that Ashfield's right boot, twisting in the stirrup as he fell, had become entangled in the tapadero.
Ashfield's horse, panic-stricken by the clatter of shots and feeling the jerk on its reins as Ashfield tumbled from saddle, suddenly reared and headed off along the trail at a mad gallop.
Kingman saw Ashfield's body jouncing along the stony ground, like a sack of spuds towed at rope's end.
"And here I am without a long gun!"
Kingman muttered an oath as he peered over the top of his sheltering granite outcrop, then ducked as a .30-30 bullet sprayed gravel in his face. The ambusher was gunning at him!
Crouched in shelter, Kingman saw Joe Ashfield's leg finally knocked free of the stirrup. But there was no hope that the syndicate trail boss could still be alive.
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