24
THUNDERING GUNS
Hap Kingman arrived in Mexitex during the siesta hour, so that his return "from the dead" occasioned no excitement, the sun-baked streets being empty.
He dismounted in front of the jailhouse, but found the sheriff's office locked.
Accordingly, the cowboy made his way to the outskirts of town, in the direction of the public cemetery. There, in a little white cottage where Bob Reynolds and his wife had lived ever since the days when Reynolds was a deputy under Les Kingman, the cowboy presented himself at the sheriff's door.
To his surprise, it was opened by Anna Siebert.
"It's me, Anna." Hap grinned as he saw the girl blanch and cling to the door jamb for support. "I'm no ghost—"
He was not prepared for what happened next.
With a sudden burst of tears, Anna Siebert flung herself into his arms, clinging to him as she might her own father. And the cowpuncher, whose busy life on the Kingman Ranch had brought little opportunity for the companionship of women, found his heart stirring with a strange thrill as he rubbed his jaw against the soft clusters of chestnut hair.
"Hap… Hap… we had given you up… long ago… for dead," whispered the girl in a hysteria of relief. "And now you've come back… you've come back—"
A moment later the sheriff and his gray-haired wife were rushing to the door to greet the supposedly dead cowboy. Bob Reynolds was quick to note the lines which pain had stamped on Hap Kingman's sun-browned face, and knew that those lines could tell a grim story.
While his trio of friends hung on his every word, Hap Kingman haltingly outlined what had happened to him from the morning he and Joe Ashfield had set out from Marfa, bound for the Triangle S spread with the syndicate money from El Paso.
Sheriff Reynolds nodded understandingly as the cowboy outlined his long stay at the badlands home of One-eye Allen, and the probability of their blood relationship.
"All I know is that there are a pair of graves out in boothill, marked Warren and Eleanor Allen," said the sheriff's wife when the cowboy had completed his narrative. "I saw your foster-mother, Florence Kingman, puttin' flowers on them mounds many the time. But I never knew who those graves belonged to."
Kingman turned to Anna Siebert, who had clung to his hand throughout his long discourse.
"Anna," said the cowboy, completely oblivious to the presence of the sheriff and his wife, "I'd have told you I was fond of you before this, I reckon, only I figgered I was an outlaw, the son of an outlaw, Dev Hewett. But now I reckon there's nothin' to stop me. I—"
Kingman broke off in conclusion, aware of the kindly grins of Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds. He leaned back, conscious of the fact that Anna Siebert's eyes glowed with a strange light as they followed every changing expression on his face.
"And what's gone on durin' the past seven weeks here in Mexitex?" he asked his three listeners. "I darn near blundered into a hornet's nest this mornin', over at the Triangle S. Saw Melrose and my brother Everett over there—"
Cold despair quenched the love which had glistened unashamed in Anna Siebert's eyes.
"Melrose moved in with legal possession papers," blurted the sheriff. "Anna's been livin' with us. An' we been powerless to do anything against that lawyer. All the evidence we got against him is circumstantial."
Anna Siebert spoke heavily:
"And Melrose is powerful now. He's crowded out all the honest men that used to be in dad's syndicate. He controls all the best grazing land, all the waterholes. He's got the whip hand, and he's using it. Honest men don't dare buck him, because Melrose has surrounded himself with killers."
The sheriff stood up, hitching his gun belts.
"Hap, you come over to the county prosecutor's office with me," said the lawman briskly. "We'll lay our cards on the table, an' see if I can't get a warrant to arrest Melrose for the murder of Joe Ashfield. If we can make that charge stick, maybe we can put the cattle syndicate back in Anna's control, where it belongs."
The two men left the house and headed for the courthouse building, restraining a desire to break into a run.
Both realized that events were rapidly shaping themselves toward a climax. Hap Kingman's return would give the county prosecutor and the sheriff some tangible basis for starting proceedings against Russ Melrose, before the latter became unshakeably intrenched as the ramrod of the county's beef range.
"I'll rustle up a good posse and deputize 'em before we go out to force a showdown with Melrose," chuckled the sheriff excitedly. "It'll turn into a damned range war if Melrose once gets wind of what's—look out!"
Sheriff Reynolds bawled the warning, even as they were crossing a side street on their way toward the courthouse.
At the same time the sheriff flung out an arm to pull Hap Kingman to the ground with him.
Brrrrrrang! A hail of bullets whistled overhead, as the two men dropped.
Fifty yards up the street, a close-bunched group of horsemen were triggering six-guns in their direction, their quarry caught in the open.
Horses trumpeted with alarm as their riders sent a third burst of shots at Reynolds and Hap Kingman, as the two began scuttling for the shelter of a nearby lumber yard.
"It's my brother Everett!" panted Hap, as they gained the refuge of the lumber pile. "And he's sided by Melrose's greasers, or I'm a loco leppie!"
The sudden and totally unexpected fusillade had filled the air with gunsmoke above the mounted group of horsemen. Now, seeing that their bullets had failed to find a target, Everett Kingman and his henchmen from the Triangle S spread turned and spurred wildly in the direction of the Rio Grande.
"We'll trail them skunks to hell an' back, Hap!" yelled the sheriff, as the two men emerged from hiding with six-guns drawn. "If they cross into Chihuahua, we'll cross, too, boundary or no boundary!"
Men were running out of saloons and other buildings as Sheriff Bob Reynolds sprinted down the street, Hap Kingman at his side.
Yelling for men to saddle their horses to form a posse, Reynolds suddenly broke off as he saw Hap Kingman crumple and sprawl headlong, like a man who has stopped a bullet.
Instantly Reynolds was at the cowboy's side, noting that Hap's face was gray with pain as the sheriff assisted him to his feet.
"It's my leg," gritted the cowboy. "Haven't exercised it enough. I'm afraid I won't be able to go with the posse, Bob. But don't wait for me—"
Ten minutes later, Hap Kingman leaned against a saloon wall and muttered disappointed oaths as he saw Sheriff Reynolds head toward the Rio Grande, with a score or more of townspeople riding with him, all armed to the teeth.
Everett Kingman and his would-be ambushers, dashing past the startled border patrol officials, had crossed the Rio Grande and were riding for the security of the Chihuahua hills.
But the sheriff and his hastily organized posse, with an outlaw trail to follow, were disregarding political boundaries to swarm over onto Mexican soil in hot pursuit of Everett Kingman and his Mexican killers from the Triangle S.
Hap Kingman, sick with disappointment and half nauseated by the pain of wrenched tendons in his leg, hobbled his way painfully to the coroner's office across the street.
There he greeted the deputy coroner, Dan Kendelhardt, who was among the few witnesses of the attempted murder of the two men by Everett Kingman and his horsemen.
"Gripes me to think I can't be in on the shootout," said Hap Kingman, as he saw the sheriff's posse disappear into the cactus-dotted Mexican hills beyond the river. "Reynolds has got that drygulchin' gang outnumbered, and I don't reckon he'll come back until he's draggin' those owlhooters with him."
The deputy coroner nodded glumly.
"If those skunks are workin' for Russ Melrose, I hope they get caught," agreed Kendelhardt. "Me an' the sheriff have been doin' some thinkin' about Doc Hanson's disappearance, an' I wouldn't be surprised if Russ Melrose don't know the answer to that one, too."
Through the doorway of the coroner's office, Hap Kingman scanned the
Purple Hawk Saloon, across the street.
Painted on the office windows of the upper story was a sign that twisted Kingman's lips in a bitter grin:
RUSSELL MELROSE
Attorney-at-law
"There's no need of me stickin' around doin' nothin' while the sheriff is out chasin' those skunks who tried to kill me just now," said Hap Kingman. "I think there's a little business I can attend to very handily, myself!"
While the deputy coroner looked on wonderingly, the cowboy limped his way across the street and headed up the stairs leading to Russ Melrose's business office.
25
INSIDE MELROSE'S SAFE
Hap Kingman had a definite reason for what he was about to do. Hap figured that inside Melrose's office he might be able to recover the contents of the money belt which the crooked lawyer had stolen from Joe Ashfield's body.
It was a fifty-fifty chance, but a lot would hinge on the recovery of that money. He knew that Melrose would not dare to deposit the stolen funds in the Mexitex bank. And, since the lawyer still maintained his business offices, it was probable that his safe might contain the missing cash.
He entered Melrose's office without the formality of a knock, and grinned as he recognized the scrawny figure of Barney Adams, the law clerk who handled Melrose's routine office business for as long as Kingman could remember.
The rawboned clerk had just turned from the window as Kingman entered, his face bleak.
"I reckon you saw what happened out on the street just now," Kingman rasped, his eyes darting to the huge black safe in one corner of the room.
Adams gulped, and his hands shook nervously as he adjusted the green eyeshade perched over his furrowed brow.
"I… I heard shooting," confessed Melrose's assistant. "But what… what do you want?"
Kingman grinned crookedly. He paused in mid-room, thumb hooked in cartridge belt.
"That shooting was done under orders of your boss, Russ Melrose," snapped the cowboy. "And I'm here on business that concerns Melrose. Adams, I'm orderin' you to unlock that safe of Melrose's, and do it pronto, without arguin' with me."
Adams sagged into a swivel chair, his face draining to the dirty yellow color of banana meat.
"I… I can't open that safe without orders from Melrose," Adams protested weakly. "I… I don't know the combination—"
Kingman slid his Colt .45 from holster.
"Maybe a dose of lead poisonin' would refresh yore memory, Barney. I got plumb urgent business regardin' the contents of that safe."
Barney Adams stared at the black bore of Kingman's .45 and shook his head in panic.
"It ain't legal… it's robbery!" squawked the law clerk. "I can't do it!"
The sound of Kingman's Colt coming to full cock made the law clerk forget the technicalities of the moment. Adams scuttled crablike to the safe, spun the polished combination dial, and then yanked the black handle to operate the tumblers.
As the door of the vault opened, Hap Kingman stepped forward swiftly in time to see Barney Adams reach into the opened safe and turn with a black-muzzled six-gun in his own palsied hand.
With a swift outward blow of his own gun barrel, Kingman dropped Melrose's office assistant before Adams could trigger a bullet in his direction.
Rolling the unconscious clerk to one side, Hap Kingman holstered his gun and squatted down to begin pulling out steel drawers from the safe.
He riffled swiftly through filed legal papers. One compartment yielded a canvas sack bearing the name of the local bank. It contained upward of a hundred dollars in loose change and packages of dollar bills.
He had gone through the contents of Melrose's safe for the third time before he was forced to admit failure. There was no sign of Joe Ashfield's money belt inside the vault, nor money which could conceivably be traced to the loot which Melrose had taken from the Triangle S foreman's corpse out in the Sierra Secos almost two months past.
"He must have it cached somewhere over at Siebert's ranchhouse, then," decided Kingman, his voice tinged with disappointment. "I reckon I bashed Adams on the noggin for no good purpose, after all."
A heavy brown envelope was in a compartment marked "Personal," and it contained an object which Kingman had not yet examined—an object too light in bulk to be Ashfield's money belt.
Nevertheless, the cowboy opened the envelope.
Into his waiting palm dropped a small silver snuffbox, the metal tarnished with age.
Curiously, Hap Kingman opened the lid of the snuffbox, and then squatted there motionless, eyes staring at the tintype photograph which was glued on the inner side of the lid.
It was almost an exact duplicate of the tintype which One-eye Allen had showed him—a picture of Warren and Eleanor Allen with their baby son. Costumes and background were identical to the picture which One-eye Allen had said was taken nineteen years before by a San Antonio photographer.
With fingers which suddenly shook, Hap Kingman lifted the contents of the snuffbox into the light. It was a tightly folded bit of soft sheepskin, and covering one side of the leather was some sort of map, traced onto the sheepskin with a hot needle that had left fine lines like a pen dipped in brownish-black ink.
"My father's goldmine map—"
A shiver coursed down Hap Kingman's spine as he realized the significance of what he had found in Russ Melrose's safe. This, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was the map to the lost gold claim which One-eye Allen had said was the possession of his missing brother, Warren.
How could it have come into Russ Melrose's hands?
There was but one answer to that, and that realization left Hap Kingman limp.
"Melrose was the red-masked killer who shot my father and mother—the hombre I been wantin' to get revenge on all these years!"
Parts of the weird jigsaw puzzle fell into place now.
Melrose had told him that he was the son of Dev Hewett, a long-dead outlaw. That outlaw had left in trust with Melrose a notched six-gun as his only legacy—that, and a dying request that his son kill George Siebert to avenge his death.
"I can see it all now," whispered Hap Kingman, clamping his father's sheepskin treasure map in a damp fist. "Melrose knew that Everett was really Hewett's son, and that I was Warren Allen's son. Les Kingman adopted the two of us—and when we came of age, and I told Melrose I was honin' to avenge my father's death—"
It was crystal clear, now, in the light of this evidence which had lain through the years in Melrose's private safe.
Melrose, seeking to obtain control of the cattle syndicate headed by George Siebert, had deliberately led Hap to believe that George Siebert was the rightful target for all the festering hate that had burned in the cowboy's heart as a result of his terrible babyhood memories—
A slight noise behind him snapped Hap Kingman back to earth. He turned his head, expecting to see that the law clerk, Barney Adams, had returned to his senses.
Then Kingman froze as he saw a sombrero-clad man standing in the doorway, almost out of the range of his vision.
"Hold it, Kingman!"
It was the voice of Russ Melrose that snarled the low-voiced order, as Kingman reached instinctively for his gun butt.
The leering Mexitex lawyer came into the room and closed the door. A cocked .45 six-gun was in his fist, its black bore leveled unwaveringly at Kingman's body.
"Doing a little private investigating among my private papers?" leered Melrose, halting a few steps away. "Well, get your arms up. One booger move, and I blast you to hell!"
Hap Kingman dropped the tarnished sterling snuffbox and the sweat-moist sheepskin map. He elevated his hands to the level of his shoulders and then stood slowly erect.
"You're going to shoot me down like a rat, Melrose," said the cowboy, his voice registering bleakly. "But before you shoot—answer me this: Dev Hewett is Everett's real father, isn't he? My real name is Allen?"
Melrose's eyes slitted warily. Then he nodded gravely.
"It won't hurt for you to know it
now. Yeah—I switched yore identities. I figgered to use you to wipe out George Siebert, so I could move in on his syndicate. I admit things didn't run so smooth—but they led to the right end. I'm sittin' pretty in Yaqui County—and you've drawed a one-way ticket to hell."
There was a moment's silence, broken only by Barney Adam's moans. Melrose moved closer, the knuckle of his trigger finger turning white under slowly increasing pressure.
"If yon got any prayers to say, hop to it, Kingman!" whispered Melrose. "I'm killing you, and making it look as if you and Adams there had a shoot-out while you were robbing my safe. My own hide isn't secure as long as you're above ground, Kingman."
Hap's muscles stiffened before the anticipated shock of the bullet that would blast him into eternity with a whit more pressure of Melrose's trigger finger!
Thoughts shot like lightning through Hap Kingman's brain during the clipped second of time that he waited for the six-gun to roar and flash in Melrose's grip.
Then an inspiration came, and the cowboy seized it as a drowning man clutches at the proverbial straw:
"You're throwin' away a gold mine if you pull that trigger, Melrose."
The lawyer's hand relaxed.
"Meaning what, cowboy? If you think you can talk your way out of this, you got another think comin'."
Kingman moved his boot toe to direct the taut-nerved lawyer's attention to the unfolded goldmine map on the floor at his feet.
"You've kept that silver snuffbox in your safe for eighteen years, Melrose. Isn't that right?"
The lawyer's nostrils dilated nervously. Alert for treachery, still Melrose was intrigued by the doomed cowboy's words.
"Maybe so. What you drivin' at?"
New hope leaped in Kingman's heart, as a faint chance of outwitting Russ Melrose was born in his head.
"That box contained a map showin' where my real father had a gold mine. Mebbe you didn't know that, Melrose."
Bushwack Bullets Page 15