The lawyer rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.
"How come you know so much about that sheepskin map, Kingman?"
"What did you think I was ransackin' your safe for just now?"
Melrose looked puzzled.
"I figured maybe you were hunting that money belt I took off Joe Ashfield's corpse. In which case you were drilling a dry well, Hap—because that dinero is salted away in my safe out at the Triangle S ranch house, where I can keep an eye on it."
The lawyer moved closer, jabbing his six-gun muzzle into the cowboy's stomach while he reached out and drew forth the six-gun from Kingman's holster.
"Now," said the lawyer, backing away, "tell me what you know about that map, Kingman."
Thinking fast, the cowboy decided to confide part of the truth to Melrose.
It would be a grim battle of wits, with his own life at stake, and he could not afford to play the wrong card.
"You may be curious to know why I didn't feed the buzzards after you left me pinned down under a dead horse," Hap began. "That—"
Melrose snarled out an impatient oath.
"Get to the point, Kingman. Stick to the subject of that gold map, and what you know about it."
Kingman's eyes slitted. The cards were beginning to fall his way, now.
"That's what I'm drivin' at. Melrose, I was found out there in the Sierra Secos by the man who was with my father when that map was drawn. One-eye Allen, who happens to be my uncle. It was One-eye Allen who set my broken leg and nursed me back to health."
Greed made Melrose's narrow-set eyes glitter.
"Go on."
"Well, to make it brief—One-eye Allen knows where that mine is, or can locate it with the aid of this map. If you hadn't surprised me lootin' your safe just now, I would have taken this map to One-eye Allen—and the map would have made him rich."
Russ Melrose's breath came in short jerky gusts. A pulse hammered on the knotted blue veins across his forehead.
"Where's One-eye Allen at?" he demanded craftily.
Kingman laughed shortly.
"You'd like to know, wouldn't you, Melrose? Well, I'll make a bargain with you. I'll take you to One-eye Allen, and you can dicker with him about that map. He'll make you a half partner in the gold mine—a mine you couldn't locate without Allen's help, and a mine which Allen couldn't locate without the aid of that map."
"And what's your price—what's your side of the bargain?"
Kingman grinned at the avarice in the lawyer's tone. But he knew that, for the time being at least, he was safe from the threat of the lawyer's gun.
"I'll take you to One-eye Allen on the promise that you spare my life. That you'll let me get out of Texas for keeps."
Melrose hid the triumph which leaped within him. Ever since the night he had murdered Warren Allen and his wife, to obtain the gold map which he had kept ever since in his safe, Russ Melrose had fumed at the dirty deal fate had handed him.
The sheepskin map represented untold riches, and yet the map was useless unless he knew what part of the frontier the man's directions applied to.
Now, through a bewildering series of circumstances, fate had dealt him a royal flush. The map he had kept through the years might yet prove to be a key to unlock a fabulous golden fortune out of the badlands which had held the secret thus far.
"O. K., Hap!" grated the lawyer. "I give you my word to turn you loose, as soon as you take me to this one-eyed uncle of yours. I know you're speakin' truth, otherwise you wouldn't know what this map was that I shot your father and mother to get."
Kingman went white at this cold-blooded confession which confirmed his own hunch as to Melrose's guilt. The knowledge that Russ Melrose had been the red-masked man of mystery, who for so many years had haunted Hap's adolescent dreams, now left the cowboy with a sickish feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He knew that Russ Melrose intended to double-cross him; the lawyer's guile was transparent. But Kingman knew also that he possessed an ace in the hole—that if he maneuvered things right, he could lead Melrose into a trap from which there would be no possible escape.
"Where is One-eye Allen now?" demanded Melrose.
"Out in the Sierra Secos."
"Bueno. We start tonight. In the meantime, Kingman, I got to tie you up, gag you, and put you in safekeeping. The sheriff is liable to wonder where you are, and as you might have been seen coming into my office here, I got to make sure nobody'll find you if they get to searching."
26
BACK FROM MEXICO
The varied hues of sunset were reflected on the ripples of the Rio Grande when Sheriff Bob Reynolds and a trail-dusty posse of Mexitex citizens rode back across the international bridge.
Their man hunt into the Chihuahua malpais had not been unsuccessful, as testified by the three handcuffed Mexican killers who were being brought back surrounded by deputies.
Proof that their victory had been obtained only at heavy cost was evident in the four dead possemen who were strapped to their saddles, corpses riddled by outlaw lead.
"Caught up with 'em, eh, sheriff?" asked a border-patrol officer, unlocking the big border gate to admit the returning posse to American soil.
The lawman nodded glumly. The Federal man noticed that Reynolds' head was swathed in bloody bandages.
"Cornered 'em in a box canyon over toward Las Piedras Pass. These greasers surrendered rather than shoot it out."
The border-patrol inspector searched the faces of the Mexican prisoners.
"Didn't get Everett Kingman?"
The sheriff shook his head glumly.
"Everett vamoosed on us. But he daren't show his face around Yaqui County any more—not after tryin' to shoot me an' Hap Kingman in broad daylight."
Reynolds took his prisoners to the jailhouse and turned them over to the custody of his turnkey.
The stiffening bodies of his slain possemen Reynolds removed to Doc Hanson's morgue in the rear of the undertaking parlors.
Dan Kendelhardt, the assistant coroner who was handling Hanson's business ever since the old sawbones had mysteriously disappeared during Hap Kingman's murder trail months before, took the sheriff aside after the glum-faced possemen had departed.
"Sheriff, I'm worried about Hap Kingman."
"What about him?"
"He went over to Melrose's law office just after you fellers rode across the border this afternoon. I ain't seen him since. I saw Russ Melrose go into his office shortly afterward, but Melrose came out alone."
The sheriff's face betrayed his alarm.
"Looks bad. Hear any shots?"
"No," replied Kendelhardt. "You figger those two might shoot it out?"
The sheriff removed his six-gun from holster, twirled the cylinder and replaced it.
"Hard tellin'. I'll go over to Melrose's office for a look-see. If you saw Hap go in, an' he didn't come out, then he must still be there."
The sheriff climbed the stairs to the upper floor of the Purple Hawk Saloon, and drew his Colt .45 as he approached Melrose's office. A light burned inside, and the pasty-faced law clerk, Barney Adams, opened the door upon the sheriff's knock.
"Where's Hap Kingman?"
The clerk started violently as Reynolds shoved his way into Melrose's office.
"I don't know," Adams said.
"Didn't he come here?"
Adams pointed to a blue welt the size of a hen's egg which had disfigured his bald scalp.
"He sure did, sheriff. I was aiming to report it to you. Kingman came in this afternoon, either drunk or mad. He conked me with a gun butt—and when I came to, he was gone."
The sheriff looked startled.
"Can't figure why Hap should want to conk you. Where's Russ Melrose?"
Adams shrugged.
"Melrose brought me to. Then he left. That window was open, so Melrose figured Kingman crawled out on the porch roof, jumped across to that gambling-hall roof, and got out that way. Leastwise, Melrose didn't meet Kingman comin' out."
&nb
sp; The sheriff scowled with worry.
Barney Adams' story had a distinctly false note to it, regarding Hap Kingman's strange behavior. Still, his explanation of the cowboy's method of exit would explain why Dan Kendelhardt had not seen Kingman leave the lawyer's offices.
"Somethin' damned fishy here, Adams. If you're lyin', I'll choke the truth out of you. Meanwhile, I'll poke around a little."
The sheriff's search of Melrose's office was brief but thorough. There was no place that could hide a corpse, in the event that Kingman had been murdered here.
A thorough search of a clothes closet and adjoining office where Adams' files were cabineted revealed no clues as to Kingman's disappearance.
Grave-faced with worry, Sheriff Reynolds left the Purple Hawk Saloon and hurried to his own home. Neither his wife nor Anna Siebert had seen any trace of the cowboy since he had departed in company with the sheriff earlier that afternoon.
"This business o' people disappearin' in broad daylight is gettin' on my nerves," groaned the sheriff. "Why should Hap visit Melrose's office? An' why should he knock out Barney Adams? It don't make sense."
At that moment, Hap Kingman was alive, but extremely uncomfortable. He was bound hand and foot with braided rawhide rope, and gagged with a bandanna knotted on his neck nape. The liquor-storage cellar of the Purple Hawk Saloon was his temporary prison.
The cowboy, kept in check by a gun hidden in Russ Melrose's coat pocket, had been marched down into the saloon barroom by a back stairway.
There, money had changed hands between Melrose and the Purple Hawk bartender, and Hap Kingman had been ushered down into the wine cellar where he had been tied up and left in total darkness.
The cowboy had no way of keeping track of time, in the blackness of the saloon cellar; but he knew that it was nearing midnight when the door was unlocked and Russ Melrose appeared.
"I got horses in the alley behind the saloon," said the lawyer. "I'm leaving your wrists tied together, Kingman. We're heading for the Sierra Secos while it's dark."
Melrose untied the cowboy, allowed him to stretch his stiffened muscles, and then prodded him up the stairs with a gun muzzle.
He was ushered down a corridor and out a back door opening on a narrow alley behind the saloon— an alley where, on another grim night, Melrose had carried away the knife-slashed corpse of Dr. Harry Hanson on his way to a watery grave on the bottom of the Rio Grande—a grave from which the ill-fated medico had never returned.
A pair of saddled horses whickered at the men as they walked down the alley in the darkness.
They mounted silently, and rode out into a deserted side street which intersected the main stem.
Saddlebags had been packed with provisions for a several-day trek into the Sierra Secos badlands, Kingman noticed, and tarpaulin-wrapped soogan rolls had been strapped behind each saddle cantle.
Not until they were a mile away from Mexitex, headed in the general direction of the Sierra Secos mountains, did Russ Melrose remove the six-gun from his pocket and holster it.
A crescent moon lifted above the saw-toothed eastern horizon, and by its phantom glow Hap Kingman saw the grim face of his captor, eyes regarding him with blinkless fixity.
"From now on, you're the guide," grunted Russ Melrose. "Where abouts is this One-eye Allen camped?"
Kingman, his wrists still bound with rawhide, pointed vaguely toward the wastelands ahead of them.
"Yonderward. I'm not tellin' you where."
Melrose's lips twitched with suppressed anger.
"If you're double-crossin' me, Kingman—"
The cowboy laughed hollowly. "My life's at stake, Melrose. My stayin' alive depends on livin' up to my bargain to lead you to One-eye Allen."
They pushed on in silence, Kingman taking the trail which led toward the foothills.
Triumph was welling in Melrose's heart. Safe in an inner pocket of his coat was the sheepskin map which he had murdered Warren Allen to obtain, almost two decades before.
Once Melrose had located the gold vein which that map represented, he would pay off with hot lead, and not with freedom for the cowboy.
The sickle-shaped moon climbed in the starry heavens as they reached the base of the foothills and headed on into the desolate, cactus-dotted desert country.
The trail was narrow and rocky, and Hap Kingman rode in the lead. If he was worried, he did not show it. He lifted his voice in a plaintive cowboy melody, ceasing only on a curt order from his captor.
A night owl hooted in the sky overhead. Somewhere, miles away, a lone coyote bayed at the moon, his solitary howls sounded magnified by echo, like an entire pack of the predatory beasts.
The clip-clop of steel-shod hoofs made faint echoes against the rim-rocks of dry washes as they rode past. Both men rode in silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts.
Then, from out of a clump of chaparral which flanked the trail on their left, came a high-pitched voice like an off-key clarinet with a squeaky reed:
"Reach for a cloud, you buskies! The first man who reaches for a hogleg is a dead man!"
Hap Kingman reined up and lifted his tied-together hands, but a grin was on his face.
Russ Melrose made a darting motion toward his gun, then thought better of it as a bowlegged hombre stepped out of ambush and leveled a Winchester at his midriff.
"Good work, unk!" Kingman said to One-eye Allen. "I was dependin' on you to spring my man trap!"
27
JAIL FOR A MALO HOMBRE
Melrose made a gagging sound as One-eye Allen stepped forward, his single eye squinting at the mounted lawyer down the sights of his .30-30.
"You damned, double-crossing skunk!" bellowed Melrose, lifting his arms shakily. "You—"
Hap Kingman swung out of stirrups and stood grinning at the lawyer.
"What you mean by those insultin' words, Mr. Melrose?" asked the cowboy mockingly. "My part of the bargain was to lead you to One-eye Allen. I'm keepin' that bargain, here and now. And— whether you want to or not—you're keepin' your part of the deal. I'm not your prisoner now—I'm as free as a sneeze."
One-eye Allen reached up and removed Melrose's gun from holster. Then, aiming his rifle at the lawyer's head, he ordered Melrose to dismount.
"Untie that rope that Hap's wearin'," ordered the bony prospector. "We'll use the same piggin' string to tie your mitts together, I reckon."
Not until Hap Kingman had completed the happy task of knotting his own bounds on Melrose's hairy wrists did the old hard-rock miner relax.
"Lord, son, but I was worried when you didn't show up on schedule," Allen said. "I was fixin' to leave for Mexitex town, come daylight, to see what was goin' on down there."
Hep Kingman reached under Melrose's lapel and drew forth a flat silver snuffbox.
Then, taking the lawyer's six-gun from his uncle, Hap passed over the box and the sheepskin map which it contained.
"There's your gold claim, unk—a bit late, but just as good as the day my father drawed it!" Hap Kingman chuckled. "And I sort of got a hunch that my dad's ghost is around somewhere, laughin' right this minute. Melrose took good care of that map all these years."
Sweat beaded Melrose's face and twinkled in the moonlight as the lawyer saw One-eye Allen unfold the pliable sheepskin and squint at the familiar markings on the leather.
"That gold claims is as good as found ag'in, Hap!" cried the prospector, as he saw an end to his long search. "I know the general location this map describes, and Warren's put down all the important landmarks I'll need to know."
Hap Kingman, holding a careless drop on the helpless lawyer, turned to his excited uncle.
"You roll up your soogans and traipse back into the Sierra Secos tomorrow, unk," said the cowboy. "Soon as you got the claim located, you light a shuck down to Mexitex and record it. And maybe, if you're not too long doin' it, you'll have the pleasure of seeing Russ Melrose stretch hang rope, to boot."
The old prospector thrust the long-lost map into a pocket of h
is Levis, and paused a moment to regard the tintype photograph of his brother in the lid of the snuffbox.
"You sure you can get this jigger back to town?" he asked anxiously.
"Why not?" Hap grinned. "He'll be roostin' in the calaboose before sunrise."
The old prospector thrust out a scrawny hand.
"Half o' that gold claim is yours, son. It's rightfully yours, as a sort o' legacy from your father."
Hap Kingman, remembering that a notched six-gun had been the only legacy he had had to look forward to a short time before, gave his uncle's hand an extra shake.
"Forget it, unk. Cows're my business, not grubbin' gold out of quartz ledges."
He turned to Melrose and motioned toward the lawyer's horse.
"Straddle that bronc, hombre," commanded the puncher. "I'm plumb anxious to get you back to town and turn you over to Bob Reynolds. He'll have a cell all dusted out for you in his juzgado. You'll have plenty of time to think of who you want for a lawyer, before your case comes to trial."
A few minutes later, when he had remounted his own bronc, Hap Kingman leaned down to bid his new-found uncle good-bye.
"Sounds pretty flat to say I'm glad I met up with a relative I didn't know I had, unk." The cowboy chuckled. "And by the time you drift back to Mexitex, maybe I'll have a new niece-in-law to introduce to you."
One-eye Allen waved in farewell as Kingman moved with his sullen prisoner.
"Hasta la vista, Hap. An' congratulate yore Anna for me."
Mexitex town was shaken out of its lethargy the next day when news traveled from bar to bar throughout the border settlement regarding the startling events of the previous night.
From the sheriff's office had come announcements that the erstwhile county judge and cow-country lawyer, Russ Melrose, was lodged in Bob Reynolds' jailhouse incommunicado, charged with murder, smuggling, and sundry lesser crimes.
The news was received with consternation among the cowhands at Melrose's Triangle S ranch, and for reasons of their own, the ranch crew saddled up and disappeared in the general direction of the Mexican border.
At any rate, when Hap Kingman accompanied the sheriff out to Siebert's ranch the day following his arrival in Mexitex with his prisoner, they found the place deserted. There was evidence in the bunkhouse to indicate that Melrose's henchmen had packed their warbags in haste, not even troubling to water or feed the stock remaining in the ranch corrals.
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