Bushwack Bullets

by Walker A. Tompkins

  A diligent search of the ranch house by Kingman and the old lawman brought to light a small iron safe which Russ Melrose had hidden in a bedroom closet.

  The safe responded to a charge of dynamite, and among the contents was a money belt which Kingman identified as being the one which Joe Ashfield, the ill-fated Triangle S segundo, had been wearing at the time of his return from El Paso.

  Still intact inside the money belt was nearly thirty thousand dollars in greenbacks, belonging to the Mexitex Land & Cattle Syndicate.

  Likewise in the safe was the deed to Anna Siebert's Triangle S spread, and the unpaid mortgage paper bearing Gorge Siebert's signature.

  "Fixin' all this up will be a matter for the courts," said Sheriff Reynolds, "but from where I sit it looks like Anna Siebert is boss o' her father's cattle syndicate again."

  The sheriff gave Hap Kingman a sidelong glance.

  "Anna'll be needin' another foreman. Runnin' a syndicate is a man's job, anyway," he said pointedly. "Offhand, Hap, I'd say you had as good a chance as any to land that job. Or would you object to workin' for a lady boss?"

  Hap Kingman colored under the sheriff's gibe.

  "What wife ain't a man's boss?" he countered. "Let's get goin', sheriff. I want to be the first to tell Anna the good news. I mean, about locatin' Ashfield's stolen dinero again, damn you!"

  The ruddy glow of the setting sun was in their eyes as they rode down to Mexitex and headed for the sheriff's home on the outer reaches of the cow town.

  They dismounted in front of the house and announced their arrival with boisterous whoops, intended to bring Mrs. Reynolds and Anna Siebert to the door.

  Instead, silence greeted them as Sheriff Reynolds opened the door and stepped into the living room.

  An instant later the grizzled old lawman gasped aloud and seized Kingman's arm.

  The two men were staring at the sprawled form of Mrs. Reynolds lying prostrate on the rug.

  For an instant they thought the woman was dead, and then they saw that she had been clubbed viciously over the left eye, a blow that had split the flesh to the scalp and drenched the old lady's face with crimson.

  "Anna!" yelled Hap Kingman, as he saw the sheriff rush to the side of his unconscious mate. "Anna!"

  The name was flung back in empty echo from the walls of the room.

  "Get me some water in the kitchen, Hap!" said the sheriff, his voice breaking with grief.

  The cowboy, his face blanched with dread, headed for the kitchen door. As he passed the living room table, his attention was arrested by a hastily scrawled letter which lay displayed on the dark wood.

  Snatching up the paper, Hap Kingman read:

  SHERIFF: I'm holding Anna Siebert hostage until midnight. If Russ Melrose ain't out of jail and safe in Mexico then, the girl will feed the catfish in the Rio Grande.

  EVERETT KINGMAN.

  An overwhelming sense of loss dazed Hap Kingman as he mechanically made his way to the kitchen and returned with a pitcher of water.

  He sank dazedly into a chair, staring at his foster brother's brief kidnap note, while the frantic sheriff bathed his wife's face with cold water.

  "Everett did this, sheriff!" Kingman said finally, as Mrs. Reynolds' eyelids fluttered and her face began to be restored to its natural color. "He's kidnapped Anna."

  The sheriff did not appear to hear. He tenderly lifted his wife's limp form and carried her to a nearby divan.

  It was ten minutes before the lawman's wife had recovered sufficiently to give an account of what had happened. The news seemed to stun Sheriff Bob Reynolds, but Hap had already guessed most of the details:

  "Anna and I were piecing a quilt out in the dining room. We heard hoofbeats outside, and someone knocking hard on the door. I… I went to answer it, and Everett Kingman came in."

  The woman buried her face in her hands, shuddering at the memory she was trying to recapture inside her addled brain.

  "He was murderous. Wild-eyed. Said he'd got back from Mexico… last night… and heard about Melrose being… jailed."

  The sheriff and Kingman exchanged glances. They knew that Everett Kingman had come to Reynolds' home to shoot it out with the sheriff. Everett was probably half drunk at the time, and mescal always gave him false courage. Otherwise, Hap knew that his foster-brother would never have dared ride north of the border.

  "I… I told him that you weren't here… that you were out of town He said he had come to kill you, Bob!" The quivering old lady gripped her husband's hand in a shuddering grasp. "I told Everett you were out of town on business. And then… Anna came in… she headed for the rifle hanging above the fireplace… to drive Everett away."

  Mrs. Reynolds groped a palsied hand to the bruise on her head.

  "I remember Everett striking me with his pistol," whispered the old lady. "I remember Anna screaming. Then… all seemed to… fade away… into a black emptiness."

  Hap Kingman crossed the room and handed the sheriff the hastily scrawled kidnap demand which Everett had left behind.

  "Everett was smart enough to know that we'd turn Melrose loose in order to get Anna back alive," the cowboy said. "He probably tied her up and put her on his horse and they rode double out of town. Anyway out here on the border to Mexitex there wasn't anybody to see him kidnapin' her."

  The sheriff's face hardened as he scanned the note.

  "He gives no proof that Anna is even alive," he rasped. "Even if we turned Melrose out of jail, we'd have no way of knowing Anna would get back to us safe."

  Something in the sheriff's clipped tone put a cold shock through Kingman.

  "We've got to turn Melrose loose. We got to give Anna the chance Everett says he'll give her."

  The sheriff, kneeling beside his wife, locked glances with a white-faced cowboy standing above him.

  "Everett's not the one to keep a promise, drunk or sober," replied Reynolds. "If we turned Russ Melrose free now, it would be violatin' my oath of office. I'd feel like I was turnin' a hydrophoby wolf loose to prey on people, Hap. No—it can't be done."

  The sheriff's face softened as he saw the bitterness stamped across the cowboy's countenance.

  "You know I love Anna—almost as much as a daughter," whispered the veteran lawman. "But I got my duty to do, Hap. When you've got your wits back, you'll see that it would be impossible to turn Russ Melrose loose."

  Hap Kingman turned on his heel and strode from the room. Walking out through the blue twilight, the cowboy studied the hoof-trampled soil at the hitch rack.

  But there would be no chance of finding Everett Kingman's tracks and following them, even if night were not approaching.

  Grimly, Hap Kingman mounted his own horse and spurred into a gallop. He drew rein in a flurry of dust in front of the Mexitex jail.

  Inside the lamplighted office was Grandpa Neeley, the jailer. The oldster looked up and grinned as Kingman entered the room, his eyes darting toward the steel-barred door of the cell block.

  "What's on yore mind, Hap?" greeted Neeley, swinging about in his swivel chair.

  "I've come to take Russ Melrose out of jail."

  Neeley's boots hit the floor with a thump.

  "You mean Reynolds is transferrin' that varmint to another jail? You mean the customs hombres are makin' a Federal case out o' this, an' cheatin' us o' the pleasure o' hangin' that snake?"

  "Yes. Andale, Neeley. Hurry up."

  The jailer picked up his ring of keys and unlocked the cell-block door. Then he turned, squinting at the cowboy over brass-rimmed spectacles.

  "Sheriff give you orders to turn Melrose over to you?"

  "I just come from Reynolds' place," evaded the cowboy. "I'm a deputy sheriff. What the hell more authority do you need? You don't figger I'm aimin' to lynch Melrose, do you?"

  Neeley shrugged.

  "No—not that I'd give a damn what happened to that shyster."

  A moment later Russ Melrose appeared in the doorway, frowning in bewilderment. The lawyer had lost weight dur
ing his term of imprisonment, and fear was plainly stamped on his visage.

  "Come with me, Melrose!" ordered Kingman, covering the lawyer with a Colt .45. "Neeley, you stick to your knittin'."

  Once out on the street, the cowboy stood facing the puzzled lawyer, who was staring wildly about as if expecting to be greeted by a lynch mob.

  "What's the idea, Kingman?" demanded; the lawyer quaveringly.

  "My brother Everett kidnapped Anna Siebert this afternoon," announced the cowboy bluntly. "He's holdin' her hostage for yore safety."

  Fresh hope leaped inside Melrose at this totally unexpected news.

  "I got a strong hunch," said the cowboy, "that Everett lit a shuck either for the Flyin' K ranch or for that cave on the south bank of the Rio, where your Señor Giboso gang holed up. Leastwise his kidnap note hints he might feed her to the fishes. You and I are ridin' out there, and if Anna hasn't been hurt, I'll swap you for her."

  Kingman eyed the row of ponies hitched to the jail's tie rail, and selected a leggy buckskin belonging to one of Reynolds' deputies.

  "Fork that buckskin," he told the excited lawyer. "And don't forget that I've got the drop on you. It so happens that this six-gun is the one that belonged to Dev Hewett—and I think it wouldn't be any more than justice comin' to pass if you forced me to make you the fourteenth notch on this hogleg!"

  But Russ Melrose, faced with a chance at freedom which he had not deemed possible five minutes before, was in a cooperative mood. He climbed aboard the deputy's saddle horse, and a few minutes later the two were riding out of town stirrup by stirrup.

  Kingman cast apprehensive eyes in the direction of the sheriff's house, as they left the outskirts of the town behind them. But Reynolds had not appeared. Doubtlessly the sheriff was remaining by his injured wife, little dreaming that the cowboy would have the audacity to release Melrose from jail without his official approval.

  Night had fallen and the terrain was bathed in the ghostly light of the half moon by the time Kingman and Melrose had reached the Flying K ranch.

  At Hap's loud halloo, the ancient Chinese cook, Wing Sing, appeared on the porch of the house where Hap Kingman had been raised to manhood.

  "Everett at home?" called the cowboy, his heart pounding anxiously as he waited the Oriental's reply.

  "No see Everett long time now," came the cook's answer. "Me hear that no-clount go to Mexico velly fast!"

  Kingman refused to be discouraged by Wing Sing's report. He had not expected to find his foster-brother hiding out at their own ranch.

  "Everett's probably got spies tipped off in Mexitex to find out whether you got out of jail," commented the puncher, as he and Melrose headed for the Rio Grande. "But as long as I'm holdin' your life forfeit, Melrose, mebbe he won't kill Anna Siebert."

  The lawyer swore fervently.

  "I'm hoping as much as you are that Everett rattled his hocks over to that cave," said Melrose. "But if he hasn't, what you aiming to do?"

  Cold fury throbbed through the cowboy's veins.

  "I'm liable to get to rememberin' that it was you who shot my father and mother in cold blood, Melrose," answered Hap. "It'd do me good to put a bullet through your guts and leave you kickin'."

  They gained a bottomland trail which flanked the American side of the Rio Grande, and followed it until a bend in the river brought the towering Chihuahua bluff in view, at the base of which Señor Giboso had had his rendezvous.

  Kingman drew rein alongside a dead cottonwood.

  "I'm tyin' you up here, Melrose," decided the cowboy. "I'll go the rest of the way afoot. If I don't find Everett and the girl, I'll be back pronto. Be sure you keep yore trap close-hobbled."

  The lawyer made no protest as Hap Kingman uncoiled his lariat and bound Melrose securely to the bole of the cottonwood.

  Then, after picketing their two horses a short distance away, Hap Kingman inspected his six-guns briefly and headed off up the river.

  The Rio Grande sluiced over a gravel bar midway between the point where Kingman had halted and the outlaw cavern. The cowboy tugged off boots and chaps, rolled up his Levis, and waded to the Mexican bank.

  Then, replacing his footgear, the cowboy vanished into the thick brush, working his way cautiously toward Señor Giboso's cavern, on the alert for possible Mexican guards.

  A few moments after Kingman's departure, Russ Melrose caught the sound of hoofs approaching up the river from the direction of Mexitex.

  The rider came into view, and Melrose shrank against the cottonwood trunk as he stared at the oncoming horsemen, fearful lest it be Sheriff Bob Reynolds, riding in pursuit of his errant deputy.

  Then, as the rider came abreast of the cottonwood tree, Melrose lifted his voice in a low shout of triumph.

  "Juan! Juan Fernandez!" called the tied-up outlaw, as he recognized his Mexican henchman. "Come over here and untie me!"

  The startled Mexican leaped from the saddle and came running up, staring in alarm at the trussed form of his chief. Then he whipped a knife from scabbard and cut the ropes to release Melrose.

  "I just come from Mexitex—I was riding to tell Señor Everett that you were turned free from the juzgado," Fernandez informed the lawyer in Spanish. "Señor Everett is hiding in the cave."

  Melrose reached out and helped himself to one of Fernandez's six-guns.

  "Bueno!" whispered the lawyer. "Hap Kingman's sneaking up on Everett and the girl now. I reckon Anna's goin' to have the pleasure of seem' her hero punched full of bullet holes before many more minutes!"

  28

  DEATH IN THE RIO GRANDE

  No Mexican sentries lurked in the chaparral as Hap Kingman worked his way with infinite caution to the looming black mouth of the smuggler's den.

  A faint glow of lantern light told the cowboy that someone was inside the cavern, and Hap knew that the probabilities were that this was the spot where the kidnaper brought Anna Siebert.

  Removing his spurs so that their jingling chains would make no noise to betray him, the cowboy crept stealthily into the blackness of the cavern. His previous visits had familiarized him with the right-angle turn which the tunnel made, so that he did not have to grope his way along the rocky walls.

  A moment later, to his straining eardrums, came the familiar voice of Everett Kingman, made guttural by too much whiskey:

  "I'm givin' you till midnight, Anna. If Fernandez ain't back from Mexitex by then with the news that the sheriff turned Melrose loose, I'm puttin' a bullet through you an' then I'm lightin' a shuck for Hermosillo."

  Planting each boot sole carefully into the rubble underfoot, Hap Kingman rounded the turn of the subterranean passage.

  Once more he was looking at the familiar underground chamber where he had once battled in showdown with Señor Giboso.

  A lantern glowed on the crude pine table as before. Anna Siebert, tied with many turns of rope, was seated in a rickety chair by the table, a bandanna bound about her mouth.

  The girl's eyes were staring at the spectacle of her captor seated on the table, flinging back his head in order to swill down a stiff jolt of rotgut whiskey.

  "Reach for the roof, Everett!"

  Hap Kingman shouted the command, even as he leaped into the circle of firelight, his twin six-guns leveled at his foster-brother.

  With a hoarse bellow of surprise, the dissipated cowboy leaped off the table, hands swinging to his own low-thonged Colts.

  "Hap!" squalled the half-breed spawn of Dev Hewett, his red-rimmed eyes slitting murderously. "How in hell—"

  The outlaw broke off as he saw his foster-brother stalk forward behind jutting guns.

  "Get your hands up, Everett, or I'll blast you wide open!" warned the cowboy. "I'm feelin' in a killin' mood, right now, and the gun I'm holdin' in my right hand belonged to the crooked owlhooter who sired you."

  Everett Kingman still clutched the whiskey bottle in his right hand.

  "You ain't takin' the girl!" screamed Everett, hauling back the hand that held the bottle.
"Damn you, Hap—"

  With all his force, the half-drunk cowboy hurled the brown glass bottle at Hap Kingman.

  Anna Siebert's scream was muffled by her gag as she saw Hap try to dodge, saw his boots slip in the loose gravel underfoot. He flung up an arm, and the bottle struck a glancing blow across his head to shatter to bits in a spray of whiskey against the rock wall behind him.

  Half stunned by the blow of the whiskey bottle, Hap Kingman sagged to his knees.

  Dimly, through swimming vision, he saw the blurred figure of his foster-brother as Everett Kingman jerked his own six-guns from leather and brought them up, spitting lead.

  Fighting against the dizziness which threatened to black out his senses, Hap Kingman tugged at his own guns.

  The cavern was a nightmare of sound, as Everett Kingman rushed up with guns thundering madly.

  With an effort that brought perspiration beading from his pores, Hap Kingman lifted the gun that was his misplaced six-gun legacy from Dev Hewett, and released the knurled hammer.

  The sound of his shot blended with the burst of echoes from Everett's drunken and misaimed salvo, and the bullet sped through a milky wall of gun smoke to halt Everett's berserk charge.

  Knocked off his feet by the irresistible impact of a .45 missile tunneling the bridge of his nose, Everett Kingman was a dead man before his body slammed against the hard earth.

  It was the first man Hap Kingman had ever slain, but there was no trace of regret in his heart as he got groggily to his feet and lurched across the cavern floor toward Anna Siebert.

  Instead, he seemed to sense the dramatic retribution which Dev Hewett's six-gun had brought about against his own flesh and blood.

  Holstering his Colt, Hap jerked off Anna Siebert's gag. Oblivious to her grasping word of thanks, the cowboy tore at the knots of her bonds with fingers that shook like ague.

  "Let's get out of here, Anna," said the cowboy hoarsely, as the girl struggled up from the chair where she had spent hours as a despairing prisoner. "We'll leave Everett here. I don't owe him anything."