The Pulp Hero

by Theodore A. Tinsley

  “Thanks.”

  The Lone Ranger returned to Bryant’s room.

  CHAPTER XXV

  WHO IS ANDREW MUNSON?

  The masked man paused at the door until he heard Wallie reach the first floor of the big house. He waited another moment, listening intently, but heard nothing. He wondered where the men were whom he’d seen approach the house with guns drawn, and what they were doing at the moment. Then he closed the door and would have locked it, but he found no key.

  Bryant Cavendish lay on the bed, flat on his back. His mouth was half-open and his eyes were closed. He slept noisily, breathing with a throaty sound. The old man had been through a strenuous ordeal. The Lone Ranger stepped to the bed and placed sensitive fingers on the pulse in Bryant’s wrist. The heartbeat was firm and steady. The sleep, apparently, was normal sleep brought on by sheer exhaustion, not abnormal unconsciousness.

  “Just as well,” the masked man muttered. “If he’ll stay asleep for a little while I’ll have a look at that desk.”

  The desk was old and rather battered. It was a huge affair of oak with many drawers beneath the two-inch-thick top. Rising from the back of the desk there was a section divided into many squares. Filled with papers, as these pigeonholes were, it closely resembled an overworked post office. The sections on the right were neatly ordered, the papers folded evenly and tucked in edgewise.

  The masked man glanced about the room. Meticulous order was apparent everywhere. On the dresser a brush, comb, a large knife and a smaller knife, and a razor were neatly arranged. A shelf above the washstand held a shaving mug. The brush, instead of being in the mug in sloppy fashion, had been rinsed, and stood on end. The rest of the room was equally neat. The ordered compartments of the desk were, then, as Bryant had fixed them. The lefthand pigeonholes were otherwise.

  Papers were jammed in these without regard for order. Some were folded, others just stuffed in; some compartments bulged, while others were barely half-filled; some papers were on edge, some lay flat. The condition of things told a story of a search that had been started at the extreme left and continued methodically, one compartment at a time, until the object of the search was found. The Lone Ranger reasoned that the object, whatever it was, had been in the last disordered pigeonhole.

  He glanced at Bryant and found him still asleep and snoring. He pulled papers from the pigeonhole and spread them on the desk top. A few receipts of recent date; an envelope with a penciled address on it; a bill of sale for twenty head of cattle; a clipping from a St. “Jo” paper that dealt with a railroad that was contemplated in the West; a pamphlet which described in glowing terms the curative qualities of Doctor Blaine’s Golden Tonic; a sheet of heavy paper, folded twice across, and labeled, “Bryant Cavendish, His Last Will and Testament.”

  The Lone Ranger replaced everything else, then drew another legal document from the pocket of his shirt. He unfolded this, and laid it by the will. The writing in the two was identical; Lonergan’s handwriting. The masked man had known there would have to be a will of some sort to accompany the agreement which the natural heirs had signed forswearing their rights to the Cavendish property. He had been anxious to know the name of the individual chosen as heir.

  Penelope and her cousins were mentioned in the will. Each was to receive ten dollars in cash. A lawyer’s foresight had, doubtless, dictated the mention of them, so that there would be no complaint that Bryant had forgotten relatives in preparing the will. The balance of the estate, after all just obligations had been paid, was to go to a man named Andrew Munson. The document described Andrew Munson as a man to whom Bryant felt a heavy obligation. It told how Munson must be identified, and omitted no detail. Bryant Cavendish had signed his name at the bottom, and in the proper places there were signatures of witnesses. Until such time as Andrew Munson could be found, the Basin ranch was to be managed by Bryant’s four nephews or, if all four were not alive, by the survivors.

  “Who,” the masked man asked himself, “is Andrew Munson?” He had never heard the name before. There might be some reference to Munson in the papers in the desk, but the search through these would have to wait until a later time. There was something far more urgent that must be done at once.

  It took several minutes to waken old Bryant Cavendish. When he was fully awake and growling his complaints at being roused, the Lone Ranger sat beside him on the bed. “Get fully awake, Cavendish,” he said.

  Bryant squinted in the light that came from the windows. “Hurts my eyes,” he complained in a somewhat sleepy voice.

  The masked man crossed the room and drew the heavy draperies together, cutting out most of the light and making the room quite dim. “Better?”

  “I heard your voice before,” Bryant said. “Who are yuh?”

  “We rode from Red Oak together last night, Cavendish. I was with you in a cave until this morning—don’t you remember?”

  “I seem tuh. How long I been sleepin’?”

  “Only about half an hour. I’ll get you a drink of water. You’ve got to get wide-awake and listen to me!”

  “I’ve listened aplenty. I’m done with it. Now get the hell out of here, an’ lemme alone. Where is Penelope?”

  The masked man poured water from the pitcher and held it to the old man’s lips while he explained, “Penelope is in Red Oak. She went there this morning with the children. My friend, the Indian, went with her.”

  Bryant drank half the water, then pushed the cup aside. He rubbed his eyes, then studied the masked man, squinting slightly. “I reckon,” he said, “I remember things now. So damn much has happened in the past couple o’ days I can’t somehow keep things straight.”

  “Are you wide-awake now, Bryant?”

  “Course I am,” retorted the old man in a nettled voice. “What d’you want?”

  “I took your will from the desk. I want you to take a look at it.” A paper was extended toward Bryant. “Is there enough light in here for you to see it?”

  “I don’t need tuh see it, I know what’s in it!”

  “Examine it anyway.”

  “Fer what?”

  “See if it’s just the way you want it!”

  “I’ve got fed up with all these fool stunts of yores, stranger. Now, for the last time, will yuh leave me be?”

  The Lone Ranger found it difficult to control his anger. Before him, sitting upright in the bed, was the man who was indirectly responsible for the murder of those Texas Rangers, whose graves were in the Gap; for Becky’s death; the stabbing of Gimlet; possibly even of Rangoon and Mort. And this man was asking to be left alone! The masked man’s clenched fists trembled while he fought for self-control. He must, above all, keep his voice down. He leaned forward.

  “I want to know,” he said softly as he put the will in his pocket, “who Andrew Munson is.”

  Bryant said, “Who?”

  The Lone Ranger repeated the name.

  Cavendish pondered. His eyes held a faraway expression as he gazed at a corner of the ceiling.

  “Answer me, Cavendish—who is Andrew Munson?”

  Bryant turned slowly, and looked at the mask. His frown was deep, and his voice without emotion. “I never heard the name before.”

  The Lone Ranger felt something in him snap. It seemed as if this stubbornness in Bryant was more than he could bear without an outburst! The strain of the past few days; the fight against his wounds, against fatigue and pain; the bitterness of seeing good friends die…all of these things seemed to roll together in a choking bitter mass that made him speechless. His hands reached out and gripped Cavendish. “You,” he whispered in a hoarse, tense voice, “must be shown!”

  With strength born of desperation, the Lone Ranger lifted Bryant as if he weighed nothing, and hauled him from the bed. His unanswered question was ringing in his brain.

  “Who is Andrew Munson!”

  CHAPTER XXV
I

  DISASTER GETS ORGANIZED

  As Wallie descended the stairs after this talk with the masked man, his nonchalance crystallized into a grim resolve that transformed his personality. He paused at the bottom of the flight and glanced up. The enigmatic man with the mask apparently had returned to Bryant’s bedroom. Then Wallie opened the front door and stepped to the verandah. Half a dozen of the ranch hands were there with ill-concealed curiosity.

  Wallie spoke softly but without a trace of the careless ease that marked his style at other times. “Go back to whatever you were doin’,” he ordered. “If you’re needed, we’ll send for you.”

  “But who was that masked man with Bryant?” asked one of the men.

  “None of your damn business,” retorted Wallie in a surly voice. “Get to work an’ you’ll be sent for later.” He turned to another man. “Has Gimlet been buried yet?”

  The lanky individual addressed shook his head slowly. “We jest tossed a blanket over him,” he said. “We warn’t shore what yore plans was. He’s still in the bunkhouse.”

  Wallie nodded. “Leave him there for the time being.” He swung through the door and headed for the upset living room. Had Penelope seen Wallie in his present mood, she would have revised her opinion of him in a hundred ways. He walked with a purposeful air instead of the familiar sauntering gait; his eyes, generally half-closed in boredom, were wide and divided by a perpendicular frown-crease on his forehead. And those eyes were hard. His hands were clenched with such intensity that the well-cared-for fingernails bit into the palms…hard fists in place of hands that strummed soft tunes of romance on a guitar. The soft, full-lipped mouth was gone, and in its place there was the same hard line that Bryant Cavendish showed when angry.

  Wallie was indeed a different person. A fop no longer; instead, a man of purpose with cruel ruthlessness in every feature. He went through the living room without a pause and halted only when he reached the kitchen. He closed the door without a slam.

  Jeb sat with a woebegone expression on a heavy chair. Sawtell, as bland as ever, stood beside him, holding a heavy gun in one hand. At the sight of Wallie, Sawtell spoke. “He started to make some complaints a little while ago, an’ I tapped him on the head. I don’t think we’ll hear any more from him.”

  Wallie glanced at his lean brother. There was a cut somewhere beneath the stringy hair on the left side of Jeb’s skull. Blood, seeping from it, had dribbled down his cheek and stained his collar. Jeb’s eyes held an unvoiced but pathetic plea. They resembled those of a hog-tied calf suffering the torment of a branding iron.

  Wallie said, “Better gag an’ tie him. I’ll decide later what’s to be done.”

  Sawtell nodded, dropped his pistol in a holster, and proceeded with the tying, while Jeb, who knew that a voiced complaint would simply mean another crack on the head, made no resistance.

  Lonergan sat on the edge of the kitchen table, casually working on his fingernails with a carving knife. He glanced up, a question mark in his expression.

  There had been two others locked in the vault beneath the living room. They, too, were present in the kitchen. Lombard and Vince, sullen, and dripping muttered curses as well as sweat, stood side by side, leaning against the wall with half-filled whisky glasses in their hands.

  “Are you sure,” began Wallie, “none of you knows who that masked man is?” He glanced from one to another, receiving negative headshakes.

  “All I know about him,” grumbled Lombard, “is that I spent a hell of a night in that damned wet cellar, an’ I’m goin’ to square it with him.”

  “What about me?” snapped Vince. “My joints’ll ache fer a week after las’ night.”

  “You,” said Wallie, looking at Lombard, “stand at the foot of the stairs, an’ make sure he don’t come out of Bryant’s room. Vince, you get close to the window an’ keep watch on the Gap. Yuma will be here some time today with a warrant for Bryant’s arrest, an’ law men to act on the warrant.”

  “Why me? What’s the matter with Sawtell or Lonergan?”

  Wallie didn’t reply, but his cold-eyed gaze was quite enough. Vince grumbled his way to the window, as if he resented being ordered about by his own brother in the same fashion that ordinary outlaws were commanded. He dragged a chair to the window and sat down.

  “This’ll do for the time,” Sawtell suggested, as he tied the last knot in the ropes about Jeb’s arms. “Now what’ll we do with him?”

  “Leave him where he is until I finish speaking, and then we’ll decide later what we’ll do with him. I told you that already.”

  “He knows too damn much,” said Vince, “an’ he’s too dumb to be any good to us. Why worry about him?”

  “Who,” said Wallie, “is worrying?”

  “What about that masked man? What was it you said about Yuma comin’ with the law?” It was Lonergan, the lawyer-gambler, speaking.

  Wallie explained briefly how Yuma’s hat had been shot at by Bryant; how both Yuma and the man with the mask were convinced that Bryant Cavendish was the leader of all that went on in the Basin.

  “That works out fine for us,” he said. “We may have to lay low for a little while, but we’ve been needin’ a rest anyhow. We’ll sell off some of the cattle we’ve got here now, but wait till things cool off before we bring in any more.” He went into detail, explaining how the masked man’s plan was to persuade Bryant to confess before he went to jail. “And he figures,” he continued, “on lettin’ the law take you men back.”

  Sawtell shifted his weight uneasily, and Lonergan laid down the carving knife. “There’s a rope just a little too tight for my neck waitin’ for me if I go back to Red Oak,” Sawtell said.

  “None of you are goin’ back,” snapped Wallie. “Didn’t I tell you, when I suggested that you come here and help me out, that I’d see you well protected?”

  “Maybe,” suggested Lonergan, “you’ve got some new scheme.”

  “I have.”

  “It better be good. Your idea was working out swell until Rebecca sent for the law. Then, instead of entertaining those Texas Rangers and convincing them that everything was all right here, you had to ambush them. As a lawyer, I advised against that massacre.”

  “I didn’t ask for your advice, Lonergan.”

  “Well, it was a mistake to dry-gulch them anyway. That won’t stop other Rangers from coming here to see what happened to them. I tell you, Wallie, there’s a great big rope, speaking in the picturesque way of the story-writers, around all of us, an’ that rope is bein’ hauled in tight.”

  “Like hell it is,” barked Wallie in a sharp reply. “If you’ll button your lip for a few minutes I’ll tell you how everything has worked out to put us in the clear.”

  “You weren’t satisfied with that massacre,” the lawyer went on accusingly. “You had to kill Rangoon, then Gimlet, and last night, Mort.”

  “My policy,” replied Wallie, his voice cold with suppressed anger, “is to leave no loose ends. Rangoon couldn’t be relied on. Gimlet already knew a few things, an’ thought a lot more. Mort would have squealed his yellow head off to avoid bein’ hanged. As for Yuma, it’s a damned shame he didn’t get a couple of slugs where they’d do the most good for us.”

  “I don’t know why he was hired to work here anyway,” said Lonergan. “He wasn’t like the rest of the men.”

  “Bryant himself hired Yuma, an’ God knows why. Anyway, it’s the fact that Yuma is bringin’ the law that’ll put us in the clear.”

  “In the clear on what?” asked Lonergan.

  “I don’t know why in hell I take so much back talk from you, Lonergan,” said Wallie.

  “I do. It’s because you wouldn’t have a ghost of a show in handling things after Bryant dies, without my legal talents.” The lawyer studied his fingernails with exaggerated concern, and again picked up the carving knife. “Now what is this big sc
heme of yours that’s to put us in the clear? My own suggestion would be to go to Bryant’s room and get the drop on this masked man, then—”

  “I’ll do the talking from now on,” Wallie interrupted. “In the first place, there’s the murder of Rangoon to be accounted for. Well, that masked man and the Indian friend that went to town with Penny were both in the clearing. All right, we blame Rangoon’s death on them. As for Gimlet, Yuma had a lot better chance to kill him than I did. It’s known that Yuma was on the ranch at the time. But no one knows that I came back from Red Oak by the Thunder Mountain route, knifed Gimlet, an’ went back to town. We tell the law men it’s Yuma who killed Gimlet. I’ll accuse him of it when he gets here, and let him try to deny it. Penny herself, if need be, will have to say that Yuma was here at the time.”

  Lonergan nodded. “So far,” he said, “you’re doin’ good—go on.”

  “As for Mort’s death—hell, that’s easy to blame on the masked man. Everyone in Red Oak has already accused him of murderin’ Mort. Everyone in town heard him yell to that white horse of his when he carried Bryant away. Why, public sentiment is with us! There ain’t anyone in town that wouldn’t blame the masked man for killing, not only Mort, but Bryant as well!”

  “It sounds swell to me,” admired Sawtell, “all but for the fact that this masked man an’ Bryant are both upstairs and livin’.”

  “That’s a detail that’s goin’ to be taken care of pronto,” stated Wallie. “My story, which Vince will back up, being that none of you others dare show yourselves, is that the masked man brought Bryant here, dead. I shot him for it after a hell of a fight.” Wallie looked proudly at Lonergan. “Now what’s the matter with that?”

  Lonergan pondered and then said, “Those two are still alive. That’s the only trouble.”

  “It won’t take long to remedy that. We go up to Bryant’s room, burst in, and start shootin’. Get Bryant and get the masked man. I took the trouble to bring the key with me, so the door won’t be locked. By lookin’ through the keyhole I’ll make sure where the two of them are, an’ then when we go into the room we won’t be shootin’ blind. We can’t miss.”