If anything had gone wrong, it would be a good thing that he was going out. Dick Jordan was a fine man, a big man, and hard-handed, but just, and noted always for hospitality. His ranch had been a favored stopping place, and no man had ever been turned from his door lacking food. Jordan himself had been a buffalo hunter turned trader. As a boy he had worked for a cattle buyer in the East, and finally he went back to that, but his great desire was to own a ranch. He soon had it, and the Circle J had always worked hand in glove with Peters’s outfit in everything.
The dying outlaw had mentioned names. They came back to Hopalong’s mind suddenly.
What were they again? Soper an’ Sparr. Sparr!
Hopalong put his cup down so hard that some of the coffee slopped over into the saucer. Buck and Rose were staring at him. Sparr!
“What bit you?” Buck demanded, his eyes alert and shrewd. “You got an idear?”
“Me?” Hopalong demanded innocently. “About what?”
“You know what I mean,” Buck growled irritably. “I mean this here holdup! This Jordan business! If I know you, you just had a thought—not that it wouldn’t feel mighty strange under that silver thatch o’ yourn.”
Carefully Hopalong lifted his cup and then poured the spilled coffee from the saucer back into the cup. This gave him time to assemble his thoughts a little, and he tried to be casual about the question.
“Is Mesquite back yet?”
Buck’s eyes brightened. “See?” he said to Rose. “I knowed it! He’s got somethin’ on his mind that smells of trouble! If he hadn’t, he would never think of askin’ about Mesquite at a time like this!”
Cassidy forked another slab of beef onto his plate and piled mashed potatoes around it. “The kid’s a top hand in any crowd. Look at the way he worked through the roundup. And who is any better with a rough string than him? He’s as good with bad horses as Johnny was. Maybe better!”
Buck stared at Hopalong. “He’s good with a gun too. Mean an’ on the prod. I never in my life seen but one hombre as ready for trouble as he is!”
“Now who would that be?” Hopalong demanded innocently.
“You, you wall-eyed galoot! You always did hunt trouble! Most folks could ride through a town without anything happenin’, but not you. You go into a place filled with old-maid schoolmarms an’ right away trouble busts loose an’ splashes all over everybody!”
“This here trip,” Hopalong lied cheerfully, “looks like the quietest sort of ride. Dick Jordan may have trouble from time to time, but you know Dick. I’ll take your money out there an’ deliver it safe.”
The thought that had come to him as he ate was far from a pleasant one. The name Sparr had at last struck a responsive chord in his brain. Of course there could be many Sparrs. Soper he had never heard of. But there was one Sparr of whom he knew, and none of what he knew was good.
Like Jordan himself, Avery Sparr had been a buffalo hunter. From buffalo hunting, he had graduated to town marshal of a tough Western town. Indiscriminate killings won him quick removal from that job and he had drifted West. From Ellsworth, to Abilene, to Dodge, to Ogallala, to Cimarron and Bloomfield, and in each one there had been gun battles or killings. A couple of the known ones had been outright murder, and there were some others of which the same had been suspected. His surly nature and ready guns earned him no friends and many enemies.
Then Sparr had dropped from sight. There had been rumors of him around mining camps in Nevada and Montana, and it was said he had fled Calgary after killing a mounted policeman there. If this was the Sparr the dying outlaw had mentioned, he was a ruthless killer.
Hopalong could not imagine such a man on Jordan’s ranch. Dick was not a man to be frightened of a six-gun reputation, nor were the hands he was accustomed to have around him. Probably he was stewing over nothing.
“Daylight will be the time,” Hopalong said at last. “I aim to take it easy this trip and not put in any long rides. There will be some rough country to get over, and I want to make it all by daylight.”
Buck Peters stared sourly at his friend. “Ain’t sure but what I should saddle up an’ ride along,” he suggested tentatively, avoiding his wife’s eyes. “That’s a mighty long ride, Hoppy, and could be the Apaches are off the reservation again.”
Cassidy chuckled. “What you think I need, a nursemaid? You stay back here an’ run this show. I’ll get this money to Dick, stay a few days to rest up, then be back here before you know I’m gone. I need a ride anyway. I’m goin’ stale with settin’ around.”
He got up and stretched. “Thanks, Rose. I sure did enjoy that supper. Last home cookin’ I’ll be gettin’ for some time, I expect.”
He turned toward the door, then stopped. “Say, Buck, you got that last letter of Pam’s around anywheres? I’d like a look at it.”
Buck Peters’s suspicions were not dead. He eyed Hopalong darkly. “Yeah,” he said; “it’s in my desk. I’ll get it for you.” He got up and lumbered into the office. “What you want that for? The town you want is Horse Springs. It’s a stage stop an’ cowtown.”
“I know the town. I was there once. All I want to see is that letter. Seems to me I remember Pam sayin’ somethin’ about where to go if I came out there.”
“Yeah,” Buck admitted grudgingly, “there was something like that.”
He found the letter at last, and handed it over. Hopalong had seen the letter but once before, and had been told all that was in it. Accordingly, when he glanced at it he had done just that—glanced. Now, with thoroughly aroused suspicions, he looked at it with new eyes. Instantly he felt his pulse jump.
He read the letter through slowly, and then returned to the part that referred to him.
This was of two paragraphs, and the writing was different, somehow, as though strained.
Remind Hopalong of the games he used to teach me. There was one especially that I used to like to play. I wish he would think of this as he reads my letter. Dad often refers to that situation in Dry Canyon when Hopalong joined him. It would be wonderful to see Hoppy again now, feeling like that.
Cassidy looked up at Buck’s inquiring eyes. All his resolutions about keeping Buck from knowing went by the board, forgotten in his exasperation. “Buck, we’re a couple o’ fools! The day this letter came you mentioned it to me, and you said she reminded me of the Dry Canyon affair. When I looked at this letter I was thinkin’ about that gelding of mine, down sick with the colic, an’ I never paid it no attention.”
“What’s wrong?” Buck demanded.
Slowly Hopalong read the passage aloud, and then he swore. “Don’t you see? She mentions that business in Dry Canyon, an’ says she wants to see me again, feelin’ like that!”
Rose looked from one to the other. “Dry Canyon? What does that mean?”
“Mean?” Buck was genuinely worried now. “Why, four rustlers had Dick Jordan cornered down in Dry Canyon. He was helpless, an’ they were aimin’ to kill him. Then Hopalong showed up. They turned on him, an’ Hoppy downed two of them an’ the other two throwed up their hands.”
“But what is that to worry about?” she protested. “It’s in the past.”
“Yeah, but she wants to see me again like that! I think they are in trouble, an’ need help!”
“Why wouldn’t she say so then?” Buck protested.
“Maybe somebody made her write the letter,” Hopalong said, “but remember what she said about the games I used to teach her? Well, one of those games was a code game. We used to see what messages we could write by using the first letter of each word as the secret message. Now wait a minute.”
He studied the letter with care, and then he said, “What did you make of this part?”
Buck stared at it. “That? Couldn’t make sense. Figgered the kid had us mixed up with somebody else she knowed.”
Hopalong scowled and read aloud.
“How ever, Long Pete Carroll of Mesa Escabrosa, head of PPY, never did come out. Better call Rod Edwards for us. Lew Brake
was through a year ago. He left Pat, that mustang here, but finally came after him.
“Now take just the first letters. H-e-L-P C-o-M-E h-o-PPY.
“See?” Hopalong looked up. “Help, come Hoppy, she says. This next part doesn’t make sense because she’s tryin’ to make the letter sound right. She’s got the first two letters of ‘better’ underlined because she wants to use ’em both. Same thing with the next word. Figgerin’ in the same way, what do you get? ‘Be Careful.’ Then later she says ‘Help’ again.”
“Mighty lousy code!” Buck sniffed.
“Aw, it was just a kid’s game I figgered out!” Hopalong protested. “Tried to make it easy for her. Never figgered she’d use it like this.”
“When you leavin’?” Buck asked thoughtfully. “If they do need help, you better go mighty quick.”
“At daybreak,” Hopalong Cassidy said quietly; “an’ you can wish me luck.”
Chapter 2
“GAMBLERS DON’T GAMBLE”
*
ON THE THIRD morning Hopalong abandoned the trail before reaching the banks of the San Isidro and walked Topper down to the stream through a maze of rocks. He had no definite reason in mind except the instinctive one of a man on a dangerous mission. He wished to leave no sign, no evidence of his passage. The main trail, while not well traveled, would be marked by more than one set of hoofprints, and his own would merge well enough with them.
To his right bulked the towering mass of Horseshoe Mesa, and off to the south were the rocky parapets of Johnson Mesa. Beyond the pass opening before him lay the wide plains through which flowed the unruly Canadian River.
While his horse drank, he dismounted and filled his canteen from a tiny trickle of water running down from among the rocks. This spring was undoubtedly known to the Apaches but he saw no evidence of anyone having been near it. He scowled thoughtfully. All morning he had been filled with uncertainty and foreboding, his eyes continually straying from the trail to study the country through which he rode.
Without any definite reason, Cassidy had the feeling that all was not well. It was not the utter and complete loneliness of the trail, for this was an empty country at best, nor was it the weather, for the air was warm and balmy, the desert still green and lovely and not yet faded by many summer suns. It was something else, some scarcely to be defined feeling in the air or in his bones.
Somewhere on the trail ahead of him was Bizco, yet it was not the outlaw who worried him. Rather, it was the Apaches. That the Indians were supposedly on their reservation made no difference, for a dozen times in the past they had returned to raiding. Of late there had been rumors heard even in Twin Rivers about the restlessness of the younger braves and their constant irritation with the treatment received from the Indian agents.
This was their country. All this range into which he was now riding had been an Apache stronghold, and no warriors ever lived more ready to fight for their land. More than once their war parties had defied the army, raided ranches, stolen horses, killed army personnel, and then vanished like gusts of wind into the desert.
By midafternoon, if all went well, he should be coming up to Clifton House, the best-known stopping place on the river. It was or had been a stage station for the Barlow & Sanderson line, and he would be sure to get information there as to the Indian outbreaks, if any, and with discrimination he might even learn something about Jordan and the Circle J.
If Avery Sparr was in the Mogollons or the Apache country west of the Canadian, somebody would know it at Clifton’s. There had been a gold strike over there, and despite the fact that the discoverer had been killed by Indians, more prospectors and miners were coming into the country. There would be talk of this around the bar in Clifton’s, and much might be learned. Finally, after studying the country around him with care, Hoppy mounted again and, fording the stream, turned his horse into the pass.
All was still. The sun was already high in the sky behind him, and its warmth was beginning to creep along his muscles and take away the chill of night. His hard blue eyes studied the pass as he rode, and they returned again and again to the trail. Unshod horses had been ridden here, too, and Hopalong had lived too long in the West to take the Apache lightly.
When the rock walls of the pass opened out again and he saw Chicorica Creek before him he breathed easier. The open country ahead, stretching far to the blue mountains beyond the Canadian, were the grama grass plains, and beyond them, out of sight from here, was Clifton House.
A shout startled him to alertness and he drew up. Then it came again, the long, ringing shout of a mule skinner, followed by the gunshot crack of a whip.
“Fool,” Hopalong muttered. “Ain’t sensible to shout like that in this here country.”
He started the gelding again, knowing, although he could not see, that the unknown mule skinner was down in the bottom of the creek. And then, suddenly, the wagon was in view. It was a Conestoga with a patched canvas top and drawn by six spanking-fine mules. A man and a woman sat on the seat, while a boy of probably fourteen rode alongside on a rawboned buckskin.
As Cassidy approached, still partly concealed by the scattered rocks and brush at the mouth of the pass, he saw the skinner swing his mules wide to start up a steep cut in the bank of the creek. The boy on the horse preceded him, shouting back to the wagon and its driver. The mules went into the cut fast, and just as the wagon pulled over the lip of the bank, a shot rang out.
Hopalong saw the puff of smoke over some rocks, and in the same instant a half-dozen Apaches broke cover and started for the wagon on a dead run. The boy and his horse were down, but as his own rifle leaped from its scabbard, Cassidy saw the mule skinner whip up an old Sharps.
Then Hopalong’s rifle came up. He sighted quickly, held his breath, and squeezed off his shot. The Winchester leaped in his hands, and the foremost Apache left his horse and hit the ground in a tawny, trail-dusted heap.
The mule skinner must have fired in the same instant, for a horse went sprawling. But more than the dropping of the man and horse, the Apaches were surprised by the sudden attack from their flank. Cassidy rode forward, drew up, and fired again, dropping his second Indian.
Snapping two more fast shots, he slammed his rifle home in the boot and went down the hill at a dead run. The Apaches broke for the rocks, and he raced after the first one, intercepting him just as they reached the rocks. With savage desperation the Indian lunged his horse straight at Hopalong and, knife in hand, leaped for him!
Cassidy had drawn his right-hand gun, and as the Indian lunged with the knife, he swung the heavy barrel. The wrist cracked and as the Indian fell, Hopalong’s plunging horse went over him, drowning his shrill cry and hammering it into a choking moan.
Swinging his horse, Hopalong cantered back to the wagon. The driver was helping the boy from under his horse. “You shore showed up at the right time, mister!” the boy said. “That hoss had me pinned down. I was dead meat for certain!”
The driver of the wagon was a dark, sullen-appearing man whose face was now a sickly white. Reaction to fear had left him shaking. “Thanks, mister,” he said, holding up a thin hand; “that was shore a help!”
The man’s eyes were taking him in now, and Hopalong surmised in them a cool curiosity and some calculation. “You handle them guns right good,” the man said. “You from around here?”
“Driftin’,” Hopalong said. “Figured I’d see some o’ the country west. Over toward the Mogollons.”
The man’s face stiffened, but he said carefully, “Good country to get shet of, an’ you can take that friendly. I know this country. Been ranchin’ over near McClellan for the past couple o’ years. Just gettin’ back from Colorado with my wife an’ boy. But you stay away from those Mogollons unless you—”
His voice broke off sharply, and he touched his lips with a nervous tongue.
“Unless what?”
Cassidy was walking his horse alongside the man as they started for the wagon.
“Nothin�
��.” The man avoided his eyes. “But thanks again. You probably kept us alive back yonder. Won’t ferget it, neither.” He looked up. “My name’s Leeds. My brand’s the Circle L, six mile out of McClellan. Look me up.”
Hopalong was intrigued by the man’s comments on the Mogollons. “Headin’ for Clifton’s. Might’s well tag along, I guess. That’s my spot for tonight.”
“Good grub,” Leeds said, committing himself to nothing.
Asking questions was the worst way to get information in this country, as Cassidy well knew. He was reticent himself, but most Westerners were inclined to be even more so. Especially in some neighborhoods where it paid to know nothing and say nothing. Yet in hopes of breaking down the man’s resistance and of leading him into some admission or comment, Hopalong talked from time to time on cattle, range conditions, the nutritive value of grama grass, and the probable chance of water from deep wells.
It was the boy who finally interrupted him. “You got a fine horse there,” the boy said, “mighty fine! He shore don’t size up like no mustang to me.”
“He’s not,” Cassidy explained. “Hombre north of here has him a horse ranch. Good friend of mine. He gave me this horse for a favor I once done him. Topper is a cross between an Arab mare an’ a big Irish stallion this friend of mine owns. He’ll walk faster’n most horses trot.”
“I’d like to get me a horse like that!” The boy was all admiration. “I seen him comin’ down the hill, runnin’ like the wind!” He looked up at Hoppy. “My name’s Billy. What’s yourn?”
At the question, Hopalong saw the driver turn his head slightly. His interest was obvious, although he knew the West well enough to ask no questions. “My name,” Hopalong replied genially, “is Tuck. Most folks call me Ben.”
They talked quietly until the wagon drew up before Clifton House. Hopalong had already taken in the situation. Four saddled horses stood at the hitch rail, and this was obviously a busy place. A wagon stood nearby with mules hitched to it, and several men loafed about. Their eyes went from Leeds to Cassidy and back again.
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