Wanted—?
actually saw it move. It caught up the whisky glass from the bar and
flipped the stinging liquor squarely into Bull Branch’s face.
As the huge figure reeled, hands going to tortured eyes, Ware’s Kid shot
forward. He twitched Branch’s Colts from their holsters and hurled them
into a corner. He rained blows upon Bull Branch’s face --leaping clear
off the floor to reach that height.
It was cat-and-mastiff. Blindly, Bull Branch tried to push him off, but
those hard fists, landing with force terrifically out of proportion to
the small body behind them, cut his face to ribbons, closed his eyes to
puffy-lidded slits, drove sickeningly into his mid-section. He staggered
about the barroom, grunting, whining, helpless. At last some instinct
seemed to show him the door. He broke for it at a staggering run and
Ware’s Kid, with a Comanche yell, leaped upon his back and spurred him
through it, catching hold of the lintel and swinging down to the floor
as Bull Branch lurched through and fell sprawling upon the veranda floor
outside.
When he came back, the bartender was half-crouched against the back-bar,
with eyes bulging. Bos’ Johnson and the other patrons were clinging to
the bar, some whooping feebly, others too weak to do more than shed
happy tears. Bos’ Johnson waggled a hand at the bartender.
“Set ’em up, bartender!” he gasped. “This ’n’s on the house. Ware! Mebbe
they won’t neveh hi’st no monument to you-all here, but Bull
Branch--he’ll re-membeh you-all plenty!”
* * * * *
Back in the sheriff’s office, Johnson turned suddenly serious again. He
sat staring at the wall, his harsh face rigid as if set in bronze. “I
got you-all into that trouble with Bull Branch,” Johnson said suddenly.
“Done it a-purpose.”
Ware’s Kid merely waited, brown face, gray-green eyes, revealing nothing
of his thoughts.
“Wondered if you-all really was Ware an’, if you was, how much o’ the
talk was so. Because--I shore do need some help!”
“Fer what?”
“To go out with me tonight an’ stand up to Sam Bass’s gang!”
Ware’s Kid studied the grimly earnest face. From the beginning he had
sensed something unusual about him. He thought that Johnson was usually
a happy-go-lucky cowpuncher and a man efficient with either hands or
weapons. He was used to judging men quickly and he began to like this
stocky deputy.
“A’ right!” he grunted curtly.
“You-all willin’?” cried Johnson. “Then here’s the layout. They’re goin’
to stick up the east-bound T & P ag’in at Eagle Ford. Figger folks won’t
be expectin’ lightnin’ to hit twict in the same place. Me ’n’ you, we’ll
be in the weeds ’long the track.”
“How-come just us two?”
“I could raise a posse,” Johnson admitted. “But--how’m I goin’ to know
the fellas I line up ain’t in with Bass? No! I’m goin’ to line my sights
on Simp Dunbar an’ before I let some dam’ spy carry word, I’ll go it by
myse’f!”
“Simp Dunbar? Who’s he?”
“He’s the skunk that killed my cousin, Billy Tucker! Two weeks ago, oveh
in Tarrant. Man! I’d give a black land farm to git me Simp Dunbar oveh
my front sight. An’ I shore will! ’T was like this. Bass’s outfit loped
up to a saloon on the aidge o’ Fort Worth, where Billy, he was havin’ a
drink. The’ was some kind o’ wranglin’, Billy bein’ the kind as won’t
back down fer no man livin’. Simp Dunbar--I’ve knowed him all my life
fer a useless cus an’ Billy knowed him, too--he shot from off to one
side. Billy an’ me, we helled around togetheh when we was kids. Punched
cows togetheh, out Menard-way. I--I thought a heap o’ Billy----”
Ware’s Kid nodded silently. Here was a man he understood. Understood his
vindictiveness, for it was in his own fierce Texan blood; understood his
willingness to take a hundred-to-one chance to face his enemy. More and
more, he liked Bos’ Johnson.
“A’ right. We’ll hunt ’em up,” he grunted. “How-come yuh know they’re
goin’ to be at Eagle Ford?”
“My spy told me. Had him a-watchin’ fer ’em last two weeks. That boy.”
Ware’s Kid stared silently at Johnson.
“What’s name that other little station--east o’ here?” he asked.
“Mesquite?”
“Didn’t even know there was one,” shrugged Ware’s Kid, with a ghost of a
grin. “Johnson, we’ll be at Mesquite, not Eagle Ford, tonight. Boy’s
lyin’. In with Bass, likely. Feelin’ I got, an’ mostly my feelin’s is
right.”
Johnson was won over to acceptance of the altered plan, if but
half-willingly. He admitted that he knew nothing much of the boy, who
had appeared in the office a month before offering to spy upon the Bass
gang.
“In with Bass!” repeated the Ranger. “Hell! He could’ve brought yuh lots
o’ news, ’fore this.”
* * * * *
They waited until nearly dark, then ate at a Chinese restaurant. It was
pitch-dark when they went swiftly to the stable where Johnson’s horse,
with the big stallion, had been fed an hour before. They saddled,
talking a little for the benefit of any ears that might be stretched
toward them, of the western road; that toward Eagle Ford.
For a couple of miles they rode swiftly eastward, then turned south on
the road to Mesquite. They were close to the railroad always, riding
through woodland. Johnson led, because of his knowledge of the country.
Soon he checked his mount and jerked the Winchester from its scabbard.
Ware’s Kid already cuddled his carbine in the crook of his arm. They
rode on again, slower, now.
Suddenly, not fifty yards ahead, a man scratched a match. The Ranger
jerked his carbine up. Gently he kneed the stallion around, feeling,
rather than seeing, that Johnson was doing likewise. There was no alarm
while they moved back a hundred yards and slipped off their animals.
“Let’s hitch the hawses an’ sneak up!” whispered Johnson.
They returned to the point from which they had seen the flare of that
match, the stocky deputy making no more sound than a shadow--than the
Ranger himself. Then they halted, squatting on their heels, to listen.
There was the sound of men moving, of horses, the hum of low-voiced,
jerky conversation.
“Late again!” a boyish voice complained. “Hell! You’d think we were
passengers, Sam, way the dam’ railroad’s treating us!”
“Don’t ye fret, Bub,” a harsh voice answered the youngster. “She’ll be
a-ramblin’ along right soon. Ingineer, he’ll see that log an’ he’ll jerk
her back onto her tail right suddent!”
“Ever’body lined up?” inquired a pleasant voice--Bass’s, Ware’s Kid
surmised. “Yuh-all know where yuh work?”
As the voices answered in affirmative grunts, the Ranger began moving
soundlessly to circle them to get nearer to the point where the train
would stop. Johnson followed until they were squatting in a little open
perhaps fifty feet from the track, sheltered by a fallen tree.
“You-all was shore right!” breathed Johnson. “Wouldn’t be nowheres else
in the world!”
Minutes ticked off, then there was the sound of the train, far away. The
rails before them began to hum. The train was upon robbers and officers
with a roar. Came a frantic squealing of brakes and the scream of the
whistle.
The train had barely halted when there was a rattle of shots along the
track. It was so dark that there was no clue to the robbers’ positions
save the orange flames that stab-stabbed the night. Ware’s Kid was
conscious that Johnson was gone from beside him. He wasted no time
thinking of that, but ran crouched over up to the track, where he could
fire at the robbers’ shot-flashes. From here he went into action with
coldly precise fire from the carbine.
“Who’s that dam’ jughead?” someone roared. Evidently, thought Ware’s
Kid, he was believed to be some misguided member of the gang, firing
into his own people.
From between the cars came shots to answer the gang, now. It was
pandemonium, there in the pitchy night, with the heavy roar of Colts and
the sharp, whiplike reports of rifles. A man could but guess, by the
relative positions of the flashes, at whom he shot.
The Ranger hardly expected to do much execution--his position made that
a matter of chance. But he was worrying the Bass men.
Suddenly a high, clear voice rang out, crying a name over and over
again, penetrating even the staccato din of the firing. “Simp Dunbar!
Where you-all? Simp Dunbar----”
A voice answered, but there was no diminution in the firing. Ware’s Kid
crawled down the track, having reloaded his carbine. With his first shot
a man cried out shrilly. He pumped the lever and--his carbine jammed. He
spat a bitter curse. He knew instantly what had happened--he had slipped
a .45 pistol cartridge into a .44 carbine.
A huge shape hurled itself at him. Mechanically, he threw up his carbine
and the oncoming man ran into it. Then Ware’s Kid, tugging at the butt
of his seldom-used Colt, leaped aside. A roar sounded, almost in his
ear. Then a hand caught his shoulder. Instinctively he stepped close to
his assailant, turned like a flash when a pistol brushed him; dropped
his Colt and caught the fellow’s gunhand with both of his and hung on
grimly.
“Somethin’s wrong, boys! Let’s git out o’ yere!” a cool, half-laughing
voice was shouting, down the track--not the voice which had called Simp
Dunbar’s name.
The fellow with whom Ware’s Kid grappled was swinging terrific blows at
his lighter opponent. But the Ranger’s head was against his chest; the
big fellow’s fists but grazed their mark. But he was tiring with his
bulldog grip on the other’s gunhand. Suddenly he released his hold and
tried to leap backward. A heel caught on a bunch of grass and he
stumbled. A flash and roar from in front of him; a stinging pain across
his head. He crashed flat.
* * * * *
He came to, conscious of a dull headache and, next, of a dim light over
his head. After a moment of blinking, he perceived that he was sitting
in a chair of a railway coach. Next he realized that the train was
moving.
“How d’ you-all feel, now?” inquired an anxious voice.
Painfully he turned his head and saw Bos’ Johnson’s worried face
opposite him.
“Right puny!” he grunted truthfully.
Johnson grinned widely, relief in his brown eyes.
“What happened?” demanded Ware’s Kid.
“Bullet creased you-all. You-all been pickin’ daisies might’ nigh a
hour.”
“The hell! Where we goin’? Gang git away?”
“Goin’ into Dallas. Yeh, gang high-tailed it--all but Simp Dunbar,” said
Johnson. “Reckon they’ll most all be a-lickin’ some sore spots, though.
Me ’n’ you-all did right smart o’ shootin’! I hollered fer Simp an’ like
a dam’ jughead, he spoke right up. I snuck up onto him an’ told him who
I was.”
He lifted his arm and in the loose flannel of his shirt beneath it,
showed a great hole with charred edges.
“Might’ nigh got me, first crack! But I worked buttonholes up an’ down
his front ’fore he could shoot ag’in!”
“How-come yuh found me?”
“By lookin’ around,” shrugged Johnson affectionately. “You dam’ red-eyed
li’l runt! You-all think I’d hike out an’ leave you-all out there,
some’r’s, fer the gang, mebbe, to find? I come runnin’ up about the time
you-all tumbled; see that hairpin right on top me--an’ me with an empty
gun! I yelled like a Comanche an’ damned if he neveh broke an’ run.”
Ware’s Kid eyed him steadily. He knew that only Johnson’s arrival had
kept his assailant from putting another bullet into him as he lay
unconscious.
He leaned back wearily in the seat. Johnson stretched his bowed legs
comfortably and took off his Stetson.
“Wisht I had a chaw,” he grumbled.
“Got the makin’s.” Ware’s Kid fumbled in his jumper pocket.
“Don’t use her thet-a-way. I neveh could learn to smoke, some way.”
He threw his head back and closed his eyes. And the Ranger, watching
him, turned suddenly cold all over. For upon the brown, sinewy neck that