Wanted—?
had been always hidden heretofore by the silken neckerchief, shone a
long white scar that stretched evenly three quarters of the way around
it.
A stocky, dark-faced, dark-eyed man, with a white scar circling evenly
around his neck--so Simeon Rutter and the O-Bar hands had described Dell
Spreen. True, they had seen him clean-shaven, and, believing him guilty
of murder, they remembered his features and eyes as murderous. But there
was no doubt about it--Dell Spreen sat there across from him with closed
eyes. And to Dell Spreen he owed his life that night!
“Dell Spreen!” he called in a low voice.
Bos’ Johnson moved like a cat, to half-draw his Colt. Then he saw the
derringer that covered him with twin barrels. For an instant he
hesitated, then shoved the Colt back into its holster and slumped.
“So you-all come afteh _me_,” he said. “I been lookin’ fer somebody to
show up. That’s why I got me a job as dep’ty. Figgered whoever come’d
spill his tale in the office an’, seein’ me wearin’ a badge, wouldn’t
suspicion me. Specially since I neveh used my own name in the O-Bar
country. But you-all shore fooled me.”
“Hate like hell to do it!” Ware’s Kid wriggled miserably. “But I’m a
Ranger. Do anything I can to help yuh, Johnson. Much as I’d do fer my
own blood kin. But I got to take yuh back.”
“I ain’t blamin’ you-all. But--might’s well shoot me right now as to put
me up ’fore a jury in that country. Ever’thing’s ag’inst me--specially
bein’ a strangeh. That’s why I high-tailed it, soon’s I heerd he’d been
found.
“I ain’t denyin’ I went to the O-Bar fig-gerin’ I’d mebbe have to kill
Carson. I was goin’ to git back the money he stole off’n my brotheh an’
sisteh. Goin’ to git it back or try the case before Jedge Colt. But if
I’d killed him, it’d been from the front. He’d have been give a chanct
to fill his hand.”
“Yuh--yuh mean yuh never killed him?” cried Ware’s Kid.
Then the old surge of hope died. Of course Johnson would say that.
“D’ you-all figger me that-a-way? Knowin’ no more about me than you do?”
Johnson asked.
Slowly, the Ranger shook his head.
“Looky yere!” argued the deputy. “Eph’ Carson an’ my brotheh. Sam, they
was ranchin’ it oveh on the Brazos. Carson’s a tough _hombre_, remember.
He’s gamblin’ a lot. Well, he sells ever’ last head o’ stuff on the
place while Sam’s down in Fort Worth. Time Sam gits back with my
kid-sisteh that’s got a share in the ranch, Carson’s done gambled away
the money. The’s a row, o’ course. Sam, he’s got more guts than
gun-sense. Carson nigh kills him.
“Time I come into it, Carson’s rattled his hocks. Two years afteh, I’m
ridin’ down in the El Paso country. Hear about Eph’ Carson o’ the O-Bar.
I go high-tailin’ it oveh an’ hang around four-five days, but Carson
don’t come. Then I start out fer Crow Point a-huntin’ him.
“Then, hell bent, comes the Mex’ cooks’ helper-boy. I kept a cowboy from
beatin’ him to death, one day. Says Carson’s killed an’ robbed an’
ever’body says I must’ve killed him! Well, whut do I do? Try to tell
them red-eyed O-Bar boys as how I was intendin’ to kill Eph’ Carson,
mebbe, but neveh got no chanct? Like hell! I figger the job I come to do
is done. I leave that-’ere country in a mile-high cloud o’ dust.”
Ware’s Kid slumped lower in the seat, going over and over his mental
picture of the scene of the crime.
Bos’ Johnson rose to cup his hands against the window glass and peer out
into the night. Missing no slightest movement of his prisoner, the
Ranger studied again the wide, powerful shoulders, the handy legs of the
man who has ridden almost since birth. Johnson turned slowly.
“Dallas! Be in soon,” he said. “Then--I ain’t blamin’ you-all none,
Ware. But just--well sort o’ between us. I wisht I could make you
believe I never done it. I sort o’ took to you-all from the beginnin’
an----”
“’T ain’t a bit o’ use,” interrupted Ware’s Kid.
A tiny smile was born far back in the gray-green eyes; seemed to spread
over the habitually blank brown face and come finally to rest upon the
thin-lipped mouth.
“’T ain’t a bit o’ use,” he repeated. “’Cause--I know yuh never done
it!”
Ostentatiously he returned the derringer to his jumper pocket.
“’S all right, Bos’. Yuh got to go down to Austin with me. Got to
exhibit yuh some to the adj’tant gin’ral, to make him _sabe_. But
that’ll be all. Listen: I went snoopin’ around some myself, down at
Carwell. Found where the fella that killed Eph’ Carson had waited. Point
one: there was two brown cigarette stubs on the ground. Yuh-all say yuh
don’t smoke, an’ the’s no stain on yo’ fingers.
“I found where this fella’s stood with his rifle in a sort o’ notch. His
foot-prints was still pretty plain. Well, yo’ feet, Bos’ point in, like
a pigeon’s. This fella’s showed in the soft dirt under the rock
overhang, a-pointin’ out!
“But point three’s the big ’n’: I stand five foot seven, an’ that notch
he rested his Winchester in was level with my eyes. Short as yuh-all
are, it’d be mighty near over yo’ head! Now, he never stood on nothin’,
’cause the’ ain’t nothin’ the’ to stand on. An’ he never fired from no
saddle. ’Cause I found where his hawse’d been tied back in the brush.”
“Man, but you-all shore wiped some cold sweat off’n me!” cried Bos’
Johnson. “I knowed I neveh done it, but provin’ it, the way you-all just
done, neveh would’ve come to me. I reckon.”
“Took a bigger man than ary one of us. That’s what we’re goin’ to show
the adj’tant gin’ral. Then I’m goin’ to ask him to let me go back to
Carwell to find the fella that really done the killin’. He’ll let me go.
An’----”
“If he does,” cried Bos’ Johnson very earnestly, “man! The’s shore some
six-footehs down in that Carwell country as’ll be up in the air two ways
to onct!”
* * * * *
Up out of the glaring yellow sand, the long, low, narrow barrier of
black rock jutted abruptly. “El Castillo”--the Castle, the Mexicans had
named it, long ago. The name such names fitted as well as such names
usually do. Actually it more resembled a stone fence fifty yards long,
which, in height, varied from three to ten feet and, in thickness, from
a foot to four, even five, feet. The top was jagged--sharp saw teeth of
slick, inky rock. A sinister pile, even in the white sunlight of a
desert forenoon.
Ware’s Kid squatted on spurred heels at the Castle’s western end, where
the trail forked to run on either side of the wall. Not much of a trail,
this--the deep, loose, perpetually-drifting sand soon effaced
impressions; but generations of travel had made a lane between walls of
greasewood and cat-claw and cactus.
It was near the Ranger’s position, on this dimly-marked track, that Eph
Carson had died--shot from the saddle without a chance to return the
murderer’s fire.
Having left Dell Spreen in the care of the adjutant general in Austin
and returned swiftly to Carwell, Ware’s Kid had come without being
observed to the scene of the murder. Now that he knew Spreen had not
committed the killing, he must decide who did.
“Satisfied the adj’tant gin’ral Spreen neveh done it,” reflected the
Ranger. “But I got to figure out who did. Spreen’s too little. Good-size
hombre plugged Eph Carson.”
He got up and the great, black stallion, which had stood behind him as
he squatted, now followed like a dog to the spot where Eph Carson’s
murderer had lain in wait. Ware’s Kid knew the place well.
“Fella leaned up agin’st the rock, right here,” he re-enacted the scene
mentally. “Lined his sights on Carson. Carson was comin’ up t’ other
side from over Crow Point way. Fella drilled him plumb center. Went out
an’ took seven thousand out o’ Carson’s saddle bags. Stood right here.
Standin’ on the ground. No hawss-tracks closer’n that cat-claw yonder.
Good-size’ fella. Had to be, to rest his rifle in that crotch.”
Mechanically he studied the rock wall and the sand that swept away from
its foot. Something bright in the sand, in the very spot where they had
found the murderer’s tracks. He stooped. But it was only a glassy bit of
rock. He held it, staring absently, his mind upon the mystery. From the
little sand dunes behind him, to northward, came the flat, vicious
report of a rifle. A bullet slapped the rock wall almost in his face. It
had passed within six inches of his head. Instantly, another followed.
Ware’s Kid moved like a rattler striking. He moved automatically, but
with a precision, an economy, of movement that could not have been
bettered by rehearsals times without number. He was sheltered from the
bullets within two steps, standing behind his stallion’s bulk. His hand
slapped the saddle horn; he was in the saddle without touching stirrups
and lying flat upon the black’s neck. The great rowels dug the
stallion’s flanks; he surged forward magnificently; within two strides
he was galloping. The Ranger, chased by bullets that buzzed spitefully
about his ears, swung the black around the end of the Castle.
Half-way down the length of the stone wall he slid the stallion to a
halt. Here was a place where he could peer across the top between two
teeth of rock. His great sombrero hung down his back by the chinstrap;
from the scabbard beneath the left fender had leaped a sleek Winchester
carbine. He cuddled the carbine in the crook of his arm as, with
green-gray eyes squinting coldly, he studied the sand dunes behind which
his antagonist lay hidden.
A thin smoke-cloud was drifting upward above the dunes. Ware’s Kid
rested the carbine in the crotch of the wall-top. He sighted carefully
and drove three .44’s to dust along the crest of the dunes, some fifteen
inches apart. Instantly the other rifleman replied with a rolling
quartette of bullets that bunched most efficiently beneath the Ranger’s
carbine-muzzle.
He watched narrowly without replying in kind. At last he shrugged and
whirled the stallion, to ride off south and east toward the O-Bar
ranch-house.
He could have stalked the sand dunes from which the unknown bushwhacker
had fired. There was cover of a sort up to the very base of the dunes.
But the ambusher’s fire had been entirely too craftsmanlike, too nearly
deadly, to make the prospect of scaling the low slope before him seem
anything but the brief preliminary to a funeral. Ware’s Kid preferred to
ride off with a whole skin and calculate upon another meeting under
conditions more equal. They said of him, in the Rangers, that for a
youngster no more than nineteen he had a mighty level head.
A half-mile, perhaps, he galloped without turning. Then, reaching for
the field glasses, he checked the stallion. Far behind him, a horseman
streaked it eastward. The Ranger studied rider and brown horse through
the glasses.
“Mebbe he’s tall,” he grunted at last. “But--mebbe he’s just a-forkin’ a
little pony.”
* * * * *
For ten miles he kept the stallion at a mile-eating running walk. He had
never been at the O-Bar house, but he knew its location from hearsay,
and so, when the black began climbing a steady incline, studded by
boulders and covered with taller-than-ordinary mesquite, he nodded to
himself. This was the way, all right.
The stallion made the incline’s top and paused for a moment, expelling
its breath in a great snort. At the sound, the flaxen-haired girl on the
lookout rock turned sharply. She and Ware’s Kid stared, one at another,
her great, dark eyes meeting his narrowed gaze levelly.
“Howdy!” he drawled, after a--to him--long and uncomfortable silence. He
was always ill at ease with women. They usually wanted a man to make
some sort of damned fool of himself to suit a feminine whim.
“Good morning,” she replied, still examining him calmly.
“Trail to the O-Bar?” he grunted awkwardly, after another silence.