Wanted—?
“Yes. The house is a mile away. But there’s nobody there except the cook
and his helper. Do you want to see my father, Sim Rutter?”
Ware’s Kid stared. He recalled nothing about a daughter on the O-Bar.
And that Simeon Rutter, huge, gaunt, black-haired, black-eyed,
black-bearded, grim and taciturn, should have such a daughter as this
slim, fair-skinned creature seemed somehow unbelievable. She seemed to
read his thoughts.
“I’ve been away at school--Las Cruces--convent, you know,” she
enlightened. “But I’m not going back--I hope.”
“Stay here, huh?”
“I hope not! This is just as bad. Oh, I hate this bare, desolate
country! Don’t you?”
“Don’t know,” shrugged Ware’s Kid. He had never thought about the
matter, one way or the other. “Don’t know--as I do.”
“I want to go back East! To New York--Philadelphia--Boston--oh, all the
places I’ve read about. Europe, too. I’m trying to get my father to sell
the ranch and go traveling with me. All over the world. I’ve been trying
to persuade him for two years. But I think he’ll do it now--maybe. His
partner was killed, you know. He’s all broken up over that. He doesn’t
say much, but it was an awful blow just the same. I think he’ll sell
out.”
“Got to be goin’,” grunted Ware’s Kid. All this talk of travel was over
his head. Nor had it anything to do with his particular business--the
capture of Eph Carson’s murderer.
“I’ll ride with you. Will you get my horse? He’s tied to a cat-claw over
yonder.”
The Ranger got the pony and brought it back. He sat his stallion,
holding her animal’s reins. She waited for an instant, but he was blind
to her expectation that he would help her into the saddle. So she swung
up unaided and jerked the reins from his hand.
As they rode almost stirrup-to-stirrup toward the ranch-house, Ware’s
Kid studied her covertly from beneath half-lowered sombrero brim. It
dawned upon him suddenly that not yet had he seen her smile. The large,
blue eyes were somber, always; she seemed to brood upon something. They
rode in silence until, a half-mile or so ahead, the clutter of buildings
which constituted the O-Bar holding showed against the desert shrubbery.
“I hate it!” she burst out. “Oh, how I hate it!”
Then they rode on silently again, the creak of saddle-leather, the
scuffing of the animals’ hoofs, the only sound, until they dismounted in
the ranch yard.
There was but one horse in the cottonwood-log corral, a black gelding as
large as the mount of Ware’s Kid. The girl glanced at it, then toward
the house.
“My father’s home,” she said tonelessly.
“Come in.”
They went around the house and, upon the rough veranda that shaded its
front, found Simeon Rutter with feet cocked upon the rail, big, shaggy
head upon his chest. He looked up at the sound of their footsteps and
sun-narrowed black eyes softened amazingly as he saw his daughter.
“Hello, Baby!” he rumbled. “Wonderin’ where yuh was.” Then, to Ware’s
Kid, “Howdy, Kid. What’re yuh doin’ down here ag’in? Thought they sent
yuh up to Austin, or some’r’s.”
“Did. But sent me back. I got Dell Spreen.”
“Yuh did! That’s shore good hearin’, Kid!” He came swiftly to his feet,
with great hands hard-clenched.
The girl had gone indoors and bitterly, yet with a certain grim
repression, Simeon Rutter cursed Dell Spreen.
“Where’s Spreen, now?” he demanded, breaking off suddenly. “Carwell? El
Paso?”
“Austin. Lookin’ up more evidence.”
Simeon Rutter cursed the law’s dawdling ways; its coddling of an
assassin. Ware’s Kid but half-listened. He was thinking of the efficient
rifleman of the morning, who had bushwhacked him from the sand dunes.
“How many big men in this country?” he asked abruptly. “_Big_ men?”
Rutter stopped short to stare at him. Then he considered the question,
eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“Don’t know. Me, o’ course. An’ Curly Gonzales over Crow Point way.
Lamson--that crazy puncher on the D-5--an’ Slim Nichols on the Flyin’ A.
All I think of. Why?”
The Ranger hesitated. Knowing Rutter’s bitterness toward Dell Spreen, he
wondered if the dour ranchman could be made to believe his own theory:
that Spreen had not, could not have, committed the murder. Wondered,
too, if Rutter would be silent about the theory.
“Spreen says he never killed Carson,” he said slowly.
“Yeh. An’ what?”
“An’ if he did--well, I don’t know how he done it!”
“What’re yuh drivin’ at? Yuh got the name o’ bein’ level-headed, Kid,
but--what’re yuh drivin’ at?”
“How could a little fella--littler’n me--shoot Carson, restin’ his gun
in a crotch near as high as he could reach?”
Scowling, Simeon Rutter considered this problem.
“That _was_ a high crotch--one that we found his tracks under,” he
admitted. “But, hell! He was sittin’ on a hawss, or else standin’ on
somethin’. Not good enough, Kid! By God, not half good enough to make me
believe Dell Spreen never shot old Eph Carson from hidin’. O’ course he
denies it! ’Spect him to own right up?”
“Yeh. Course, he’d say he never. But I been thinkin’. Wasn’t no
hawss-tracks under the crotch. Nothin’ to stand on. Nothin’ we could
see, anyhow. So’ wondered who’d be tall enough to shoot out o’ that
crotch, standin’ on the sand. An’ too----”
He hesitated for an instant before he decided to tell of the morning.
“An’, too, somebody bushwhacked me, out at the Castle, today!”
“Bushwhacked yuh! What for? Who’d be a-bushwhackin’ yuh?”
“Don’t know. Fella on a dun. Good shot, too. Purty good, that is.”
“Here!” cried Rutter suddenly. “Too much funny business about this. I
want to see that place ag’in. Git yo’ hawss, Kid. Let’s take a _pasear_
out to the Castle an’ look around.”
He went swiftly down to the corral and got the lariat from his saddle.
The black gelding retreated to a corner, snorting, whirling. Rutter sent
the loop spinning over its head and hauled the animal to him by sheer
brute force.
“So dam’ many hawsses none gits rid enough!” he rumbled irritably.
“Wilder’n antelope, all of ’em.”
He saddled swiftly and swung up. Ware’s Kid was already mounted. They
turned past the front veranda and Rutter waved to his daughter, who had
come outside again. He seemed another person when near her. The grim
shell of him cracked and a tenderness odd in a man so apparently
harsh-grained showed for a moment.
“Goin’ out to El Castillo!” he shouted at the girl. “Back when I git
back, Baby.”
* * * * *
They rode silently for miles. Rutter was one after the Ranger’s own
heart, taciturn, efficient in his business. Staring at his companion’s
broad back, Ware’s Kid nodded approval. He thought of what the girl had
said--of her father’s repressed sorrow over his partner’s death. He
could understand Rutter’s vengefulness toward Dell Spreen, but he hoped,
before the day’s end, to show the O-Bar owner his error, to prove that
Spreen could not have murdered Eph Carson.
“If yuh’re right about this height business,” Rutter growled suddenly,
“I don’t know what we’re goin’ to do about it. Too long ago, now. Not
that I’m admittin’ yuh’re right! But just in case yuh are, how can we
find out where these fellas--Curly Gonzales an’ Lamson an’ Nichols--was
that day? Fella don’t always recollect just what he was doin’ three
months ago. By George!”
He whirled sideway in the saddle.
“That mornin’, me an’ August Koenig--one o’ my hands--was ridin’ nawth
o’ the house nine-ten mile. An’ we met Lamson headin’ for Elizario!
Recollect, now. August an’ Lamson come near mixin’ it, ’count August he
was askin’ about some widder that lives in Elizario an’ Lamson flew off
the handle! By George!”
“What kind o’ fella’s Lamson?” inquired Ware’s Kid.
“Oh, same’s most. Gits kind o’ crazy spells. Been kicked on the head a
long time ago by a bronc’ an’ once in a while he flies up. But he’s a
good puncher an’ I don’t know why anybody’ll think he’d shoot Eph
Carson. Lamson’s seen trouble--seen it fair an’ square, through the
smoke. No-o, I wouldn’t put him down for that kind o’ killer.”
“Yuh found Carson right after noon, didn’t yuh?”
“Yeh. I got fidgety, him not comin’ in the day I figgered. So when me
an’ August got back to the house, an’ Eph hadn’t come in yet, I took
August an’ Yavapai Wiggins an’ we rode out. Found Eph ’long about two
o’clock, lyin’ in the trail. Seven thousand, about, he was packin’. All
gone.”
“Mostly yo’s, they say.”
“’Bout four thousand,” Rutter nodded gloomily. “But ’t wasn’t the money
riled me so. Old Eph, he never knowed what hit him. Never had a chanct.
Nary chanct to git his six-shooter out. Like I told yuh then, right
after it happened. I figgered Dell Spreen ’cause he’d hung around the
ranch three days, waitin’ for Eph. Wouldn’t tell nobody what he wanted.
Just looked mean. An’ packed his cantinas an’ hightailed it that very
mawnin’. I gethered yuh never found the money on him?”
“Fo’ dollars, ’bout,” shrugged Ware’s Kid.
They came to the Castle and reined in the animals on the spot where the
murderer of Eph Carson had waited. Silently, Simeon Rutter stared at the
crotch in the rock wall in which the assassin had rested his
rifle-barrel. Slowly, as unwilling even now to concede weight to the
theory the Ranger had advanced tentatively, he nodded.
“The’ wasn’t no hawss-tracks closer’n that cat-claw yonder,” he
admitted.
He swung down and pulled his Winchester from its scabbard, then moved
over to the crotch in the wall. Even for one of his height it was a
strain to level the barrel with butt at shoulder. He nodded again and
set the rifle down. From a shirt pocket he brought Durham and papers and
shook tobacco onto the brown leaf, somber black eyes roving.
Ware’s Kid slipped from the saddle and came swiftly over to where Rutter
stood. He stopped and dug into the sand at the rancher’s feet, then
straightened.
“What’s it?” asked Rutter.
It was a large, pearl-handled pocketknife, tarnished from much carrying,
with four good blades and one broken blade stump. Rutter licked his
cigarette, jambed it into his mouth and took the knife from the Ranger’s
hand, staring thoughtfully.
“See it before?” asked Ware’s Kid. Rutter shook his head.
“Umm--no, reckon not. Not many like that carried in this country. But
somebody ought to know it. We’ll ride into Carwell pretty soon. See. But
right now I want to ride Eph Carson’s back-trail. Got a idee. Mebbe she
won’t pan out.”
They could only guess that Eph Carson had come along the regular trail
and follow through the dim lane between the greasewood and cacti. They
rode silently, with eyes roving from trail to skyline and back again.
The afternoon wore on; evening came. To westward, up-thrusting hulls,
jagged, fantastic, drew nearer.
“Huecos!” grunted Rutter, and Ware’s Kid nodded. He knew this ancient
watering place of the desert people red and brown and white. A good many
times, with a Ranger detachment from Ysleta, hunting Apache sign, he had
camped there.
“Guess we better hole up there t’night,” Rutter grunted, staring across
the flat to the beginning of that welter of arroyo-cut hillocks.
“Mawnin’ we can head back to Carwell an’ see ’bout that frogsticker. Or,
we can look over some more trail.”
“Yo’ idee?” queried Ware’s Kid. “Yuh said yuh had one.”
“Tell yuh about it come mawnin’,” said Rutter. Far back in the grim
black eyes lurked a shadowy amusement. “Ain’t quite ready to back her up
clean to the tailgate. Got anything to eat?”
“Dried beef, _tortillas_, coffee, can o’ plums.”
“Dried beef an’ _tortillas_ is a meal,” grinned Rutter. “Le’s head for
the Tanks an’ camp.”
“Better hole up in the old Butterfield station,” counseled Ware’s Kid.
“Healthier’n sleepin’ ’longside the main _tinaja_ (Tank). Apaches don’t
stick no closer to the reservation than ever, I reckon.”