CHAPTER I.
Swearing under his breath, the grizzled old teamster yanked his four plodding mules to a halt.
There wasn’t much else that he could have done.
What are we going to do now, partners?
Turn back?”
Two other hombres, roughly dressed and weather-beaten, came crawling out of the wagon, disgusted and angry.
They were both past middle age, and had evidently experienced much hardship.
Strung across the rutted trail from one side of the narrow canyon to the other was a fence of galvanized barbed wire, bright and new, six strands high.
It was stretched tight between tall cedar poles and securely anchored to the frowning cliff-sided walls of the mountain pass.
The barrier glittered like silver in the hot sun of the Arizona afternoon.
“What’s the matter now, Luke?” demanded a testy voice from within the dirty canvas wagon top.
“Why’re you stopping’?”
“The fence again,” the driver groaned.
“If this ain’t the limit! stained and weary, they jumped to the ground to examine the fence and to punctuate the driver’s flow of profanity with a few choice and sizzling oaths of their own.
“We can’t go back!” clamored one of them.
“We’re practically out of water. Besides, I’m getting tired of this. The West Arroyo Pass was blocked the same as this. It means we’d have to go way around by Tuba City. They ain’t got no right to close the passes.”
“According to that sign,” growled the other, “they sure think they have.”
They all stared at it, a square of new pine board on which was daubed in black paint:
Keep out! this means you!
“The Circle-tail Ranch,” spelled out the driver.
“I’ve heard tell of this spread. It’s a big one, all right. Fills up the whole Caliente Basin. I never knew that they was so touchy about folks crossing it, though.”
“They’ve got no right, I tell you!” one of his companions fumed again.
“Even if this is their private property, they can’t block the only two passes inside of two hundred mile. Do they expect us to die here without no water?”
The view from the top of the pass was tantalizing to the three wagon men.
Ahead of them and below was a vast, basin-shaped valley, hemmed in on every side by towering naked peaks of volcanic stone, weirdly colored by the fires of ages past.
A violet-blue haze softened the harsh outlines of the farther mountains, while the wrinkled floor of the valley was dotted here and there by patches of dark green.
Those patches meant trees and water.
“We’re going on through, no matter what that danged sign says!” decided one of the old men in a desperate voice.
“There’s wire cutters in the wagon, and I’m going to use them!”
The two others looked a bit dubious, but they were too much angered at the Circle-tail’s highhandedness to make any protest when their partners went to work with the wire snippers.
After all, the ranch was going much too far when it closed the natural passes.
A man afoot or even on horseback might climb over those craggy walls, but with any sort of wagon it was impossible.
When the barbed wire had been cut and dragged aside, they climbed back into the wagon and started down the grade, the mules quickening their pace to a jogging trot.
The trail began to twist and zigzag between sharp ridges and queer-shaped monoliths and boulders.
The wheels creaked and rumbled; the tattered canvas fluttered in the hot breeze.
But the travelers didn’t get far.
They had gone only a mile or two, when half a dozen riders came galloping toward the wagon from the left.
They were yelling and brandishing rifles, and the driver pulled up his mules with an ejaculation of surprise and dismay.
As he did so, seven or eight other horsemen appeared on the crest of a ridge a few hundred yards to the right of the wagon.
They, too, approached at a gallop.
The three wayfarers exchanged uneasy glances.
Somehow, these riders didn’t appear to be cowpunchers; there was something suspicious about them.
They wore range clothes and rode range horses, but seemed more than usually weighted down with guns and ammunition.
Many of them wore two Colts, and most of them were armed with Winchesters as well.
There was something flinty and forbidding in their bleak faces that alarmed the wagon men.
“Get out of there! Get down out of there, you jaspers!” commanded one of the oncoming riders.
He was a burly hombre with tremendous shoulders and a shaggy red beard.
Luke, the driver, and his two partners hesitated and then slowly followed instructions.
The gunmen—for that was what they apparently were—drew up around the wagon in a ring.
Two or three were Mexican.
The rest were coarse-featured whites.
Some were sneering, and others were grinning mirthlessly.
“So you cut the fence, did you?” jeered the whiskered desperado, licking a brown cigarette together.
“You didn’t read that signboard, I reckon. Or wasn’t it plain enough?”
“We seen it, all right,” the old teamster admitted shakily.
“But, mister, we’re trying to get through to the Utah country. You got the west Arroyo closed, same as this one, and we’re danged near out of water. How come you strung up that wire, anyhow? All we want to do is cross this-”
“Who are you fellers?” asked another of the wagon men, speaking up in blunt defiance.
“Are you Circle-tail rannies?”
A hoarse, hooting laugh went up from the twelve or fourteen gunmen.
“Yeah, we happening to be riding line—riding the dead line, so to speak,” chortled the heavy-shouldered spokesman.
“We’re patrolling —the death patrol, you might call us.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” the driver of the wagon replied uneasily. The leader of the group showed his notched and jagged teeth.
“We’re going to show you what we mean— and pronto.”
Gun hammers and rifle mechanisms clicked sharply—the rattle of impending doom.
Old Luke’s mouth came open in stupefied amazement.
The two other wagon men paled.
“You—you’re just trying to give us a scare,” the driver piped feebly.
“You’re only fooling-”
“We ain’t fooling none.”
The spokesman’s laugh was as cruel as the rasp of steel on granite.
“For the love of Heaven, men!” gasped the oldest of the travelers, in plaintive appeal. “Don’t kill us! It’d be murder-”
“We’ll go back!” old Luke shrilled.
“We’ll go back right now.”
He started to clamber back to the wagon seat, but a sweeping blow with a rifle barrel by one of the desperadoes knocked him to the ground.
At the same moment, the red-bearded gunman barked a command. Colts and Winchesters roared, sending the echoes crashing across the basin.
Powder smoke swirled in a hot mist, streaked through by spitting tongues of red flame.
Splinters flew from the sides of the wagon.
One of the mules, struck by a glancing bullet, lurched upward, and the team would have run away if one of the killers hadn’t seized the lead animals.
Old Luke, trying to get to his feet, fell again, never more to rise.
His two partners died with him.
One, killed instantly, slid forward on his face, clawing in the sand; the other, pierced by several slugs, grabbed at the spokes of the nearest wheel of the wagon, clung there for a dreadful half minute, then slowly collapsed like a bag of rags.
“Heave them into the wagon,” said the whiskered man, with a brutal laugh.
“The boss might want to look them over afore we throw them to the buzzards. Jess,” he ordered one of the murderers,
“You get in and drive to headquarters. Cut the dead mule out of the harness and tie your own horse to the end gate. Let’s be moving.” He was just holstering his smoking Colt, when an exclamation from one of the others made him turn his ugly head with a quick jerk.
“Look, Cadwick! Over yonder!”
A lone rider, evidently attracted by the sound of the shots, had popped into view on the summit of a barren hogback about three hundred yards away.
At that distance, it was impossible to make out his identity, but the
“death patrol” could see that he was astride a black-and-white pinto cayuse.
He had halted abruptly, as if sizing up the situation.
“Who in blazes-” grunted one of the Circle-tail crew.
“Never mind who he is. Get him!” snarled the bearded hombre, furiously roweling his black bronc with his spurs.
“Bring him down!”
The whole band followed, leaving their three stiffening victims stretched out by the wagon where they had fallen.
Several of them opened up with their Winchesters.
The range, for rifles, was not difficult.
Another tragedy, it seemed, was about to take place there on the steep slopes of Caliente Basin.
Their quarry, however, had whirled his pinto and was off like a shot.
The Circle-tail band soon discovered that he was not going to be easy to bring down, or to catch.
The pinto was as wild as an antelope, and as sure of foot. Its master was an expert rider, as his pursuers quickly found out.
He dropped low over his saddle horn and sent his cayuse through a series of spins that fairly dazzled the sharpshooters who were cracking away with their Winchesters. The pinto, small and wiry, waltzed and zigzagged like a cottontail rabbit, cutting back and forth over the rocky and treacherous mountainside with dizzying speed.
None of the gang’s bullets came near him.
Within two minutes, he had increased his lead to more than a quarter of a mile, and still continued to gain.
One by one, he shook off his pursuers, until only four or five remained on his trail, the whiskered man being among them.
“It’s—no use!” rasped the leader, when the rider on the pinto had finally disappeared entirely.
“He’s made his get-away, blast him!”
Swearing, the last of the pursuit drew up their winded horses.
“Maybe we’d better not tell the chief about him getting’ away from us,” grunted one of the cutthroat crew.
“I wonder who in blazes he was.”
“That,” snarled the whiskered hombre between clenched teeth,
“is what I’d like to know!”
CHAPTER II.
In a little mountain meadow, near a tiny bubbling spring, a tall and lanky waddy was cooking his supper.
The western sky was aflame with the almost terrifying splendor of an Arizona sunset; reds and yellows mingled with fiery orange, all flecked through with specks of purple clouds, while the zenith overhead was of a luminous green.
Its reflection lighted the clearing with a weird glow.
Gradually, however, the colors faded, and it grew dark.
There was something furtive about the movements of the lean waddy, and from time to time he rose to his feet as if listening intently.
His cooking fire was so small that he could have put it out with a few flops of his shabby sombrero.
His horse, a rangy roan with a white forehead, was hobbled and grazing contentedly, but it was still saddled, and its owner could have reached it in a few strides.
The little meadow, though, was well concealed.
Walls rose on three sides of it, and on the fourth, the view was blocked by a fringe of matted cedars.
Anyone who penetrated the thicket would have to make considerable noise.
As the odor of coffee began to float from the blackened can on the fire, the lanky hombre began singing to himself in a cracked and unmusical voice:
“The sheriff done got me, Put my guns up for bail, Sure thought they’d hang me In the El Paso jail.”
He was twenty-eight or thirty years of age, and looked like a tramp. His shirt was a ruin; his calfskin vest was split up the back, and his boots were sadly run over and shapeless. At his hip, in a russet leather holster, was a Colt .45 with a chipped stag handle.
“Crime doesn’t pay, partners. So my luck I bewail, Forty years the judge gave me In the El Paso jail.
“After thirty-five years, boy, ’Cause you look kind of pale, We’ll make you a trusty In the El Paso jail.”
Suddenly the song broke off.
The lanky waddy, who had been crouched by his little fire, straightened to his feet, his eyes on the thicket.
He had heard a crackling, the snapping of branches.
The gathering darkness prevented him from seeing anything.
The tall hombre’s face, covered with a little fuzz of beard, tightened strangely, and his pale-yellow eyes half closed.
With a quick motion, he reached inside his shirt, pulled a stubby gun from a hidden shoulder holster, and tossed it to the ground at the camp-fire edge.
A cautious kick with his booted food covered it from sight among the pine needles.
Then he waited, and he was not kept long in suspense. Into the little park came a rider on a black-and white pinto pony.
“Howdy!” the lean waddy sang out.
His voice was cheery, but his eyes were still narrowed to shining slits.
“Hello,” replied the newcomer, slowly riding toward the fire.
The hombre on the pinto seemed to be just a kid, not much more than twenty.
His youthful bronzed face was innocent and apparently trustful.
One cheek was marked by a deep dimple, and his eyes were of a mild blue.
A wisp of blond hair curled from the rim of his pushed back cream-colored Stetson.
“What’s chances of me watering’ my bronc, amigo?”
He smiled boyishly.
“Alone, are you? Why,, yeah, light down,” the lean ranny invited cordially.
“Help yourself to some chuck. I ain’t got a big variety— just warmed-over biscuits and frijoles —but there’s plenty, and you’re welcome.”
“Thanks. That coffee shore smells good.”
The kid dismounted and the lanky hombre noted that he did so without once taking his eyes from his own.
They were quite remarkable eyes.
They seemed to look through and beyond whatever they were fixed on.
He was much better dressed than the man at the fire, though his outfit had seen much hard use.
He wore a blue-and-white-checkered shirt, brown leather chaps, and small, tall-heeled Coffeyville boots.
A Colt .45 was thonged low to each thigh.
A two-gun man!
About his trim waist were sloped two cartridge belts, the loops half filled.
The little pinto cayuse drank at the spring and then began to crop the coarse but wholesome grass that grew in patches about the clearing.
The saddle, by no means new, was decorated with medallions and tiny butterflies of beaten silver.
“My name’s Speer,” said the tall hombre with the yellow eyes.
“Glad to know you, Speer,” replied the younger hombre agreeably. He did not, however, give his own name.
“You work for the Circle-tail spread?” asked Speer in a careless tone, squatting down by the fire opposite his young host.
“I never heard of that spread,” the kid said, shaking his head.
“It’s in Caliente Basin, down yonder,” explained Speer, jerking his thumb toward the north.
He spoke with a slight Texas accent, and his humorous drawl seemed lazy and somewhat odd.
“I thought I heard some shooting down that a way this afternoon.” The boyish waddy didn’t change expression, but his sky-blue eyes were probing Speer’s yellow ones.
The lean hombre took the bubbling coffee from the fire and set it in the sand to cool.
His lips moved in his tuneless song:
“Says the turnkey to me, boy, Get your mop and your pail, ’Cause we’ve made you a trusty In the El Paso jail.
“Oh, crime doesn’t pay, partners, Pay heed to my tale, Or you’ll do all your riding’ In the El Paso jail.”
The ranny in the checkered shirt chuckled at his gangling host.
It was easy to see how he had come by the name of Speer.
There was something likable about the tall saddle tramp.
“Help yourself out o’ the coffee can, younker. Reckon it’s cool enough by now,” said Rip.
He reached down toward the edge of the fire, as if to pull the warmed beans from the coals.
His hand, however, darted under the pine branches.
The dimpled youth lifted the blackened can to his lips, murmuring his thanks.
He started to drink.
Then the long right arm of Speer snapped upward.
Clenched in his bony hand was something that glistened, blue and metallic, in the ruddy fireglow—the Colt that Speer had hidden out!
“Stretch them!” barked the tall hombre.
“Your name’s Rip Campbell, and I’ve got you!”
It must have been a paralyzing and terrible moment for the kid, but he didn’t betray his agitation by so much as the tremble of a finger as he laid down the coffee can.
He even smiled a little, smiled at those narrowed yellow eyes ‘that were glaring into his own.
“You’ve got me, I reckon,” he said softly, as he raised his hands.
“Darn tooting’, Campbell, I’ve got you,” said Speer.
“Turn around. If you make one bad move. I’ll have to kill you. Stand still!”
Expertly, he stripped off his prisoner’s gun belts with his left hand, holding the Colt muzzle against the small of the young waddy’s back with his right.
“Who are you?” The kid’s voice was quite cool.
“An Arizona Ranger,” said Speer brusquely. “And you’re not denying’ who you are.”
“I’m Rip Campbell,” the young ranny admitted.
Speer showed his long white teeth in a not particularly pleasant grin.
“The most ‘wanted’ outlaw in the Southwest, eh? I recognized you from the first, Campbell. Didn’t know I was going to be so lucky to-night. It’s just too bad for you. I’ve been carrying’ your description in my head for the last two years. You answered to it, even to that bullet crease in your cheek that looks so much like a baby dimple.” The Ranger jerked his head toward the grazing pinto.
“I even knew that cayuse.” He grinned.
“I suppose you’re going to take me over to Las Tablas,” said the outlaw resignedly.
“To town? Not much, I ain’t!” grunted Speer.
“I didn’t happen to be hereabouts on the lookout for you, Campbell. I got other work to do, and you’re going to help me do it.”
“Meaning?” Rip Campbell shrugged slightly.
“Meaning that you lied when you said you wasn’t with the Circle-tail outfit,” accused Speer.
“An outlaw like you not in with that gang of killers? Think I was born yesterday? You’re going to lead me to their headquarters, Campbell, and tonight!”
CHAPTER III.
At moon up, a couple of hours later, Rip Campbell and the Ranger left the little mountain meadow, bound for Caliente Basin.
Rip Campbell was astride his own pinto, and Speer rode a few yards behind him on his roan.
The outlaw’s gun belts were draped across the Ranger’s saddle pommel.
“Remember, now,” Speer warned coldly,
“I’ll shoot you, and shoot to kill, if you try and make a break for it. I won’t miss.” Rip had tried to tell the Ranger that he had nothing to do with the mysterious Circle-tail Ranch, but Speer had refused to listen.
The outlaw told of seeing the murder committed near the pass, explained how he had been pursued by the killers, but he might just as well have spoken to a stone wall.
“I don’t doubt that there was a murder,” growled the officer,
“but if so, kid, you was a party to it. Let’s move along. I’ve been sent up here to see what’s at the bottom of this trouble, and I sho’ aim to find out. Lead me to your partners, and I’ll do the rest!”
“Not much you can do,” Rip told him grimly.
“There’s thirteen or fourteen men in the bunch that I saw.”
“What are you trying to do—scare me out by such fool talk?” the Ranger scoffed.
“If there’s more than five or six of you Circle-tail gunnies. I’ll put in with you. And with you as a hostage, Campbell, I’ll get the rest. All I’ll have to do is tell them I’ll kill you if they open fire. For your sake, there better not be no shooting.”
“You’re makin’ a big mistake; that’s all I can say,” the outlaw muttered as he guided his pinto out of the clearing.
“Those rattlers are no friends of mine.” Rip Campbell was, of course, telling the truth.
He was an outlaw with a “dead-or-alive” price on his youthful head, but he was a lone wolf, and never cast his lot with gangs, especially with such a gang as the Circle-tail killers.
Fugitive from justice though he was, he had no sympathy for murderers.
The butchery that he had accidentally seen that afternoon had sickened him.
And what was he to do now?
He had no idea of where to find the gang’s headquarters.
This was a stretch of country new to him.
All he could possibly do, it seemed, was to go ahead into Caliente Basin and trust to luck—luck that would almost certainly be bad. Speer’s bullheadedness would probably end in getting them both killed.
It took them a good hour to descend to the floor of the great circular valley, for Speer kept the pace down to one not much faster than a walk.
The moon was very bright; each clump of mesquite, swaying gently in the night wind, was sharp and distinct; the mountains that rimmed the vast bowl loomed like icebergs against a sky of star-sprinkled ebony.
From somewhere in the distance, a coyote yapped hungrily.
“I’m telling you again, Ranger, that I don’t know where I’m going any more than you do,” said the outlaw.
“Never mind the talk,” sniffed Speer. “Ride on!”
Rip Campbell ran his hand through the mane of Waco, his faithful little bronc.
Even Waco seemed to realize that something was seriously wrong, and once or twice he snorted uneasily.
As the dead of night approached, the air became stingingly cold. Speer began to sing again in his cracked, unmelodious voice:
“After thirty-five years, boy, ’Cause you look kind of pale, Well make you a trusty In the El Paso jail.”
It was a good forty miles across the Caliente.
What had seemed an almost level floor from the heights above now became a tricky and uneven bottom land, cut by many arroyos and dry washes.
Sand dunes alternated with freak rock formations.
Once, they crossed a wide field of volcanic ash, where nothing whatever grew, and where the steel shoes of their broncs clinked and rang against the clinkers and lava.
“How did you happen to be sent here. Ranger?” Rip asked.
“What’s wrong on the Circle-tail?”
“Folks have been disappearing, that’s all,” grunted Speer.
“Hombres have started across the Caliente recently and ain’t never been heard from again. I’m here to investigate. But you know what’s going on there better than I do, Campbell, so why play innocent?”
It was useless to argue, so the outlaw remained silent.
His mind, though, was busy, and occupied with something more than his own troubles, which were serious enough.
He himself was in the hands of the law, and for him, that meant the hangman’s noose.
The mystery of the Circle-tail, however, perplexed him more than his own plight.
Finally, the eastern sky began to pale with approaching dawn.
The lesser stars faded, and presently a delicate pink glow heralded the returning sun.
A jack rabbit shuttled through the creosotes and went bobbing into the distance.
Rip began to see cattle; the basin seemed thick with them.
They passed close enough to some of the bunches for the outlaw to make out some of the brands.
Strangely enough, he saw few of the Circle-tail burns, although he saw Diamond 7s, a Turkey Track, a J Bar Connected, an Hourglass, and a Triple 8.
It appeared to Rip Campbell that the Circle-tail was a receiving ground for rustling on a gigantic scale.
Speer’s eyes, too, were busy.
“So this is the game, is it, Campbell?” he laughed dryly. “Who’s the kingpin of your outfit?”
Rip could only shrug his shoulders wearily.
It was no use trying to talk to the Ranger.
“What gets me,” growled Speer, “is that the owner of this spread is supposed to be an honest and respected man. Frank Pierce, his name is, and he’s been running an honest cattle business hereabouts for thirty years. I never met him myself, but he’s always been spoken well of. Hey, you, Campbell!” he sang out sharply.
“What’s the matter with you? If you’re aiming to try and-”
They had been following the course of a steep-sided, winding barranca, or small canyon, but the outlaw had suddenly turned sharply away from it.
His eyes were fixed intently on a prickly-pear-dotted ridge ahead.
“There’s trouble ahead, Speer,” said the outlaw in a low voice.
“Waco smells it, and Waco’s hard to fool.”
“No stalling, Campbell!” barked the Ranger, rolling back the hammer of his drawn gun. “You’re going straight ahead. And remember, I’m a-watching you.” The Ranger should have been watching something else, was Rip’s thought.
He had no choice, however, but to go ahead.
An icy chill passed down his spine.
It was bad enough to be dry gulched, but to be forced to ride right on into an ambush unarmed was.
It happened—just as they came alongside the out jutting ridge! Eight or nine riders came sweeping out from there hiding place with drawn guns.
Among them was the shaggy-bearded desperado.
“Keep back, you men!” yelled the Ranger, after an amazed gasp.
“Back, or I’ll kill your partner!”
His gun was on Rip Campbell.
The Circle-tail gunmen, however, kept coming.
It looked like the finish!
CHAPTER IV.
Rip Campbell would have roweled his pinto and made a break for it if he could, but he had no chance.
At any moment, he expected to feel the pang of hot lead, either from the Ranger’s gun or the guns of the gang. Before either happened, however.
Waco’s bridle was caught up by one of the Circle-tail killers.
“Our partner?” bellowed the whiskered ruffian contemptuously.
“He ain’t our partner! You get up your mitts, feller!” he yelled at the Ranger.
Speer’s lean face showed its bewilderment.
He saw that he had no choice but to surrender.
Nine men had their Colts and Winchesters leveled at him.
He was no coward, but he was sensible enough to raise his hands.
“Well, well!” rumbled the copper bearded hombre, his evil glance passing from Rip to the Ranger and back to the outlaw once more.
“Danged if it ain’t that trail burning pinto rider again! Get his guns, men!”
“He ain’t got none,” announced a weasel-faced gunman.
“But there’s an extra pair hanging from this other hombre’s saddle horn.”
“There’s something strange about this,” mused the red-bearded giant.
“Who in blazes are you jaspers, and what are you doing in the basin?”
“Let’s give them the works, Cadwick, and get it over,” grated one of the gang before either the outlaw or the Ranger could answer.
“I don’t care who gets the roan, but I want the pinto. What are we waiting on, Mike?”
Mike Cadwick—the bearded desperado—shook his head.
“No, we’d better take them to the chief and let him question them. Tie their hands behind them.”
While their wrists were being securely bound with lariat rope, Rip exchanged a glance with Speer.
The Ranger managed a faint and wondering grin.
“I should’ve listened to you, kid,” he admitted.
The gang gathered close around the two prisoners, and the party started on at a trot.
Although Rip Campbell’s picture and description had been on many a reward poster, none of the gang had recognized, in this smiling youth, the most “wanted” outlaw in the Southwest.
But then, Rip’s innocent blue eyes and boyish manner were always deceiving.
As they rode on, Rip noticed that a bank of sullen dark clouds was rolling up to obscure the rising sun.
The wind had died down, and it was oppressively still.
A storm was brewing.
Without being aware of it. Rip had come within a few miles of the gang’s headquarters, for at the top of the next rise, he made out the ranch house toward which the bleak-faced party was heading.
He eyed it curiously as they approached.
The layout was much like that of any other large ranch, and looked innocent enough.
The yard and corrals covered some five acres, but the house itself—a long, white painted frame, with a porch the full length—was rather small.
On one side was a high fence of closely woven ocotillo, and on the other a square pond shaded by cottonwoods.
“Ride on ahead, Blue, and tell the chief that we got a couple of prisoners,” Mike Cadwick ordered one of the Circle-tail crew.
As the rest of them drew up alongside the house, a few minutes later, the door swung open, and a tall, powerfully built hombre stepped out onto the porch, or gallery.
His face was carefully masked by a red bandanna in which eyeholes had been cut.
From the way he carried himself. Rip judged that he was about forty.
He wore a wide belt, decorated with Navajo silverwork, and expensive chaparajos.
“Good work, Cadwick,” he cracked out in a sharp, hard voice.
“Bring them up here on the porch, and we’ll hold court.”
Rip and Speer, their arms still bound behind them, were taken from their broncs and marched up on the gallery.
The other desperadoes gathered close around, leaving their horses standing.
They had snickered at their leader’s mention of
“court.”
“When we picked them up, boss,” Cadwick explained,
“this tall crowbait had the young kid’s guns. I can’t savvy it.”
The glittering eyes behind the mask probed the two captives like steel drills.
The air was oppressively still, and it was darker now than it had been before sunrise.
The storm would soon break over the basin.
The rustler leader’s evil glance passed from Rip to Speer.
He pointed with an accusing forefinger, and as he did so, Rip noticed that his hands were covered with warts.
“You’re a Ranger!” he snarled at Speer.
Speer thrust out his bony jaw defiantly.
“Yes, I’m a Ranger, and proud of it. Not ashamed to show my face, either, like you are!”
“You’re going to be shot in about two minutes,” sneered the masked man, “and then we’ll see what your face will look like, Mr. Ranger.”
He turned the shadowed eyes.
“Well, young un,” he rasped at Rip, “who are you?”
“My name,” said the outlaw quietly, “is Rip Campbell.”
The masked hombre stiffened and took a step backward in his surprise.
The other desperadoes, some on the porch and some standing on the ground, gave gasps of amazement and disbelief.
The name
“Campbell” was well known throughout Arizona.
“You mean that you—you’re the hombre that’s been making monkeys out o’ the law for so long?” cried the rustler chief.
“Untie his hands, men!”
While one of the desperadoes unknotted Rip’s bonds, the masked hombre laughed in uproarious amusement.
“Welcome to Circle-tail, Campbell!” he roared.
“Why didn’t you say who you was, in the first place? I can use a gunny like you, young un! From what I hear, you’re plenty fast with a pair o’ hawglegs, and them’s the kind of men I need here.”
Rip’s face had whitened under its tan, and his eyes, no longer so boyishly mild, took on a frosty tinge.
The thought that these ruthless killers took him for a professional murderer like themselves made his pulses gallop with fury.
His hands were free now, and they itched for the masked man’s throat.
He knew that a few fawning words on his part would save his life, but he’d rather die than speak them.
There was nothing of the sneak in his make-up.
What could he do, though, against ten armed men?
And how could he save the Ranger from being shot?
Those questions raced through his mind like an electric current.
“You’ll join up with my outfit, Campbell?” demanded the masked unknown man.
Rip had noticed that the ranch house door, scarcely a stride away from him, was half open.
As quick as thought, he acted!
“No, you low-down skunks!”
He seized Speer by the slack of the shirt, and leaping toward the door, he yanked the Ranger in after him.
Kicking out like a flash, he slammed the door shut and dropped the heavy bar in place before the flabbergasted gang realized what was taking place.
CHAPTER V.
There were two rooms in the house, the kitchen—where Rip now found himself—and the long bunk room beyond.
There were no other doors to defend.
This door, which the outlaw had taken advantage of so unexpectedly, had recently been reinforced by plates of boiler iron. Rip noticed, too, that loopholes had been cut through the walls at several points, and that the window shutters had also been plated with iron on the inside.
The ranch house had lately been made over into a stronghold.
All this he saw at a glance, even before the loud bellow of fury and astonishment had gone up from the rustlers on the outside.
Speer was almost as amazed at Rip’s action as the Circle-tail gunmen were.
His yellow eyes were bulging like marbles, and his mouth was agape.
“What the-”
In the middle of the kitchen was a dirty, half-cleared table covered with unclean tin plates, morsels of food, cigarette stubs, playing cards, and a whisky bottle.
Rip snatched a knife from among the debris, and with one stroke cut Speer free of the rope that, bound his arms.
“We’ll have to fight for it, amigo!” the outlaw panted.
“If we can find guns-”
“Gee! I had you wrong. Rip,” Speer gasped.
“Golly, I-” Kicks and blows were sounding furiously on the heavy door, but it held securely.
The rustlers were all yelling and clamoring profanely.
Among the voices was that of the masked leader, insane with rage.
“Open that door, blast you, or we’ll-”
“Keep low, Speer!” Rip warned.
As he expected, the Circle-tail crew began shooting.
The frame walls of the house were not thick enough to stop lead, and bullets started coming in like angry bumblebees.
Rip dived into the sleeping quarters and reappeared again with what he’d hoped for—guns.
There were several Colt .45s among the soiled clothing, blankets, and gear, as well as a Winchester .45-70 and a ten-bore double-barreled shotgun.
They lost no time in returning the gang’s fire.
“Let’s give them blazes. Rip!”
Speer began working the rifle like an alarm clock, jerking the loading lever up and down with the regularity of a machine.
Smoke, stinging and acrid, began to fill the house like a blue-gray fog.
Armed with a pair of .45s, Rip Campbell bared his teeth and swept the porch clean.
He dropped two men on the sagging boards of the gallery. Speer accounted for another, sending his victim tumbling over the low rail to the ground.
The two defenders meant to sell their lives dearly at any rate!
They had one advantage, anyhow.
They had the shelter of the house, slight though it was, and could shift from loophole to loophole.
Their hot fire had driven the desperadoes to a respectful distance from the house and had forced them to take refuge behind the near-by buildings and the embankment by the pond.
The desperadoes, however, sent volley after volley crashing through the ranch house.
The slugs ripped through with a deadly z-z-z-z-zring, occasionally with a deeper b-r-r-r-r that meant the bullets were glancing end over end.
Those were the most dangerous of all; half spent, the wound they might inflict could be terrible.
In another gun fight, Rip had once seen a man’s entire jaw torn away by such a bullet.
Both he and Speer fought coolly and systematically.
The lanky Ranger’s eyes shone through the smoke like yellow topaz. Unable to find more .45-70 ammunition, he was using one of the Colts now.
During a short lull in the shooting, Rip heard the masked leader shouting orders, then the sounds of a galloping bronc going away.
“He’s sent for the rest of his men —reinforcements,” said Rip grimly.
“There’s half a dozen more, Speer, just as I told you.”
“We’re sunk, then, I reckon.” The Ranger grinned mirthlessly.
“But we’re going to give a good account of ourselves, me and you. Rip!”
And Speer lifted his unmusical voice in his favorite ditty:
“Oh, the coffee’s sure bitter, And the bread it is stale, Yo’ don’t eat chicken pie In the El Paso jail.
“My gal brought a file, And a tenpenny nail, But I couldn’t bust out Of the El Paso jail.”
A bullet burned its way through Rip’s checkered shirt, just grazing his ribs.
Firing in return, he sent a brace of slugs toward the spot from which the missile had come.
One of them, at least, took good effect, for he heard a shriek of agony from behind the tool house, fifty yards away.
Another hail of lead swept the shack.
Some of it glanced viciously from the iron of the door and window shutters; some droned through the splintering walls.
A tin kettle on the stove sprang into the air like a thing alive.
A long splinter of wood struck Rip in the neck, and for a moment he thought he’d been seriously hurt.
Speer was still singing—and shooting.
Rip hurriedly searched the next room for ammunition, but although he ransacked the place desperately, he could find no more.
Not many rounds remained now between the two trapped men.
They couldn’t hold off the rustler crew much longer, and when those reinforcements arrived, there wouldn’t
“Look, partner!” yelped Speer.
“Here they come with a wagon tongue! They’re going to try and bust in the door!”
“We’ll have to stop it,” said the outlaw coolly, as he punched smoking empty shells from the hot cylinder of his six-guns.
“We’ve got to go easy on the cartridges, though. Don’t waste any.” Rip longed for a shot at either the masked leader of the desperado band or Cadwick, his bearded straw boss.
Both were out of sight, and directing their men with shouts.
Four of them had appeared in the open, carrying the wagon pole for a battering-ram, and were approaching the door at a trot.
“Let them have it, Speer, old-timer,” snapped Rip Campbell, thumbing the hammers of his own guns when the wrecking crew was within thirty yards.
B-r-r-r-rooom!
Blended with the reports of Rip’s .45s was the terrific, ear-shattering thunder of the ten-bore.
Speer had let go with both barrels of the scattergun.
The hombre in the lead was fairly blown in two by the blast of buckshot.
With his clothing almost blown from his body, he fell, a huddled, reddened mass.
Rip stretched out the second man with a bullet through the head; the other two turned and scampered for their lives.
In the meantime, the red-bearded Cadwick and his leader, who had located themselves behind the pond embankment had continued shooting.
One of them—probably Cadwick —had a .30-30 high-power, and judging from the sounds, he was shooting jacketed, soft-pointed cartridges.
He was keeping his aim low, and Rip knew that sooner or later, he would score. And he did, in less than a minute. Rip heard a queer, choked intake of breath from Speer.
“Amigo! Are you-” Rip bent over the lean Ranger, who had doubled up on the floor.
He felt a dragging ache at his heart.
As an officer of the law, Speer was his sworn enemy, but Rip had never considered him that.
Ranger or not, he liked Speer, admired him much for his stubborn courage.
“My gut!” muttered Speer.
With an effort he sat upright and with a shaking hand reached behind his back. His hand came away crimson.
“Gone clean through,” Speer said, showing his long white teeth in a grimace.
“Dang those dumdum bullets! The hole in front’s no bigger than a nickel, but the one—in my back— you could—stuff your hat in. I’m shore-”
He was dying, but in spite of what Rip could do, he tottered to his feet, pulling himself up by means of the table, and leaving a red pool on the floor.
He took a firm grip on his Colt six-gun.
“Open the door—just a crack, Rip, and let me out there,” he coughed.
“I’m going to get one or two of them skunks afore I die.” Rip’s powder-grimed face was as gray and streaked as Speer’s own.
“No, Speer, you’d better-”
“I’m going,” said the dying man decisively.
“Might as well—gonna, anyhow. Rip, if you should get out o’ this—don’t think you will, but anyway—this ring.”
He took a cheap ring from his finger, a ring made of two twisted horseshoe nails, and put it in Rip’s hand.
“If you should get through, partner,” Speer whispered weakly,
“show that to my brother. His ranch is ten miles north of Las Tablas. Tell him —what happened here. Have him —send the Rangers here to wipe these coyotes out. Will you— Rip?”
Unable to speak, the outlaw could only squeeze Speer’s icy hand.
Small chance he would have of getting out of this alive, but if he did, he’d not forget Speer’s request.
“Don’t go out there, compadre,” Rip pleaded as the Ranger moved toward the door.
Speer took the bottle of whisky from the table and emptied it in a few gulps.
“It ain’t—that I need Dutch courage, Rip.” He grinned.
“It’s just that I sure hate to see that liquor go to waste. Adios, partner!”
Unbarring the door, the Ranger staggered out across the porch in plain view of the hidden marksmen, straightened himself with an effort, and strode slowly and deliberately out into the ranch yard, his head up and his gun gripped in a steady hand.
“The mountains are calling. I’m jumping my bail, And I’ll never go back To the El Paso jail.”
Guns roared violently.
Rip clenched his teeth as he saw puffs of dust fly from the tall Ranger’s clothing.
Speer swerved, went down to his knees, and then, making a terrible effort, supported himself with one hand and swayed to his feet again.
He walked on, straight toward the embankment.
By that time, there must have been a half dozen bullets in his body, but he went ahead like a man in a dream.
For a brief second, one of the desperadoes exposed himself in order to shoot once again at the terrifying figure of Speer.
The Ranger was waiting for that.
His gun streaked flame and smoke and the rustler rolled down the bank with a hole between his eyes.
Then there was a deadly fusillade.
With the thunder of the Colts came the sharper crack of the .30-30. Speer’s lean legs wavered under him, and then gave a convulsive leap, as if hurdling an invisible fence.
Falling heavily, he rolled over on his side.
Stretching out his long legs and arms, he quietly composed himself for his eternal sleep.
The first few drops of the rain fell in the ranch yard—like tears.
CHAPTER VI.
With a bitter cry, Rip kicked the door wide open, a half empty .45 in each hand.
His one thought was to avenge Speer, to die doing it. According to his count, only three of the desperadoes were left, and one of these badly wounded.
Among them were the masked leader and the whiskered Mike Cadwick with the .30-30.
If he could only line his sights on those two killers.
But before he could spring into the open, he heard the hammering of hoofs.
The reinforcements had arrived on the scene!
Four riders galloped in, yelling hoarsely.
Rip banged the door again, panting for breath and thinking hard. No use for him to throw his life away so recklessly.
He could get more of the rustlers by waiting for their rush.
Here, at least, he had the shelter of the house.
If they rushed him—well, he still had a few more cartridges in the chambers of his Colts.
Then the storm that had been threatening for two hours struck with sudden force.
There was a crashing among the limbs of the cottonwoods by the pond, a shriek of wind, then a deluge of blinding rain.
The downpour was almost a cloud-burst.
Lightning flashed with a brilliance that stung the eyeballs, and peal upon peal of thunder went echoing across Caliente Basin.
“If I’m going to get out of this,” the outlaw thought, “it’s now or never.”
The loose horses had galloped away when the battle had first begun.
Rip peered through the loopholes in the wall, but saw no sign of Waco, his own cayuse.
The little pinto, though, was near to him, he was quite sure, waiting somewhere for the expected summons.
Rip had trained it well. There was no shooting just then.
Evidently, the gang was waiting for the storm to pass before renewing the fight.
The rain was coming down harder than ever.
As Rip forced open the shutters at a window opposite the door, he suddenly straightened.
He’d heard something—but what? Something that seemed in the very room with him.
There!
Between thunderclaps he heard it again.
It sounded like a moan, a rattling groan that might have come from the throat of a dying man.
Rip looked about him, the hair tightening on his scalp.
He was alone, of course.
Nobody was in the bunk room beyond, either.
There was only that little pool of crimson where Speer had got his death wound.
A shiver passed down the outlaw’s spine. He couldn’t let his nerves give way, now!
He’d only imagined that sound.
It was just the let-down after the exciting strain he’d been under, he reasoned.
He threw open the shutter, and a gust of rain-laden wind struck his face.
It freshened and stimulated him, and he filled his lungs with it.
From the window, he could see only the vague outlines of swaying trees through the curtain of falling water.
Rip gave a long, keen whistle, following it with another.
He waited then, but only for a few moments.
There was an answering whinny, and he made out Waco splashing from the timber fringe. With his heart in his mouth. Rip jumped through the window; in another moment, he had thrown himself bodily across his saddle.
“Good boy, Waco! Let’s—get gone-”
The rustler gang, however, weren’t napping.
As Waco’s little hoofs began hammering into a sprint, Rip heard a warning yell go up from the masked hombre:
“There he is! Get him, you numskulls! He’s-”
Br-r-r-ang-bang-bangl
The four newly arrived riders came pounding from the alley between the pond embankment and the granary.
Cadwick and the chief, too, popped into view, their guns blazing viciously.
Rip turned in his saddle and returned the volley.
Shooting from the hurricane deck of a galloping cayuse through a curtain of windblown rain is no easy trick, but the outlaw was one of the finest shots in the Southwest.
At the roar of his guns, one of the riders went backward over the rump of his horse, killed instantly.
Bam!
Rip relaxed his grip on his guns, would have dropped them if his forefingers hadn’t contracted about the trigger guards.
He’d been hit.
A wave of sickness passed over him.
“You got him, men! Give him some more! Run him down!”
Rip managed, with leaden arms, to shove his guns into the slack of his Levi overall pants and grip the saddle horn with both hands.
He felt a warm, salty taste in the mouth, and there was a singing in his ears like the sound of violins.
He’d been shot up before, and he realized that he was badly, perhaps fatally hit.
“Waco—run—boy-”
They were still shooting at him, following him, but the wiry pinto was going like a tornado, its silky mane and tail streaming in the wind and rain.
Rip clung on desperately, fighting against the unconsciousness that was overwhelming his tired brain.
Looking back, he could see nothing except sheets of pelting water.
“Keep going, partner!” the outlaw murmured drowsily.
After that, everything was a blurred dream.
CHAPTER VII.
It was the storm, fully as much as the spotty bronc’s speed of hoofs, that saved Rip Campbell’s life that morning.
When he drifted out of his half sleep, the skies had cleared, the sun was shining, and it was afternoon.
The pain of his wound had aroused him.
At first, he had no idea of where he was; then he discovered that he was near the south rim of the basin.
He was amazed to find himself still uncaptured and still in the saddle.
He must have kept his seat by instinct alone.
Waco had settled down into a steady lope, and every time the pony’s hoofs touched the ground, a pang of torture passed through the outlaw’s body.
He’d been hit in the right side, but whether or not the bullet had penetrated the lung or any vital organs, he couldn’t tell.
They were nearing the top of the divide, and the were not far from the spot where he’d first met Speer.
It was hot after the rain, and he was dizzy and ill.
There was a queer emptiness in his head, and a gnawing, ever-increasing pain under his shoulder.
As carefully as his aching eyes would allow him, he searched the basin behind and below him.
He could see no signs of any pursuit.
The rain, he knew, had washed out his tracks, and the country was so vast and rugged that there wasn’t much chance of the rustlers finding him.
At the sky-line rim of the gigantic bowl, Rip turned his bronc’s head in the direction of Las Tablas.
“We’ve got to get word to Speer’s brother—on that ranch,” he muttered.
Many weary miles of rough-timbered country lay between him and his goal, a journey that would have been difficult even for an uninjured man.
Rip was soon to learn that he was overestimating his strength, underestimating the seriousness of his wound.
Examining his guns, he found that he had only one cartridge left.
“Reckon I made good use of some of them, though,” he muttered.
He was soon in a forest of pines, a wild and utterly lonely land. Waco went tirelessly on, and the outlaw was forced to keep his teeth tightly set to endure the misery of it.
But he must reach poor Speer’s brother.
He’d promised that.
Besides, Rip Campbell would never rest until the survivors of that murderous band had been wiped out.
Reaching a little spring that gurgled from among the rocks in a wooded hollow, Rip stopped to let Waco drink and graze a little.
He was badly in need of water, himself.
But when he tried to get back into his saddle again, he found that he hadn’t the strength to stand, much less drag himself aboard his bronc.
Putting the Colt that contained his one cartridge alongside, he stretched out on the grass and slept.
It was night when he awoke, and he found himself weaker than ever.
Pain darted through his side with every breath he took, and he was bathed in icy sweat.
Unable even to rise, he again closed his eyes wearily.
“This is trail’s end for me,” was the thought that drifted through his numbed mind.
He was almost too ill to care.
How long he lay by the dripping spring, whether it was two days and nights or three, he never knew.
The ever-faithful Waco stayed close by his side, sometimes anxiously nudging his master with his velvety muzzle.
Some of the time, Rip was conscious, but for most of those terrible hours, he was in the grip of hideous nightmares.
Over and over again, in his uneasy, troubled dreams, he fought the rustlers in Caliente Basin.
Many times, he thought he saw Speer’s dead and smiling face.
He awoke one night in a sort of delirium.
It was very black, but he saw Waco looming near him.
Over the pinto, in a tree, he thought he saw two points of greenish light, like staring eyes.
“I must be losing my head,” Rip mumbled. “I’m loco.”
The eyes came closer.
Waco was uneasy, too, and Rip fancied that the animal was trembling with fear.
The outlaw reached out for the Colt.
He had one bullet left, he remembered.
“Those eyes ain’t real—I’m a-seein’ things,” Rip thought.
“It’s like that groan I thought I heard back in the shack.”
But he impulsively lifted his arm, aimed at the center of those moving points of baleful light, and fired.
The echoes of the shot rang dismally among the trees.
“I’m crazy in the cabeza.”
He grinned faintly, and floated off to sleep again.
But in the morning he saw, stretched out on the ground twenty yards away, the tawny carcass of a dead mountain lion!
He hadn’t been so light-headed, after all.
He was going to get well!
“Waco, you fool,” said the outlaw tenderly. “You knew about that lion, and you didn’t run. You was scared stiff, but you wouldn’t leave your old trail partner. Won’t you ever get no sense?”
Rip felt wonderfully better, though weak from lack of food.
Waco put his intelligent head down, and Rip clutched the animal’s neck and dragged himself to his feet.
In the saddle pockets were a few provisions, and the outlaw ate ravenously and drank again at the spring.
He’d come through, thanks to his tough and wiry physique.
He rested for most of the day, feeling better and stronger with each passing hour.
He even managed to give Waco a much-needed rubdown before starting again in the direction of Las Tablas.
By sundown, he was miles away from the spring where he’d almost cashed in.
That evening, shortly after nightfall, he saw the expected glimmer of lamplight.
He was near journey’s end, at last. Without a doubt, this was the ranch of Speer’s brother.
“Reckon our troubles is over for a while. Waco boy,” sighed the outlaw.
If he could have guessed what fate had in store for him, he wouldn’t have been so confident.
CHAPTER VIII.
Fred Bowman, the brother of Ranger Speer Bowman, had only a small ranch, and at that slack season employed no cowhands.
A grim, lantern-jawed hombre of almost forty, he lived a lonely bachelor existence in his two-room shanty at the foot of Marble Mountain.
He was not lonely, however, that night. Bowman had plenty of company.
The little kitchen was thick with tobacco smoke, and an earnest consultation was taking place. Sheriff John Rankin—a short and heavy-set hombre with iron-gray hair and a bristling mustache—was there from Las Tablas, and with him were two members of the Arizona Rangers, Dave Bell and Frank Myers.
Both were keen-eyed young men in the twenties.
Bowman’s fourth guest had accompanied the officers from town.
He was Ned Black, a cattle shipper and buyer from Las Tablas— a middle-aged but powerfully built hombre, attired in a suit of dusty black.
Whenever he talked, he showed a line of gold teeth.
“No, he ain’t showed up here,” Bowman was saying nervously.
“Speer’s always been able to take pretty good care of himself. Think there’s anything really wrong?”
“Well, Speer’s been gone on this mission for three-four days now, and we haven’t heard from him,” said Ranger Myers, flipping away his cigarette.
“What do you reckon could’ve happened?” Sheriff Rankin shrugged his heavy shoulders.
“It’s what we want to know. Several folks have disappeared, dropped clean from sight, somewhere between here and the north side of Caliente. It’s mighty suspicious. The Rangers and me was talking it over today in town. Mr. Black, here, offered to come along.”
“Yes, I want to get at the bottom of this—whatever it is.” Ned Black nodded vigorously.
“All this hocus-pocus is hurting my business.”
“Do you really think there’s anything wrong on the Circle-tail?” Fred Bowman questioned, puffing at his pipe.
“We’ve decided to go there and find out,” Ranger Bell snapped.
“Want to come with us, Bowman?”
“I guess so,” hesitated the rancher.
“I don’t know what to think about Speer. I can’t hardly believe, though, that there’s anything wrong with Old Man Pierce and his Circle tail spread. Why, he’s as honest as the day is long. If he ain’t, then I’ve always been badly fooled.”
Ned Black heartily agreed with him.
“I’ve done business with the old man for ten years,” he said.
“He’s square, all right. But I agree with the sheriff about wanting to see what’s wrong in the basin, if anything.”
“Bueno, we’ll start early in the morning, then,” Bowman agreed.
“No, we’ve decided to ride tonight,” Black said.
“That’ll bring us to Pierce’s at about sunup. Then-”
He broke off, cocking his head in a listening attitude.
A horseman was entering the little ranch yard; they all heard the beating of shod hoofs.
“Now who the Sam Hill could that be? I don’t get a visitor once a month,” Fred Bowman ejaculated.
The three officers rose to their feet.
“We’ll just step into the other room,” said the sheriff, his brow wrinkling.
“You entertain this here night rider, Bowman, while we give him a sizing up.”
Ned Black accompanied the officers into the adjoining bedroom. They left the door partly ajar, and as there was no light in the sleeping apartment, they could see without being seen.
They had just concluded their arrangements when a rap was heard.
“Come in!” Bowman grunted.
Spurs jingled across the threshold. In the mellow glow of the lamp, Bowman saw a clean-cut, blue-eyed hombre stepping into the house, a young fellow the rancher had never seen before.
Bowman’s taut muscles relaxed.
The sheriff’s precautions had been unnecessary.
No harm in this waddy.
Just a saddle tramp after a job or perhaps a bite to eat.
Bowman grinned a welcome.
“Howdy, youngster,” he greeted.
His visitor did not smile; there was something somber in his expression.
“You had—you’ve a brother named Speer? A Ranger?” he inquired soberly.
“Why, yes, kid, what about it?” demanded Bowman anxiously.
The newcomer handed him a horseshoe-nail ring.
“Speer told me to give you that,” he said gently.
“He’s—well, something’s happened to him. Speer is—dead.”
In his agitation, Fred Bowman gave a shocked cry.
As he did so, the young stranger whirled catlike on the toes of his boots. His hands had dropped toward his guns.
Then they went upward.
“That’s right, Campbell!” boomed the voice of Sheriff John Rankin.
“Keep them there! We’ve got you!”
The law—and Ned Black— swarmed into the kitchen with guns drawn.
“Whew! Campbell himself! What do you know about that?” cried Ranger Dave Bell.
“This is luck!” Myers echoed.
“Are you shore, sheriff, that this baby-faced kid is really-”
“It’s him, all right,” the sheriff jubilated.
“I’ve had his picture’ tacked over my desk for a year, and I ought to know! Take those guns from him, Fred.”
Bowman, still dazed from the news he had received, did as he was told.
Then one of the Rangers put the prisoner’s hands behind his back and snapped on a pair of handcuffs.
“I suppose you’re going to tell us your name’s John Doe.” Dave Bell grinned.
“Oh, I’m the hombre you want, all right,” admitted the outlaw wearily.
His gloomy eyes were fixed on Fred Bowman.
“I promised Speer I’d come here. He-”
“If he’s dead, you killed him!” accused the rancher, his face white and twitching with fury.
Rip Campbell’s shoulders drooped a little.
“I wish you’d let me tell my story,” he said.
“If I’d killed Speer, do you think I’d come here with his ring? We fought those rustlers together, him and me, and I hope that when my time comes, I can die as game as he did.”
“Spin your yarn,” grunted the sheriff impatiently.
“What rustlers are you talking about?”
“Rustlers in Caliente Basin,” the outlaw shot back.
“I saw them commit three murders, and they killed Speer. The Circle-tail-”
“That’s a likely story!” sneered Ned Black.
Rip Campbell whirled to stare at him with narrowed eyes.
That voice!
Where had he heard it?
“This kid’s lying’, that’s plain to see,” the Las Tablas cattle shipper went on.
“There’s nothing wrong at Pierce’s ranch. He’s just trying to pull the wool over our eyes.”
Black began to roll a cigarette.
Rip looked at his hands.
They were covered with warts!
“Why, you—you’re the leader of that murdering outfit!” Rip shouted, a wave of rage sweeping over him.
Ned Black leaped toward Rip, his face distorted with hatred.
He smashed the outlaw full in the face, with all his force.
“Accuse me of being a rustler, will you?” he snarled rabidly.
Unable to defend himself with his manacled hands, Rip went down, crimsoned at the lips.
“Ned Black in with a rustler gang?” sneered the sheriff.
“That’s a good one! What game are you getting at?”
Rip was silent.
What was the use to try to make the officers believe his story?
It was hopeless.
“Shall we take Campbell over to jail at Las Tablas, sheriff?” Myers asked.
“Guess we’d better postpone the trip to the Circle-tail, eh?”
“I don’t know. I hate to,” began the sheriff.
“We ain’t so very far from there now, and-”
“That’s what I say,” chimed in Ned Black.
“Let’s get the Circle tail business over with. We can leave Campbell a prisoner in the shack here. He’ll keep.”
“Good! Tie Campbell’s feet, Myers,” Bell told his fellow Ranger.
“Can’t you see,” the outlaw cried desperately, “that this Black hombre is just trying to lead you into a trap, so his men can shoot you down? He’s-”
“Shut up!” he was told curtly, and Myers took a fancy coiled reata from the wall and securely bound the outlaw’s ankles together. When the job was finished, the men prepared to leave.
Fred Bowman buckled on a gun, and slipped into a leather vest. One of the Rangers took the lamp from the table and put it on a shelf, turning the wick down low.
“For the last time, won’t you listen?” Rip begged.
“You’ll be walking’ right into a dry-gulch, for sure. This Black hombre-”
“Adios, Campbell man,” leered Black, kicking the prostrate outlaw heavily in the ribs.
“Come on, now. Let’s be hitting the trail.”
They tramped out, the lock clicked on the door, and presently Rip heard the rattling of bit chains and the squeak of leather as they got their horses and mounted.
Hoofs clattered and finally throbbed off into silence.
More victims for the killers on the Circle-tail, going like sheep to the slaughter!
CHAPTER IX.
When making Rip Campbell a v prisoner, the officers hadn’t stopped to consider that they were dealing with the slipperiest hombre in the Southwest.
The outlaw had made more desperate escapes than he had fingers and toes, and had broken out of some of the strongest jails in Arizona.
A fugitive since his earliest teens, Rip knew all the tricks.
That was one reason why he had managed to elude the noose for so long.
He was hard to hold.
The cuffs that had been snapped on him were of the old pattern, of a type with which Rip was well acquainted.
Given time, he was sure that he could free himself. Rip Campbell’s hands were small, and he had learned how to compress the bones and tendons of his hand and thumbs almost to the point of dislocation.
And his hard muscles were as supple as those of an acrobat.
The fact that the cuffs were behind him made his task more difficult.
His wound, too, pained when he exerted himself.
He wondered if, after all, he would be able to free himself.
With sweat pouring from his face, he tugged and squirmed to get the encircling bracelets over his hands.
The dragging minutes seemed like hours.
Time after time, he almost succeeded, only to have the steel hands slip back onto his wrists again.
“I’ve got to get loose! I’ve got to!” he muttered.
Finally, making a superhuman effort that tore the skin from his thumbs, he succeeded.
Hurling the cuffs from him, he sat up, got his breath, and then with numbed fingers unknotted the reata that bound his legs.
He stood up dizzily, clutching at the table for support.
He got the .45s that had been taken from him and ransacked the place for ammunition.
On a dusty shelf in the bedroom, he found a fresh box of fifty cartridges.
After loading his guns and filling the pockets of his pants, he broke a window in the kitchen and crawled through.
At his sharp whistle, the spotty bronc came trotting toward him out of the darkness.
With a chuckle of relief, Rip climbed into his saddle.
“We got to go far, Waco, and fast. Can you do it?”
The pinto’s bit chain jingled
“Yes.” Rip started north, toward the distant Caliente Basin.
Few hombres on the outside of the law would have done what Rip was doing.
He was free, able now to make good his escape from the district for good and all.
The sheriff and the Rangers were his natural enemies, and in riding to their aid, he was risking his life and liberty.
It didn’t even occur to him to leave the men to the fate they’d brought on themselves.
They were going to be trapped, and Rip meant to spike Ned Black’s evil plans, at no matter what cost.
Lawmen or not, he couldn’t let them die without doing all in his power to save them.
Besides, Speer’s brother was with them.
The moon was obscured by flying clouds most of the time, but Rip knew the way well, and he extended Waco to the limit.
The sheriff’s party had a long start on him.
“I’ve got to beat them to the Circle tail, that’s all there is to it!” he gasped.
Uphill and down grade, through timber and over rocky hogbacks flashed the hammering pinto.
Miles streamed by. By midnight, they were at the top of the divide, and the great basin was a black gulf beneath them.
After making the perilous descent to the bottom of the bowl, the going became easier.
Rip remembered the night he had traveled over almost the same route, at gun’s point, with Speer.
And it seemed to the outlaw that he could hear that chanting tune of Jim’s “The El Paso Jail.”
The horizon on his right flushed with the first pale colors of the dawn, and as the light brightened.
Rip looked searchingly about him.
He was still several miles from the Circle-tail headquarters, and he saw nothing of the sheriff’s party.
Could he have passed them during the long night gallop?
He cut a little to the left.
Only one more ridge now cut off a view of the ranch house.
As he passed it, he gave a low whistle.
There they were, only a few hundred yards west of him—the three lawmen, Speer’s brother, and Ned Black!
The little party were riding straight toward the Circle-tail headquarters, and were less than a quarter of a mile from it!
All was peaceful and quiet about the ranch house, but Rip was not deceived.
A murderous ambush was waiting.
Black was riding a little apart from the men he was betraying, to be out of the line of the gunfire when it came.
There was no time to lose; Rip roweled his pinto to head the party off.
“Black!” he shouted, whipping out one of his Colts.
The rustler leader wheeled his horse about, stiffened in his stirrups, and yanked quickly at his own gun.
Br-r-rang-bang!
Once, twice Rip’s .45 flashed flame.
A scarf of blue smoke whipped out behind the running pinto.
His first shot missed, Waco having joggled his aim by hurdling a mesquite bush.
At the second shot, Black squirmed half about in his saddle, squalling with agony.
He clutched at his saddle horn, missed it and thudded to the sand.
From the way he had fallen, Rip knew that he would never rise again.
It had all happened in a few seconds, before the rest of the posse had time to realize what was taking place.
“It’s Campbell!” bellowed Sheriff Rankin, collecting his scattered wits.
They had more to think of, however, than Rip Campbell just then!
Guns flashed venomously from the loopholes in the ranch-house walls. Bullets began to whine among them.
“Get behind the corral fence— quick!” Rip shouted as he galloped up.
If Rip had been a minute later than he had, even half a minute, that first volley of rifle fire would probably have wiped them all out. As it was, the outlaw had forced the rustlers’ hand, made them open up before their victims were within effective range.
The surprise was premature.
The four hombres who had been saved from the gun trap didn’t hesitate long, but followed Rip’s advice.
Jumping from their horses, they took refuge behind the corral fence, three hundred yards from the house.
The young outlaw was right with them as they dug in.
“Campbell, looks like you’ve—you’ve saved us in spite of ourselves!” stuttered the sheriff.
“Black was shore leading’ us into…a hornet’s nest. But how in damnation did you—you-”
“Never mind, sheriff. Just keep your head down,” drawled the outlaw.
CHAPTER X.
The men in the shack kept their Winchesters going steadily, but by taking advantage of every bit of cover, Rip Campbell and the others worked their way alongside the corral to the shelter of the tool house and granary.
Thus far, the gang was burning powder to no avail; none of the lawmen had received a scratch. For the time, the fact that Rip was an outlaw—a “wanted” man with a price on his head—was forgotten.
They were all in it together now!
And somehow, although they couldn’t have told why, they seemed to look to him for leadership.
“Not much use for us to shoot at the house,” he told them.
“Let’s lay low a minute and figure this out.”
“How many do you reckon are in there?” Dave Bell demanded.
Rip made a swift calculation.
“Five, I think—and I believe one of them was wounded the other day.”
“Well, there’s five of us; it’s even, looks like,” the sheriff growled. The rustlers had the big advantage of shelter, though, and Rip knew that a rush would be disastrous.
He considered carefully.
In the alleyway was the heavy wagon tongue the rustlers had used in their unsuccessful attempt to batter in the door when he and Speer had defended the house.
“There’s no loopholes in the back of the house,” he told his companions.
“We’ll take that pole and try to knock one of the shutters down at the rear. If the gang had tried that the other day on Speer and me. they’d have got us quick. Come on! We’ll circle through the trees by the pond.”
“Seems a good idea,” agreed Ranger Dave Bell.
“Wow! That was a close one!”
A high-powered bullet kicked up a volcano of sand and gravel near them with a loud spa-a-a-n-ng!
Cadwick’s .30-30 again!
Rip set his jaws grimly.
“Old Red-whiskers is plenty good with that long gun,” he warned them.
“Watch out for him. It was him that got Speer.”
“The murdering cutthroats!” choked Fred Bowman.
“Let’s go! Let’s wipe them stinkers out!”
“First, let’s decide exactly what we’re going to do, and how we’re going to do it,” the outlaw counseled.
They made swift plans; then, with the heavy pole, they circled the pond embankment, careful to keep out of sight.
They emerged from the timber thicket forty yards from the rear of the house, and some distance higher above it on the side of a knoll. There were two iron-shuttered windows.
It was agreed to ram the one on the right.
Four of them would be enough to use the pole.
Ranger Dave Bell’s job would be to blaze away at the one on the left to keep those inside from shooting out.
“Here goes! Ready?”
They charged down the slope.
Rip and Ranger Myers held the front of the wagon tongue.
Fred Bowman and the sheriff balanced the other end.
They gained speed at every stride.
Crash!
A combined weight of nearly half a ton smashed against the shutter.
Reinforced though it was, its fastenings burst asunder.
“In we go!” cried Rip Campbell as the obstruction fell inward.
He heaved his lithe body through the opening, guns drawn.
Myers scrambled after him, and Bowman and the slower-moving sheriff were right behind.
A hurricane of lead, aimed too high, came bursting from the rustler guns.
Rip Campbell, as he dropped to the floor inside, leaped to one side and crouched low.
He was in the kitchen—the room where Speer had got his death wound.
All was murky with smoke, but Rip had targets, and plenty of them.
His guns roared.
Three of the men were Mexicans, and he caught a glimpse of Mike Cadwick’s cruel, bearded face in the flash of guns.
By this time, three of Rip’s companions were in the house, and Dave Bell was just leaping through the window.
“Drop your guns!” bellowed the sheriff.
The five crooks chose to fight, instead, and they fought with all the insane ferocity of cornered animals.
At such close quarters, the battle was practically hand to hand.
Guns were used as clubs as well as firearms.
The noise was deafening.
Shrieks and yells were added to the uproar of exploding Colts.
Rip heard Fred Bowman laughing wildly.
Br-r-r-rang-bang-br-r-rang!
One of the Mexicans went slumping down, shot through the heart, his shirt on fire from the close-range gunpowder flash.
Myers tore a bowie from another swarthy rustler and blasted him down with his Colt.
Another desperado screamed and fell.
A weasel-faced hombre and Mike Cadwick rushed for the doorway that led into the bunk room, but only the whiskered Cadwick made it.
“Weasel-face” was nailed in his tracks by a shot from Sheriff Ran36 kin’s gun, and somersaulted to the floor. Rip leaped in alter Cadwick.
There was no door for the red-bearded ruffian to slam shut, only an opening in the partition.
As Rip jumped through it, Cadwick whirled on him, his .30-30 aimed from his hip.
Screaming an oath, he pulled the trigger.
But he was too close to his intended victim.
Rip knocked the barrel aside as the Winchester cracked savagely. He fired in return—twice—three times.
“That’s for Speer, you whiskered sidewinder!” the outlaw cried, his eyes frosty, his white teeth bared.
All of Rip’s shots took effect.
Cadwick, his beard parting in a laugh of agony, fell like a hamstrung buffalo.
He landed in a bunk, with his ugly head twisted under him.
With a long ah-r-r-r-r-r, he breathed his last, his death rattle clacking like a broken pump.
With a crimson-spotted sleeve. Rip wiped the sweat and powder stains from his face and, staggering a little, returned to the other room.
He hadn’t been hit this time, but his old wound was throbbing a little.
A yell went up from the sheriff and the others.
The fight was over, and only Ranger Myers had been wounded, his hurt being a bullet pierced arm and a cut on the left hand he’d received from a knife.
“Good work! Good work, all of you!” cried the sheriff, as excited and elated as a tot with a new toy.
“We wiped them all out, by jeepers! Campbell-”
But Rip was doing a curious thing.
He was stamping at the kitchen floor—and listening.
“What’s eating you?”
Ever since the day he’d made his escape from that very room. Rip had been puzzling himself over those groans he’d heard, or thought he’d heard.
It occurred to him now that there might be a cellar underneath the house.
Some of the boards gave back a hollow echo under his feet.
“I’m looking for some kind of a trapdoor,” he explained quickly.
“When I was here last-”
Dave Bell pushed the smashed table aside.
“By God!”
He whistled.
They all pushed forward eagerly at the sight of an iron ring, flush to the floor.
There was a cellar beneath.
The body of one of the Mexicans was rolled aside.
Bell got his fingers through the ring, and with an effort raised a good-sized door.
“Any one down there?” demanded the sheriff warily, his hand on the butt of his holstered gun.
There was no reply from the black opening in the flooring—only a faint sound that might have been made by a scampering rat.
Rip, though, thought he detected the sound of breathing.
“I’ll go down. Seems to be a ladder,” grunted Dave Bell, striking a match.
He descended carefully, his light flickering in his hand.
“Ain’t very deep,” he told them, his voice echoing back weirdly.
“Nothing here but a lot o’ canned stuff, an Oh, hell!”
“What do you see?” yelped the sheriff.
“Come and help me! There’s a man down here! It’s old Pierce! I don’t think he’s dead, but he’s mighty near it!”
Bowman and the sheriff hurriedly climbed down the ladder, and after some difficulty, they managed to bring the occupant up into the daylight.
Rip was shocked at the sight of him.
He was an old man of perhaps sixty, with long, unkempt white hair. He was practically a skeleton; his tatters of clothes were filthy, and his sunken eyes were half closed.
“He’s unconscious, but I think I can bring him around,” panted the sheriff when Pierce had been placed on one of the bunks.
He took a flask from his pocket, poured out a quarter cupful of whisky, added sugar and water, and held it to the old ranchman’s lips.
When Pierce was finally able to swallow, he took a few sips, and a little color began to creep back into his waxy face.
It was some time, though, before he could talk, and then only in a whisper.
He recognized the sheriff, but for a while, he seemed delirious.
“Have they—they gone?” he quavered at last.
“I—I’ve been through —through terrible-”
“I know, Pierce,” soothed the sheriff. “Here, take a little more of this, and then try and tell us about it. Have them skunks been keeping you down in that hole?”
“Yes, for weeks, I reckon. Have they gone?”
“Yes, they’ve gone to a place they’ll never come back from,” Rankin snapped.
“Did Ned Black do this to you?”
“Yes. When I wouldn’t consent to him using my spread for his stolen stock, he took my ranch anyhow,” groaned the old man.
“He had his gang murder the three punchers I had working for me. I’m near starved—ain’t had one meal for nigh a week.”
“How come he didn’t kill you right out, too?”
“Wanted me to sign—some papers. I wouldn’t. I been terrible weak. There was fighting’ going on the other day—unless I dreamed it. I tried to yell out, but I was too weak. I’d have been dead in another day, I reckon, if you hadn’t got here.”
“I’d sure never thought such a thing of Ned Black!” the sheriff said, shaking his head in bewilderment.
“Why, everybody thought he’d been carrying on a respectable cattle business. I’d never have dreamed–”
“Campbell was right, all the time,” ejaculated Ranger Bell.
“Hey! What the hell, Campbell?”
“Reach!” commanded the outlaw in a quiet voice.
“All of you get your hands up!” They’d all been so interested in Pierce’s story, they’d almost forgotten that Rip was among them. And now they found themselves staring into the muzzles of a pair of Colt .45 single-actions!
“Don’t worry,” Rip drawled whimsically. “I’m not going to hurt any of you.”
“But—but-”
Their hands had gone up, and their faces were white, as white as Pierce’s on the bunk.
“I just want to say adios to you, that’s all,” Rip chuckled,
“and when I say adios to three lawmen— well, I have to be careful, you know, how I say it.”
The tension relaxed a little, though they were careful to keep their hands aloft, and one by one they broke into wide grins.
“Good-by, Rip! Do you care if we wish you good luck?” they chorused.
The scar in Rip Campbell’s tanned cheek looked more than ever like a dimple.
“Just to make sure it’s good luck,” he said, “you’d better stay in the house until Waco and me have hit the trail. Adios, every one!”
And backing toward the door, one of the most “wanted” outlaw whistled cheerily for his pinto pony.
THE END
Can I send you WRANGLER for FREE?
Chris Lowry Books 