Читать книгу Six-Gun Gorilla - Anonymous - Страница 11

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The horses in the coach were tired. They had already come a full lap of the long journey through the Western mountains, but now they went faster than they had ever gone in their lives.

Their necks were outstretched, their eyes bulged, their nostrils were wide; they were crazy with fear as they stampeded, pulling the heavy mail coach behind them.

It was not the whip of the wild-eyed coachman which urged them on, but fear—stark fear. It was fear which caused three ruffian-looking men to cling desperately to the sides of the coach as they sought to climb to the top of it while it raced along.

And the reason for this fear was a nightmarish figure, well over six feet tall, which leaped and bounded down the trail after the coach.

It was a massive gorilla, with shaggy, red-brown hair, a fierce, hideous face, and ungainly limbs. It was moving sometimes on all fours, sometimes on its hind legs, and on the occasions which it straightened up it was possible to see that around its waist it wore a gunbelt and a revolver. Over one shoulder was a bandolier, which was heavy with cart ridges.

Swift through the great beast was, it was soon outdistanced by the maddened horses. At last it pulled up, snarling with disappointment. Uncertainly it swayed on its feet, snatched out the revolver, and blazed away three shots after the departing coach.

The shots were meant for the three men who clung to the sides of the swaying vehicle. They missed, and the gorilla roared with rage. More than anything else it desired to kill those men.

The strange feud had begun at the Dragonfly Mine, a small gold mine in the Boulder Hills of Colorado. This mine had belonged to Bart Masters, an old-timer, who had worked it for seven years, aided only by the gorilla, which he had purchased when young from sailor named O'Neil.

O'Neil was the name Bart Masters had given the gorilla, and O'Neil became his constant companion. The old miner had taught the great beast to be useful. It could dig, haul up buckets of earth from the mineshaft, or bring in firewood.

The miner had even taught it to use a revolver with a fair amount of accuracy. It had always made old Bart Masters grin to see O'Neil rigged up with gunbelt and bandolier. The gorilla had enjoyed it as much as the man.

Then one night came tragedy. Masters had decided to give up his mine. He had nearly ten thousand pounds worth of gold. He had decided to abandon the mine and go back to civilization.

That same night a bunch of gunmen, known as the Strawhan Gang, had come to the lonely mine, had killed Bart Masters, wounded the chained gorilla, and made off with all the gold.

O'Neil had recovered, and had nearly gone mad when he discovered that his master was dead. He had set out on the trail of the murderers whom he knew both by sight and scent.

The trail had led a considerable distance. He had caught up with and slain one of the four gunmen, but the other three had got ahead of him, to the coaching depot in this lonely spot. There Tutt Strawhan, Pete Stark, and El Valdo, the half-breed, had prepared a trap. They had shot the men in charge of the coaching station, and had barricaded themselves inside the place armed with rifles and sticks of dynamite.

But the Six-Gun Gorilla was more clever than they had thought. The first of the killers had know of is presence at the coaching depot was when he had arrived on the roof of the building and started to tear a way through to them. They could not use the dynamite without blowing themselves up.

The Strawhan Gang would undoubtedly have been wiped out if the westbound coach had not appeared on the trail at that moment. Seeing the gorilla on the roof of the depot the passengers had yelled to the driver to keep going, and the three besieged ruffians had managed to dash out and get aboard the passing coach.

O'Neil's hopes of vengeance had once again been dashed. With a smoking gun in his hand, he had watched the coach vanish in the distance.

A low and mournful cry came from the depths of his throat.

Slowly the gorilla went back to the coaching depot and searched for food. It had a special fancy for tinned fruits. By crushing the tins in its great hands it could extract the juice and the sweet fruit pulp.

There was not much tinned fruit in the depot, and in its fury the gorilla wrecked everything within reach. It even tore down the door from the stable, and allowed the relief horses for the coach to bolt.

After that there was nothing else to do. It seated itself on a flat rock and proceeded to clean its revolver. Often it had watched Bart Masters cleaning his gun and it knew that the weapon must be kept clean.

But the gorilla had neither rags nor brushes. It cleaned the gun as best it could by licking it and blowing through the barrel. Then came the slow process of reloading it. With clumsy fingers it thrust new cartridges into the chambers and finally clicked the gun closed.

The gun replaced in the holster, the gorilla started down the trail to the west. Although it had missed the men it sought, it did not intend giving up the chase. It had resolved to track down the Strawhan Gang, no matter where they went.

On and on it marched, sometimes on all fours, sometimes rising on its hind legs to study the country ahead.

As for the coach, it had gone fully four miles before the exhausted horses had slowed. They were lathered with sweat and on the verge of collapse. The coachman did not attempt to goad them any further. He knew that they were finished for the time being.

So the coach stopped, and the passengers looked anxiously behind them, sighing with relief when they saw no trace of their pursuer.

"What in heck does it all mean?" demanded the guard, still gripping his heavy shotgun. "What kind o' beast was that?"

He addressed his remarks to Tutt Strawhan, whose face was streaked with sweat.

"It was a gorilla," said Strawhan shortly, for he had just remembered that in their flight away from the coaching depot they had left the gold which they had taken from Bart Masters.

"A gorilla! But there aren't any gorillas in America," objected one of the passengers. "Where did it come from?"

"Dunno! Guess it must have been somebody's pet, or else escaped from a circus. It killed two men at that depot. We came across their bodies, and then it attacked us," lied Strawhan.

"Then we'd better get on as quickly as possible, before it catches up on us," said the other passenger nervously.

"Can't do that, mister, till the hosses are rested," declared the coachman. "Fair run themselves to bits, they have. We've got a good start. The brute won't follow us. There's no reason why it should. It's got the whole of America to trail around in."

Strawhan and his two companions exchanged glances. They knew that this was not so.

"Just how long will it take for them horses to rest, mister?" demanded Strawhan.

"Reckon two hours will see 'em fit enough to carry on," exclaimed the driver.

"Two hours!" gasped Strawhan. "That gorilla will be here long before then. Any rifles aboard?"

There was one, and Strawhan grabbed it. He posted himself behind a boulder which overlooked the trail to the east. He meant to riddle the gorilla before it got too close. It might not be able to stand nickel-nosed bullets from an express rifle as it did the softer bullets from a six shooter.

The gang leader had been there about fifteen minutes, and was trying to decided whether a small cloud of dust he could see in the distance was moving or not, when something whistled within an inch of his head.

It stuck a nearby tree. It was an arrow!

Crack-crack!

Tutt Strawhan fired at the bushes where he saw a movement, and a copper colored figure leaped in the air and fell forward. Tutt Strawhan raised a shout of alarm and started for the coach.

"Injuns! Make for the coach!" he roared.

No one needed a second warning. Even in those days, when the white men had established themselves well in Colorado, roving bands of young Indians sometimes sneaked down from the mountains to launch a raid in search of the coveted scalps of the white men.

There were a dozen Indians in this party, and they surged forward with war-like cries, brandishing their tomahawks and shooting their arrows as they came.

The guard of the coach was killed by one of those arrows. Pete Stark grabbed the fallen man's shotgun and followed inside the coach.

Everyone who had a gun was using it. The coach gave the white men a certain amount of cover. The horses, which had been tethered beside the track to graze, promptly struggled free and bolted.

At a time like this all differences were forgotten. The Strawhan Gang knelt beside the passengers whom they would have cheerfully robbed, and fired rapidly at the attackers. Four of the Indians rolled in the dust, but the rest took cover, crouching behind bushes and firing their arrows through the coach windows.

Tutt Strawhan's face was gashed by one of these deadly missiles, and one of the passengers got an arrow in his arm.

For another half hour the duel continued, and then the Six-Gun Gorilla arrived on the scene.

He had been attracted by the sound of gunfire, and he had covered the last few miles at top speed.

Approaching the scene of the fight O'Neil leaped into a large tree, and peered down at the scene below.

The coach was not completely surrounded. The men inside were not visible, but whenever an Indian showed himself in order to shoot an arrow, a shot rang out.

The fierce eyes of the giant gorilla peered out from amongst the branches, and it reached for its six shooter. Bart Masters had taught it that Indians were enemies. On the one occasion when a band of Indians had attacked the Dragonfly Mine, the old prospector had slain four of them.

The Six-Gun Gorilla had never forgotten that. He decided that he must act as his master had acted. From a distance of no more than ten yards, O'Neil fired at the back of a Redskin.

What was more, the bullet struck home. The Indian gave a screech of pain, and rolled over on his side.