Читать книгу Trail of Blood and Bones: A Walt Slade Western - Bradford Scott - Страница 7

SLADE DID GO TO BED, AFTER CLEANING AND OILING HIS GUNS, and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow. He awakened shortly after noon, greatly refreshed and fit for anything. After breakfast at Amado’s La Luz, he and the cantina owner attended the inquest.

It was more formal and stately than the rangeland type across the river, but the verdict was similarly terse and to the point. Slade was commended for the part he played. The deckhand met his death at the hands of parties unknown whom the authorities were urged to apprehend and bring to justice. The slain outlaw was now tasting of the flames of infierno, it was hoped.

Afterward, everybody reparied to Amado’s cantina for a drink. Slade and the owner occupied a table in a corner near the dance floor, where they could talk without interruption.

“And you feel sure that the outrage was planned and executed by the man Sosna you seek?” said Amado.

“No doubt in my mind,” Slade replied. “I didn’t get a look at him, but I heard his voice, a voice I’ll never forget. Yes, it was Sosna, all right; the chore was typical of him.”

“And were it not for your courage and intuition, it would have succeeded,” Amado commented.

“Luck played a considerable part,” Slade replied. “I just happened to sit down by the window at just the right time and spotted the hellions sliding up the gangplank.”

“And tackled them all, singlehanded,” Amado observed dryly.

“And I slipped a bit there,” Slade added. “I was careless and neglected to be on the watch for a lookout posted by the cabin door, and very nearly got my comeuppance in consequence. Well, I guess you can’t think of everything.”

“Nobody has been able to so far, I would judge,” Amado agreed. “and you believe the ladrones crossed the river to Texas?”

“That’s my opinion,” Slade conceded. “By way of the ford to the west of Matamoros, I’d say.”

“And you intend to pursue him?”

“I do,” Slade stated. “That is,” he added grimly, “if it doesn’t turn out he’s pursuing me, which has been the case more than once in the past.”

Amado chuckled. “Sounds like the carrousel, the—merry-go-round,” he said.

“It goes around, all right, but there’s not much merry about it,” Slade smiled.

El Halcón versus Veck Sosna! The ablest and most fearless of the Texas Rangers pitted against the most cunning, most ruthless outlaw Texas ever spawned!

Slade pushed his empty coffee cup aside and stood up. “I’m going to take a little ride,” he announced. “Tell Dolores I’ll see her later.”

“I’ll do that,” Amado promised. “She will await you eagerly.”

When Slade reached the stable, Shadow whinneyed joyfully. The old keeper bowed and smiled.

“He likes not to be inactive,” he observed, apropos the tall black.

“I’ll give him a chance to stretch his legs a mite,” Slade said as he cinched the saddle into place. “We’ll be back.”

“Adios, Cápitan,” said the keeper. “Vaya usted con Dios—go you with God.”

Leaving Matamoros and Brownsville behind, Slade rode west on the Camino Trail, which ran close to the river’s edge. After a while the flat lands on the far side of the stream gave place to low rises thickly grown with brush, continuing to the ford and beyond.

At the ford, Slade reined in and gazed across to the heavy chaparral growth that ran close to the water’s edge.

The ford was a narrow ridge beneath the water, something like the Indian Crossing at Laredo, which is a ledge of limestone rock lying just below the surface of the water, and in dry seasons becomes exposed. Here there was never any exposure and the water was deeper. And, similar to the Indian Crossing, below the ford the river swirled and eddied, flashing and glittering and spuming rainbowed arcs of spray.

Such peculiar geological phenomena interested Walt Slade. He knew that this eastern section was on the fringe of the earthquake belt, the manifestations of which were often disturbing to the west coast. Such formations as the ones just mentioned evidenced subsidence or elevation not far in the past, geologically speaking, and it was with the eye of a geologist that he studied and understood them.

Shortly before the death of his father, subsequent to financial reverses which entailed the loss of the elder Slade’s ranch, young Walt had graduated from a famous college of engineering. He had planned to take a post-grad course in special subjects to round out his education and better fit him for the profession he had determined to make his life work.

However, at that time it became economically impossible and he was sort of at loose ends and trying to make up his mind as to just which course of action to pursue. So when Captain Jim McNelty, his father’s friend, the famous Commander of the Border Battalion of the Texas Rangers, who recognized good Ranger material when he saw it, suggested that he come into the Rangers for a while and pursue his studies in spare time, Slade decided the idea was a good one. Long since he had gotten more from private study than he could have hoped for from the post-grad and was eminently fitted for the profession of engineering.

However, in the meanwhile Ranger work had gotten a strong hold on him, which doubtless canny Captain Jim figured would be the case, and he was loath to sever connections with the illustrious body of law enforcement officers. Engineering could come later, he was young; he’d stick with the Rangers for a while longer.

Which explained his professional interest in such terrestrial manifestations as the Indian Crossing and the ford on which he gazed.

“Well, horse, here goes,” he said. “Maybe we can pick up a trail over there that will lead us to something. Not much travel on the north bank and half a dozen gents riding fast should have left some marks of their passing.”

Shadow didn’t argue the point and sloshed along in water that rose almost to his barrel.

As they neared the middle of the stream, where the water in the channel below the ford was very deep, Slade constantly studied the approaching north bank.

It was El Halcón’s inherent watchfulness and meticulous attention to details, plus his keen eyesight, that saved him from the drygulcher’s bullet. He saw the gleam of reflected sunlight as the hellion shifted his rifle the merest trifle before pulling trigger, and was already going sideways and down in the saddle, almost to the water, when the slug yelled through the space his body had occupied the instant before.

But Slade knew he was a setting quail in the full blaze of the sunlight and outlined against the water. To try and shoot it out with the rifleman holed up in the brush would be tantamount to suicide. There was but one thing to do, a devil of a chance to take, but he had no choice. He whirled Shadow downstream. His voice rang out, “Take it!”

Shadow took it, with a squeal of protest. Straight into the swirling, eddying waters below the ford he plunged, casting up a cloud of spray, going clear under. Slade slipped from the saddle and went under with him.

Up they came, blowing and gasping, and as they broke surface, bullets smacked the water beside them; but the drygulcher could see little to shoot at and none of the slugs found a mark. Then the current seized them and hurled them downstream toward a bend a few hundred yards distant.

But as he battled with all his strength to reach the nearer north shore, Slade began to fear that he had just traded a quick death from lead poisoning for a somewhat slower one by drowning. For here the ever unpredictable Rio Grande ran like a millrace and the water in the channel was deep and cold. For half the distance to the bend he did not gain a yard. Weighted by his guns and his clothes, he could barely keep his head above water, and Shadow was having trouble, too. Slade gripped the bridle iron with one hand and paddled furiously with the other. His arms were growing heavy as lead, there was a band as of hot steel about his chest, tightening, tightening, shutting off his laboring breath. His heart was pounding, red flashes stormed before his eyes.

He went under again, broke surface gasping and retching; looked like it was curtains.

They reached the bend and with a surge of renewed hope, Slade realized that they were in an eddy that was whirling them toward the north shore. A moment later Shadow’s irons clashed on stones. He gave a prodigious snort and surged forward, Slade clinging to the bridle iron. Another instant and his boots scraped on the bottom and he was reeling and stumbling through the shoaling water. Together they struggled ashore, Shadow to stand gulping and gurgling, Slade prone on the warm sands.

Gradually his strength returned. He regurgitated some of the water he had swallowed and felt better. Sitting up, he hauled off his hat, which had been kept in place by the chin strap, and batted it free of water. Removing his boots, he emptied them and managed to struggle back into them. Then he stood up, shook himself and wrung out his clothes as best he could. Fortunately the sun was hot and he was already beginning to steam.

All the while he was keeping a sharp watch upstream, against the chance the drygulcher might put in an appearance around the bend. He made sure his Winchester was free in the boot—it would take no harm from the wetting.

“Into the edge of the brush, horse,” he said. “We’ll hole up there for a while; don’t want to get caught settin’ again.”

Physically he was feeling pretty good; but mentally he was thoroughly disgusted with himself and in a very bad temper. Outsmarted again! Sosna had figured what his move would be and had set a trap for him; and he had blithely blundered into it.

“And nothing but plain bull luck saved us,” he growled to Shadow, overlooking the part his own acute perceptions had played. He smiled wryly as he recalled his remark to Amado Menendez, that in this deadly game of hide-and-go-seek it was sometimes difficult to be sure just who was the pursued and who the pursuer. Sure worked out that way this time. Still watching the brush-flanked bend in the trail, he drew forth his waterproof pouch of tobacco and matches and rolled and lighted a cigarette.

“Guess we can take a chance on a brain tablet,” he told Shadow. “Won’t make enough smoke to be seen and the wind’s blowing from the west, so the hellion can’t smell it. Seems ridiculous to think he could even with the wind blowing the other way, but if Sosna himself happens to be somewhere around, I wouldn’t put it past him. Now I wonder what he figures I figure to do? The answer to that one could be mighty important.”

He smoked the cigarette down to a short butt, which he pinched out carefully and cast aside. For several more minutes he stood gazing toward the bend in the trail; it showed no signs of life.

“Horse,” he said, “we’re going to play a hunch. It’s evident that the hellion isn’t riding down this way to try and learn what happened to us. I’ve a notion he’ll figure that if we weren’t drowned, we’ll continue to wherever we were headed for when we tackled the ford. Which would mean that we’d ride west on this trail. Perhaps he hightailed when we went into the drink, but then again perhaps he didn’t. He could still be holed up waiting for another chance. Sosna doesn’t take kindly to failure, and the fellow may be reluctant to go and report that for all he knew he did fail. The whole business seems to be sheer nonsense, his arriving at such a conclusion; just doesn’t make sense. But then nothing the Sosna bunch does seems to make sense. Let’s go!”

Mounting, he rode diagonally up the brush clad slope. Shadow didn’t like it but registered his disapproval in a single disgusted snort, then forged ahead, avoiding as many thorns as possible.

Slade smiled grimly as he reflected that now, at least, the outlaws were on Texas soil and under his jurisdiction as a Ranger. In Mexico his only authority had been what he packed on his hip, and there was always the chance that he might find himself in exceedingly hot water. This was much better.

Finally he reached the crest of the rise where the growth was even heavier than farther down the slope. Shadow wriggled and wormed his way through the chaparral strands until they arrived at a point Slade believed was not far from being directly above where the drygulcher had been holed up and possibly still was. As far as he dared go on horseback. He slipped from the saddle, dropped the split reins to the ground and gave Shadow a pat.

“Take it easy, now,” he whispered. “Can’t take a chance any longer on the racket you make shoving through the brush. Be seeing you.”

Silently as the shadow of the great mountain hawk for which he was named, he drifted down the slope, pausing often to peer and listen. He followed a slantwise course for a while, until he was sure he must be directly above the point from which the drygulcher’s bullets had come. Now it should be less than a hundred feet down the sag. That is, if the fellow hadn’t moved. He might have slipped farther down the slope, but Slade doubted it. Farther up he would have a better view of the trail where it curved around the growth, following the bend of the river. Slade slowed his pace to a crawl, careful to snap no twig, to step on no dry branch, to move no stone.

The sun was close to the western horizon now and it was already gloomy under the thick growth. The hush of evening had descended, broken only by the sleepy chirps of birds. Slade strained his eyes to pierce the deepening shadows, and he began to believe that his thorny ride and stalk had been for nothing; there was naught to be seen, nothing to be heard. Looked very much like the killer had hightailed. Instinctively he quickened his gait a little.

Then abruptly he halted to stand rigid. From nearby had come a sound, faint and musical, the jingle of a bit iron as a horse tossed its head. The devil was still there!

But blast it! where was “there?” Must be close, unpleasantly close. Had he been spotted creeping down the slope? Was the muzzle of a gun swinging in his direction, eyes glinting along the sights? A nice thought! He stood tense and motionless, his glance probing the shadows ahead, bleday, N.Y., 1948. drew a breath of relief as nothing happened. He risked another forward step, and saw the drygulcher.

He was lounging against the trunk of a small tree, less than half a dozen paces distant, his eyes fixed on the trail below. Slade’s pulses leaped exultantly; he had the hellion “settin’!” Take him alive and perhaps force him to talk. He drew his right-hand gun, glided forward another step. His lips opening as if to speak, he sensed rather than saw movement to his right. There were two of the devils!

Sideways and down he went. A gun blazed and the slug whipped through the crown of his hat. He fired at the flash, rolled over and over. The drygulcher by the tree whirled with a yell of alarm. Bullets stormed from two directions, kicking up spurts of dust, fanning his face with their deadly breath. He shot as fast as he could pull trigger, left and right, left and right!

A gurlging scream knifed through the uproar, the thud of a falling body and a wild thrashing about. Slade whirled over on his side, saw the second killer looming huge and distorted in the gloom, almost over him. He fired point-blank, tried to surge erect. Something crashed against his skull and the world exploded in flame and roaring sound, and a cyclone-rush of blackness.