Читать книгу Bullets for a Ranger: A Walt Slade Western - Bradford Scott - Страница 5

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WHEN HE FINALLY regained something resembling consciousness, Slade knew he must have been completely out for some time. His face was caked with dried blood which had flowed from a bullet gash at the hairline above his left temple; his clothes were soaked by rain that had fallen. His limbs were stiff and he was cold. Fortunately, however, the night was warm, and a bit of movement would quickly remedy that condition. There seemed to be a great hammer beating with clanging strokes in his head. Waves of pain flowed before his eyes as he moved, and for a long moment he was deathly sick.

Recovering somewhat, he propped himself on a shaking elbow. Overhead the sky was almost clear, although the wind still howled in intermittent gusts. Summoning his strength, he lurched to his feet to stand weaving and staggering. The effort reopened the wound, and blood trickled down his face. He wiped it away with a trembling hand and glared wildly about.

Nowhere nearby was there any sign of movement. The tossing waves of the bay were silvered by the moonlight, and far out on the turbulent water showed a crawling gleam of light, evidently from a ship breasting the waves.

“And she’d better stay out there,” he muttered, apropos of the passing vessel. “Get too close and some contrary current is liable to beach her, and she’d be pounded to pieces in no time.”

Dismissing the ship, which could doubtless take care of itself, from his thoughts, he turned his attention to his more immediate surroundings. Shadowy amid the broken growth straggling the sand, he could just make out the sprawled bodies of the two dry-gulchers. He was anxious to examine them, but they’d have to wait.

With fingers that still trembled, he explored the bullet crease. He was reassured in finding no evidence of fracture, a conclusion bolstered by the free flow of blood. Concussion might be another matter, but he did not think he had suffered any. Just the same, the blasted thing must be taken care of, and without delay.

Stumbling and lurching, he made his way to where Shadow was waiting in patient disgust. He fumbled a jar of antiseptic ointment and a roll of bandage from his saddle pouch. After smearing the wound with the ointment, he padded it heavily and managed to bandage the pad into place. The activity warmed him, and he decided he was feeling a mite better despite the hammer blows inside his head, which were lessening to a degree.

“Okay, feller, now for you,” he told the horse, and proceeded to loosen the cinches and flip the bit free so that the animal could graze in comfort on the sparse grass, which Shadow immediately proceeded to do. The task completed, Slade turned to search out a resting spot for himself. As he did so, his attention was attracted by a glow in the northeast, miles distant, steadily brightening against the sky. It quickly resolved to a flicker of flame tossing and billowing in the wind. He knew it was a beacon atop a hill to notify the coming ship that it was safe to veer nearer the land into a channel that would lead it to port.

Still feeling far from good, Slade sat down with his back against a tree trunk, fished out his waterproof pouch of tobacco and papers and rolled a cigarette, his hands still shaking slightly. The blasted slug had hit him one devil of a wallop.

“Guess I’m lucky at that, though,” he told Shadow. “Another inch to the right and I wouldn’t be here talking to you about it.”

He smoked the cigarette slowly, down to a short butt, which he pinched out and cast aside. Feeling somewhat better, he got to his feet.

“Now for a look at those gents in ‘armor,’” he said. He was very curious about the bizarre costume the pair affected and wanted to know just what it was that bore such a remarkable resemblance to what the iron men of Spain wore some centuries ago. He strode to the edge of the growth, from where he could see the bodies sprawled on the sand. Pausing, he glanced around, started forward again and halted in mid-stride.

To the east the moonlit trail was visible for nearly a mile. Riding the trail and steadily drawing nearer the thicket were seven or eight horsemen. As they approached, Slade saw that the moonlight reflected from burnished headpieces and whatever the devil it was that covered their breasts.

“More of the same brand!” he growled, eyeing the approaching riders.

Just what would be best to do, he wondered. Quite likely they were coming to look for the two who had holed up in the thicket. They wouldn’t have any trouble spotting the bodies from the trail. But would they perhaps search the growth for a clue as to what had happened to them? That was a very serious question from the Ranger’s point of view. He was in no shape to take on odds of eight to one. And he certainly didn’t feel like being the quarry in a grueling chase. He had every faith in Shadow’s speed and endurance, but even the best of horses needs a guiding hand that is sure, and at the moment his hand was far from sure. The sensible thing was to stay holed up in the growth and hope for the best. He moved back a little to where he could see but not be seen, and waited.

The approaching horsemen were looming large now, and as the wind lulled for a moment, Slade could hear the click of the speeding irons. A moment later, as they drew abreast of the thicket, an angry shout sounded and another. A gust of oaths followed as there was no answer to the hail. The horses clattered to a halt; several of the riders dismounted. Slade waited. There came a yelp of discovery, then a torrent of curses. The others dismounted hurriedly, and the whole bunch grouped around the two bodies. Strident voices bawled incoherent questions liberally sprinkled with appalling profanity. Slade’s hands dropped to his gun butts as several turned toward the thicket.

However, they did not move in his direction. Instead, they hurried toward the far end of the thicket, to the east. A moment later there was another shout of discovery. Two saddled and bridled horses were led into view. The babble of voices rose to an incoherent uproar.

“Dead! Drilled dead center!”

“Who did it? What happened?”

“Who the blankety-blank-blank knows who did it or what happened! They’re dead, ain’t they? Been dead quite a while, too! No wonder there wasn’t any blaze!”

“What a night this has been! A nice haul gone to the blankety-blank-blank!”

“Shut up! Rope ’em to the saddles and let’s get out of here. I don’t like this business.”

Such were the solid peaks above the clouds of indecipherable bumbling. A few minutes later the band mounted and stormed west, the two bodies flopping grotesquely across the saddles of the lead horses, their “armor” reflecting derisive gleams of moonlight.

Little less bewildered than the mysterious night riders, Walt Slade gazed after them until they dwindled from sight. He shook his aching head and returned to Shadow. The whole blasted affair just didn’t make sense. Well, he was in no shape to try to think things out. And he had a twenty-mile ride ahead of him.

Not tonight! He doubted if he could stay in the hull for half that distance. So he got the rig off Shadow and gave him a rubdown, after a fashion. His blanket, rolled inside his slicker, was dry. He spread it on the ground, and with his damp saddle for a pillow was almost instantly asleep.

With the full light of dawn he was awake. Aside from a sore head and a sense of frustration, he was about his normal self again. Also he was hungry, a good sign. That could be taken care of. From his saddle pouches he drew forth a slab of bacon, a hunch of bread, some eggs carefully wrapped against breakage, and coffee, along with a small skillet and a little flat bucket. He recalled that only a couple of hundred yards west of his misadventure with the crows there was a trickle of water running down to the bay. So, very soon coffee was bubbling in the bucket, bacon and eggs sizzling in the skillet—all a man needed to banish the pangs of hunger.

After eating and cleaning up, he enjoyed a leisurely smoke, then took stock of his surroundings.

The thicket grew on the crest of a rise that was in the nature of a broad sand dune, the waters of the bay, now blue and placid, washing the base of its gentle slope some seventy feet lower down. There appeared to be nothing outstanding about the spot except that it afforded a good view for some distance across the bay, also along the trail to the east where it began to curve northward, following the contours of the bay.

He walked east to where the horses of the two night riders had been tethered. Here he discovered a big heap of twigs and dry branches. Looked like the band had planned to light a fire and cook a meal, the chore being assigned to the pair holed up in the thicket.

But why at such an isolated spot exposed to the full fury of the wind? The whole business just didn’t seem to make sense. Of course, there were sheep and cattle ranches farther west, and it seemed that wide-looping of both cows and woollies had been plaguing the section. And a mile or so to the west was a sheltered cove where a small vessel could put in safely when the weather was not too bad. Would have been risky last night, however.

Slade knew that many of the little coastwise ships that plied the bay and often put in at Port Lavaca were not above handling contraband and doing a bit of genteel smuggling on the side. There was nothing new about running wide-looped cows by water, and sheep would be even easier to handle that way. Perhaps that was the answer to the puzzle. He recalled one of the voices mentioning something about a blaze that wasn’t lit. Yes, quite likely that was the explanation. The bunch aimed to eat and hole up here until a bit later, then swoop down on some outlying flock or herd and run a few head to the water’s edge, where they would have been taken aboard by a vessel putting in at a given signal. But they picked one devil of a night to try it.

Well, he had been sent here to run down a few ghosts. Anyhow, he’d made a start, at the expense of a sore head. Two of the devils accounted for. Not so bad for his first twenty-four hours in the section. In a more cheerful frame of mind he got the rig on Shadow and headed for Port Lavaca and a bluff on the west shore of Lavaca Bay, an offshoot of Matagorda.

Where the trail curved to the north, he pulled up a moment and sat gazing at the bay. Here the coast was really bad, studded with jagged rocks, the water swirling and eddying over sunken reefs, currents that for seemingly unexplainable reasons ran in madly from the deep water far out. For several miles it would continue thus, to be replaced gradually by a deep and smooth channel along which a ship could sail safely to Port Lavaca. Where the channel began, the beacon had been lighted the night before, to guide the incoming vessel, warning it to stand well out to sea until the treacherous stretch of coast was passed.

Those currents interested Slade, indicating as they did a peculiar geological formation of some sort.

Shortly before the death of his father, subsequent to financial reversals that entailed the loss of the elder Slade’s ranch, young Walt had graduated from a famous school of engineering. He had planned to take a post-graduate course in special subjects to round out his education and better fit himself for the profession he determined to make his life’s work. This for the time being became impossible, and Slade was at loose ends, undecided as to just what he should do.

Captain Jim McNelty, understanding his predicament, made a suggestion.

“Why not come into the Rangers for a while, Walt,” he said. “You will have plenty of spare time to study. You did all right when you were working with me during summer vacations, and we can use you. What do you say?”

Thinking the matter over, Slade decided the suggestion was a good one. Which it turned out to be. Long since he had gotten more from private study than he could have hoped for from the post-grad, and he was eminently fitted to take up the profession of engineering.

But meanwhile Ranger work had gotten a strong hold on him, and he was reluctant to sever connections with the illustrious body of peace officers. Captain Jim smiled when Slade mentioned the fact, but he held his peace, allowing Walt to make up his own mind.

The final result of considerable soul-searching was Slade’s decision to stick with the Rangers for a while. He was young—plenty of time to become an engineer. Captain Jim smiled again and refrained from comment. He’d made a similar decision himself, long years ago.

Often Slade had found his knowledge of the principles of engineering of value in the course of his Ranger activities and had put it to use. So now he surveyed the turbulent water with the eye of a geologist.

Two currents interested him particularly. One—broad, turbulent, evidently deep—came storming in from the bay. It headed straight for the face of the beetling, clifflike rocks. The other, not far to the west, flowing outward, was much more placid despite the buffeting of the incoming tide.

“Tide’s at flood and this one here is just boiling in, but it doesn’t seem to smash the rocks with the force that would be expected,” he remarked to Shadow, musingly. “Interesting. Well, june along, horse, we’ve got things other than speculation over the vagaries of ocean currents to bother about. Let’s go!”

To the west and north was rangeland, on which herds of cows grazed. This section, not so long before, Slade knew, was part of Shanghai Pierce’s great holdings. Shadow splashed through several shallow bayous. To the west, Slade noted a number of rises, none of them very high, but rugged, with here and there spires of stone.

“Yes, an interesting section, geologically speaking,” he told Shadow. “Much weathered down. In the old days, ages before, when the shore of the bay was farther east, it must have been high and rocky. I’ve a notion that underneath the soil is still the original sedimentary limestone formation, no doubt honey-combed with caves and tunnels which once had openings above ground. Largely conjecture, however, horse, so we won’t bother our heads about it. No concern of ours, anyhow.”

Shadow snorted agreement, as much as to say, “Okay! Okay! But how about a helpin’ of oats before long? I’m more interested in that than limestone caves; oats don’t grow in caves.”

At least that was Slade’s translation of the initial snort, which was followed by a couple more. Who can say he was wrong?