Читать книгу Clattering Hoofs - William MacLeod Raine - Страница 4

OUT OF A GASH IN THE HILLS TWO MEN RODE WARILY TO THE edge of the mesa and searched with their eyes the torn valley below. Seen from above, its floor was as wrinkled as a crumpled sheet of brown wrapping paper. The surface was scarred by lomas, washes, and arroyos running down from the bench back of it.

A brazen sun beat down on baked terrain sown with cactus and greasewood. In this harsh desiccated region the struggle to live was continuous. Vegetation was tough, with clutching claws. Reptiles carried their defensive poison. The animals that at rare moments flitted through the brush were fierce and furtive.

But no more savage than the men whose gaze squinted up and down the basin at their feet. The skin of the cholla was less tough than theirs. When cornered they could strike with the swift deadliness of the sidewinder. Across their saddles rifles lay ready for instant use. The butts of revolvers projected from the pockets attached to the shiny leather chaps they wore. Into every fold and wrinkle of their clothes the dust of long travel had filtered.

“Filled with absentees, looks like,” one of them drawled.

His companion added dryly, “I hope.”

The first speaker, a long dark man with a scar across his left cheek from ear to chin, lifted a hand in signal. Cattle dribbled out of the cut through which they had just come, pushed forward by a heavy-set squat man bringing up the drag. The animals moved wearily. It was plain they had been driven far and hard. The bawling of the beasts for water was almost incessant.

Anxiously the scarfaced man slanted a look at the westering sun. “Come dark we’ll be in the clear—if night ever gets here. Once we reach the pass they’ll never find us.”

“Likely we had a long head start.” The squat man’s glance swept the valley slowly. In the tangled panorama below him he could see no sign of human life. “No use gettin’ goosey, I reckon. Loan me a chaw, Sim.”

Sim was the oldest of the three and the smallest, with a face as seamed as a dried-up winter apple. He drew a plug of tobacco from his hip pocket and threw it across to the other and watched the sharp teeth at work. “You don’t have to eat the whole plug,” he remonstrated. “If I was you, Chunk, I’d buy me two bits worth of chewing some time and see how my own tobacco tasted.”

They turned the leaders into a draw that dropped down to the valley and presently the herd was in motion again. A cloud of fine dust, stirred by the tramping feet, rose into the air and marked their progress. The cattle smelled water and began to hurry. Scarface tried to check them, fearing a stampede, but the cattle pounded past him on a run. They tore down to the creek, which was dry except for half a dozen large pools, and crowded into the water. Those in the rear fought to get forward, while the leaders held stubbornly to the water until they had drunk their fill. The herders had their hands full moving the watered stock out of the way to make place for the thirsty steers.

They were getting the last of the cattle out of the bed of the creek when Chunk looked up and gave a shout of warning. Four armed men had just topped a knoll two hundred yards away and were coming up the valley toward them. The heavy-set man whirled his cowpony and jumped it to a gallop. Scarface took his dust not a dozen yards in the rear. It took Sim a moment to understand what was spurring his companions to flight. He was on the side of the herd nearest the approaching riders, and he lost more time circling the closely packed cattle.

A voice called to him to halt, but Sim had urgent business elsewhere. He stooped low in the saddle, his quirt flogging the buckskin he rode. The crack of a Winchester sounded, then another. The body of the little man sank lower. He clutched at the horn of the saddle. His head slid along the shoulder of his mount toward the ground. As he plunged downward, the fingers of his hand relaxed their grip on the horn.

Three of the pursuers went past him without stopping, the fourth pulled up and swung from the saddle. The body of the little man lay face down in the sand. He turned it over. Though the lips of the rustler were bloodless and his face grey, he was still alive. He recognized John Ranger, the man at his side.

“Who got you into this mess, Sim?” the cattleman asked.

The outlaw shook his head. His voice was low and faint. “You’ve killed me. Ain’t that enough?” he murmured.

They were his last words. He shut his eyes. A moment later his body relaxed and seemed to sink into itself.

Rustlers and cowmen had disappeared over a rise, but to Ranger had come the sound of shots, four or five of them, the last one fainter as the distance increased. He remounted and rode after his friends. The reason why the thieves had fled without a fight was clear to him. They were not so much afraid of a battle as of having their identity discovered. A rustler caught in the act had either to get out of the country or be killed. Since these fellows were not ready to leave they had to avoid recognition.

Near the end of the valley Ranger pulled up, uncertain whether the riders had ridden to the right or the left of the great rock which rose like a giant flatiron to separate the two cañons running out of the flats to the hills beyond. A rifle boomed again, far above him to the left. The explosion told him which gulch to follow. Before he reached the scene of action he heard other shots.

The cañon opened into a small park hemmed in by a rock wall, at the foot of which was a boulder field. In one swift glance Ranger’s eyes picked up his companions. Two of them were crouched behind cottonwoods and the third back of a fallen log, all watching the rock pile lying close to the cliff.

“Got a coon treed, Pete?” Ranger asked.

“Y’betcha. He’s skulking in the rocks.” The voice of the speaker was flat and venomous, his foxlike face sour and bitter. Peter McNulty was his name. He ran a small spread up by Double Fork. “Darned fool hasn’t anything but a six-gun. We’ll smoke him out soon.”

The man behind another cottonwood had a suggestion. “Can’t get at him from here, John. How about you riding up the gully and potting him from the bluff? He’ll have to throw in his hand then.”

“All right, Russ. The fellow you knocked off his horse down below has cashed in. He was old Sim Jones.”

Russell Hart frowned. He was a quiet and responsible cattleman. It gave him no pleasure to know that he had killed a man, and particularly as inoffensive a man as Sim Jones. Wryly, by inference at least, he justified himself. “That’s what bad company does for a man,” he said. “If he hadn’t thrown in with Scarface he would have gone straight enough. Sim was trifling, but there was no harm in him.”

Ranger swung his horse round and guided it into a sunken channel that had been cut by floods from the ridge above to the park. At the summit he dismounted and tied the pony, then moved forward cautiously to the edge of the precipice. The trapped man was kneeling back of a boulder, revolver in hand. Other rocks protected his flanks.

The cattleman took careful aim and fired at the flat plane of one of the rocks. Startled at this attack from the air, the man below looked up. The face turned toward Ranger was bearded but young.

“Throw up your hands and walk out of there,” ordered Ranger.

The man with the revolver knew he was beaten. His forty-five would not carry accurately to any of his foes. Ranger was quite safe on the bluff, but from where he stood he could send bullets tearing into the body of the other.

“What’s all the shooting about?” demanded the stranger. “Why should you fellows jump me when I’m riding peaceably about my business?”

“Don’t talk. Drop that gun and get going.”

“All right. Call off yore wolves and I’ll go out.”

Ranger shouted to the others that the fellow in the rocks was surrendering. Hands up, the man walked out from the boulder field. Two rifles covered him as he moved forward. When he was eight or ten paces from the men carrying them he dropped his arms. He was a slim young fellow, coffee brown, in cowboy boots, levis, and well-worn Stetson. His blue-grey eyes were hard and frosty. In his motions there was a catlike litheness. The muscles of his legs and shoulders rippled like those of a panther.

“I’ll listen to yore apologies,” he drawled.

Pete McNulty tittered, his small eyes gloating. “He’s gettin’ fixed to saw off a whopper on us. I’ll bet it’s good.”

“What is this—a sheriff’s posse?” The prisoner snapped.

“If any questions are necessary, we’ll ask them,” Hart answered harshly. He did not like the job they had agreed to do, and he was hardening his heart to it.

The man in levis was a stranger to them, but that meant nothing. Drifters came and went. That Scarface had picked up some scalawag on the dodge to help on the raid was very likely.

“I think we finish this now.” The man who had been behind the log shuffled around the end of it and joined the others. He moved ponderously, his short heavy legs supporting an enormous torso. Leathery folds hung loose on cheek and jaw. His deepset, peering little eyes looked shortsighted. Altogether, he resembled a rhinoceros. Though his name was Hans Uhlmann, his intimates called him Rhino. “Nice and quick, then get started with the cattle.”

The cornered man tightened his stomach muscles. He braced himself to meet what might be coming, deep-set eyes fierce as those of a trapped wolf. For he knew Uhlmann of old, and that knowledge set a passionate hatred churning in his heart. He owed the man a deep and lasting grudge, one he had waited long years to satisfy. That the ranchman did not recognize him was understandable. The big man had seen him last a pink-cheeked boy of nineteen, smooth-faced, thin as a rail. Now he was bearded. His body had filled out. The bitter intervening years had etched harsh lines in his face, given it an edge of lean sternness. Even a casual observer could not have missed the steely hardness, the defiant challenge of one at war with the world.

“You’ve made a mistake,” he said. “I’m not the man you want.”

Uhlmann showed bad teeth in a cruel grin. “You’re the man we’ll hang. Right now. Do the job and get on our way.”

The brutal ruthlessness of the man’s words angered the captive. They had made up their minds. They were not going to pay any attention to his story.

“What am I supposed to have done?” he asked.

Hart spoke, ignoring the question. “I reckon Scarface met up with you recently. You’re a stranger here.”

“Right. My name is Cape Sloan. Never heard of this Scarface.”

McNulty laughed, with heavy sarcasm. “He doesn’t know Scarface—wasn’t rustling stock with him. He was just riding along peaceable when we went gunning for him.”

“Get yore rope, Pete,” Uhlmann said.

Sloan could read in the faces of McNulty and Uhlmann nothing that gave him hope. That of the former was full of cruel mirth. The German’s was set as an iron mask. Toward Hart and Ranger he pointed his appeal.

“You haven’t told me yet what my crime is,” he said quietly.

“You know damned well what it is,” McNulty broke out. “No sense in talking more. Let’s get this business done.”

“I started this morning from Redrock,” the stranger said. “Last night I stayed at the road house there. That I can prove. All day I have traveled alone.”

McNulty showed his yellow teeth in an ugly grin. “Didn’t I tell you boys he would spread the mustard good?”

“I stopped at a Chink restaurant on Congress Street in Tucson for breakfast. A deputy sheriff named Mosely sat opposite me at the table. We talked about the Apache Kid.”

“So you say,” jeered McNulty. “Why don’t you claim you sat opposite John L. Sullivan?”

Sloan kept his eyes on Ranger and Hart. McNulty he ignored completely. “If you write to the road house at Redrock or to Mosely you’ll find that what I say is true.”

“We ain’t gonna write anywhere. We’re gonna string you to a tree.”

“Don’t push on the reins, Pete,” Hart counseled quietly. “We’ll listen to what this man has to say.”

“Where do you hail from?” Ranger asked.

For a half a second Sloan hesitated. “From Holbrook, I drifted west from Vegas.”

“Cowboy?”

“Yes.”

“With what outfits have you ridden?”

“I’ve worked for the Bar B B near Holbrook and for the A T O in New Mexico.”

“When did you work for the A T O?” Ranger inquired.

“Couple of years ago.”

“The A T O has been out of business for four years,” McNulty shouted jubilantly. “That cooks his goose.”

The stranger knotted his brows in thought. “That’s right. Time jumps away so fast you can’t keep up with it. I drew my last pay check from Tidwell ’most five years ago.”

“What does Tidwell look like?” Hart queried.

“He’s a fat bald man with only one good eye—wears a patch over the other.”

“What’s that got to do with the question? This guy might be Tidwell’s brother for all we care. Point is, he’s a rustler caught stealing cows. That’s enough.” McNulty tossed the loop of the rope in his hand over the head of the suspect, who promptly released himself from it.

“What are you doing in this country?” Ranger demanded.

Again there was a little pause before the young man opened his lips to answer. Before he could speak McNulty slid in an answer. “Why, that’s an easy one, John. He’s stealing our stock.”

“I asked him, not you, Pete,” mentioned Ranger.

“Just seeing what’s over the next hill,” Sloan answered. “You know how punchers move around. Thought I’d pick up a job riding for some outfit.”

Uhlmann took the rope from McNulty and shuffled a step or two closer to the victim. “What’s the use of talk? We caught him stealing our stuff. No use wasting time.”

The cowboy choked down the dread rising in him. “I tell you I’m the wrong man,” he said evenly. “Let me prove it.”