The Range Detectives

by William W. Johnstone

  “Let’s see if we can get back to the line shack without runnin’ into any more trouble,” he said. “Reckon we’ve done all we can for today. We’ll put our heads together and figure out our next move.”

  “We’ve got to find that rustlers’ hideout,” said Dan. “That’s the only way we’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

  Stovepipe nodded and said, “I expect you’re right.”

  He was pondering some other things, though, but as usual he kept them to himself. It wasn’t his custom to start spouting theories until he had worked out as many of the details as possible.

  Their route took them far to the north as they circled toward the high pastures on the other side of the Box D. Dan didn’t want to cut across the heart of the spread, and Stovepipe agreed that was a good idea. They wanted to avoid not only any of Abel Dempsey’s punchers who might be riding the range, but also posses from Hat Creek who could be out searching for the escaped prisoners.

  They were just crossing the shallow stream that flowed on eastward to the settlement named after it when a group of riders followed the bank around a bend to their left. The grass was thick along the bank, so the horses hadn’t raised any dust, and the grass had muffled the hoofbeats as well. Stovepipe, Wilbur, and Dan were taken by surprise and couldn’t get out of sight in time.

  “Uh-oh,” muttered Wilbur.

  “Uh-oh is right,” said Stovepipe, and hard on the heels of his words came the popping of gunshots as the horsemen surged toward them, firing as they charged.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Instantly, Stovepipe, Wilbur, and Dan jabbed their boot heels in their horses’ flanks and sent the animals leaping forward. Water flew high, filling the air with sparkling droplets, as the horses splashed through the creek and lunged up onto the bank.

  Stovepipe glanced at the group of riders and recognized the burly figure of Sheriff Frank Olsen in the lead. Wilbur’s earlier comment about their luck ending appeared to be coming true. Nothing but pure happenstance had led them to cross this creek just as the sheriff and the posse came along.

  “Don’t shoot back at ’em!” Stovepipe called to his companions as they raced toward some distant trees. “We’ll wind up in even more trouble if we do!”

  Wilbur ducked and winced as a slug whined over his head.

  “Yeah, we wouldn’t want to get in trouble!” he exclaimed.

  The horses had done quite a bit of hard traveling during the day, and now the three men were calling on them for a valiant effort. The mounts responded, stretching out and covering the ground swiftly.

  The members of the posse were riding hard, too, though. They seemed to have stopped shooting and were concentrating on chasing down their quarry instead. At least, Stovepipe couldn’t hear any guns going off over the rolling thunder of the horses’ hooves.

  They had to slow down as they reached the trees. Wilbur glanced back and yelped, “They’re gaining on us!”

  “Hang on!” Dan called. “I’ve got an idea!”

  “Lead the way, son!” urged Stovepipe.

  They pounded through the pines, then Dan angled sharply to the right. The trail he followed led across a broad, open area.

  “Oh hell!” Wilbur moaned. “We might as well be targets in a shooting gallery!”

  The ground suddenly dipped down in a grassy trough that wasn’t visible more than a few yards away. That dropped them below the level of the surrounding landscape. The three men leaned far forward in their saddles to make themselves even less visible.

  Stovepipe let out a laugh.

  “When Sheriff Olsen and those old boys come outta those trees, it’ll look like we dropped off the face of the earth !” he said. “You musta known about this little gully, Dan.”

  “I remembered it from chasing cows through here when I worked for Dempsey,” Dan replied. “And I’ve used it since he kicked me off the place, too.”

  “You reckon Olsen knows about it?” asked Wilbur.

  “No telling. He might.”

  “We better hustle along as much as we can, then,” said Stovepipe.

  The trough ran straight for about a quarter of a mile before rising and coming to an end in some thick brush. The three riders forced their way into the growth and then dismounted. Stovepipe parted some branches a little and peered back toward the creek.

  “I don’t see ’em,” he said quietly, “but I hear some horses . . . Hold on. There they are. They’re clean on the other side of this pasture, looking around. Appears they’ve lost the trail.”

  “They’ll probably work their way in this direction eventually, though,” Dan said. “We can’t just wait here.”

  “Naw, that’d be too risky. This chaparral’s mighty thick, but I reckon we can lead the hosses through it. We just need to be careful not to make too much racket while we’re doin’ it.”

  Once again, stealth had become more important than speed as the three men worked their way through the brush, leading the horses. Dan went first to break a trail of sorts, which made it a little easier on Stovepipe and Wilbur, but all three men wound up with skin scratched and clothes snagged. The horses’ hides took a beating from thorns and branches, too, but they didn’t balk at going through.

  At last they came to the end of the growth and emerged into some rolling hills dotted with rocks. The green heights where the upper pastures were located were visible now. Stovepipe and the others mounted up and rode in that direction, still alert for any sign of the men searching for them.

  They didn’t relax until they came in sight of the line shack, and even then Stovepipe was still cautious and said, “Hold on, fellas. Let’s take a look before we go ridin’ up there.”

  He reached into his saddlebags and brought out a pair of field glasses. It was late afternoon, and the westering sun splashed golden light all over the cabin and the pine-covered slopes behind it. Stovepipe studied the line shack and the surrounding area through the lenses and didn’t see anyone or anything moving except birds flitting around in the nearby trees. The presence of those birds told him there hadn’t been any recent disturbances around here.

  “All right, let’s go,” he said as he lowered the glasses.

  Despite the apparent peacefulness of the scene, Stovepipe and Wilbur both pulled their rifles from the saddle sheaths and rode with the Winchesters held in front of them. As they approached the cabin, Dan said, “I sort of thought Laura might come out to wave at us.”

  “Thought we might see Hamp, too,” mused Stovepipe. “Charley could be out on the range again, but Hamp wasn’t in any shape to ride with that swole-up foot.”

  Dan glanced over at the lanky cowboy and asked, “Do you think something’s wrong?”

  “Don’t know. But I don’t know of any way but one to find out, either. Just in case, though . . . Wilbur, why don’t you swing out and come in from the side while Dan and me ride straight on?”

  “You’ll be sitting ducks if you do that,” Wilbur protested.

  “Yeah, but that’s why we’ll be countin’ on you to pull our fat outta the fire if there’s a ruckus.”

  “All right,” Wilbur said with obvious reluctance. He turned his horse and trotted off to the right.

  Dan said, “If somebody’s watching from in there and saw Wilbur do that, he’ll know that we’re suspicious.”

  “Reckon he probably figured that anyway from the fact that we’re holdin’ guns,” Stovepipe pointed out. “Can’t do nothin’ now except play out the hand.”

  “I’ll bet you like to bluff when you play cards, don’t you?”

  Stovepipe chuckled and said, “I’ve been known to.”

  They were close enough now to see that the door of the line shack was standing part of the way open. Dan frowned and said, “I don’t like the looks of that. It almost seems like nobody’s here.”

  “It’s startin’ to appear you’re right, amigo.” Stovepipe lifted his voice and called, “Hamp! Charley! You boys in there?”

  No response cam
e from inside the cabin. Dan leaned forward anxiously in his saddle.

  “Laura!” he said. “Laura, are you all right?”

  Once again, silence was the only answer.

  “Something’s happened, damn it!” Dan exclaimed. Without waiting to see what Stovepipe thought of the idea, he kicked his horse into a gallop.

  Stovepipe hurried along behind him, holding the Winchester ready. He glanced to the right and saw that Wilbur was about fifty yards away, closing in on the line shack from that direction.

  Dan reached the area of hard-packed dirt in front of the cabin and swung down from his saddle almost before his horse had stopped moving. He called Laura’s name again as he charged into the squatty log building with his gun up and ready.

  By the time Stovepipe dismounted, Dan appeared in the open doorway with a distraught look on his face.

  “They’re gone!” said the young cowboy. “The chairs are turned over, and the pot Hamp cooked the beans in is lying on the floor. It looks like there was a fight in there!”

  “Take it easy,” Stovepipe advised. “Let me take a look.”

  He moved past Dan and cast his eyes around the shack’s interior. The signs of a disturbance were there, just as Dan had said.

  Stovepipe spotted something Dan obviously hadn’t, or else the young man would have been even more upset. There were several dark spots on the puncheon floor near the table, and when Stovepipe dropped to one knee and touched a spot with a fingertip, he found it to be sticky. Some of the substance clung to his skin, and when he rubbed it with his thumb, he was sure of what he had found.

  Somebody had lost some blood here. Not a lot, but enough to confirm that things had gone wrong.

  Of course, there was no way of telling who that blood belonged to . . .

  Stovepipe came to his feet and found Dan staring at him from the doorway. He pointed and said in a voice that shook a little with emotion, “What is that, Stovepipe? What did you find?”

  Stovepipe didn’t figure there was any point in lying. He said, “There are a few drops of blood over here, Dan.”

  “Blood!”

  “Hold on. It don’t look like anybody was hurt bad.” Dan came over and stared down at the dark spots on the floor. He said, “Somebody was wounded, though. There’s no doubt about that.”

  “No, I reckon not,” Stovepipe agreed.

  Dan looked up at him.

  “We’ve got to find Laura. She could be hurt. And I know good and well she didn’t leave here of her own free will!”

  From the doorway, Wilbur said, “I’ll go along with that, Stovepipe. I had a look around back in the shed. Three horses are gone, and it looks like more than that were milling around here for a while.”

  “How many more?” asked Stovepipe.

  “I’d say three, but that’s just a guess. I’m pretty sure six rode out, though.”

  “Can you tell which way they were goin’?”

  Wilbur leaned his head toward the north.

  “Headed higher on the slopes, I’d say.”

  “Then that’s where we’re going, too,” Dan snapped. He stalked out of the line shack, still tightly clutching the Colt in his hand.

  Stovepipe and Wilbur followed him outside, where Stovepipe said, “Wait just a minute, Dan. We need to think about this.”

  “You think about it. I’m going after Laura. You know good and well somebody took her from here, Stovepipe, and it wasn’t anybody who has her best interests at heart.”

  “You don’t know that—” began Wilbur.

  “Actually, I reckon Dan’s right,” said Stovepipe. “There’s really only two possibilities: some of the sheriff’s men came along and found Miss Laura here, in which case they would have hung around, figurin’ that we’d show up sooner or later so they could arrest us.”

  “And what’s the other possibility?” Dan asked tensely.

  “That bunch who wants us dead grabbed her and those two old-timers,” said Stovepipe, “and now they’ll use ’em as bait to lure us into a trap.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Dan was almost beside himself with worry, but Stovepipe calmed him down.

  “They want us to follow them,” he assured the young man. “They won’t be goin’ to any trouble to hide their trail.”

  “Then let’s get started,” Dan said. “I don’t want Laura to be in the hands of those killers one minute longer than she has to be.”

  “Hold on,” said Wilbur. “We can’t just waltz right into whatever trap they’ve got set for us. We’ll just wind up dead, and that won’t do Mrs. Dempsey a bit of good.”

  Stovepipe nodded and said, “Wilbur’s right. You and I will follow that trail, Dan, while he shadows us.”

  “We’re gonna split up?” asked Wilbur with a frown. “I’m not sure I like that idea. Anyway, won’t they be suspicious when they see there’s just two of you?”

  “Maybe a little, but you got to remember, they don’t know what happened while we were out roamin’ around today. For all they’ll know, you might’ve got shot or nabbed by a posse, Wilbur. They’ll have to go ahead and spring the trap on Dan and me—and then you’ll spring our trap on them, once they’ve given themselves away.”

  Wilbur rubbed his chin as his frown deepened, but after a moment he nodded.

  “Reckon it might work,” he said. “And I’ve got to admit, I don’t have a better idea.”

  “We’d better get movin’,” said Stovepipe. “The sun’ll be down in a while, and we don’t want to run out of light.”

  They had found some biscuits wrapped up in a cloth inside the line shack. Each man took one of the biscuits to nibble on as they set out. Stovepipe and Dan left first. Wilbur would wait a few minutes and then follow them, staying far enough behind that he wouldn’t be noticed but close enough that he could pitch in and take the enemy by surprise when trouble erupted.

  And it really was a matter of when, not if, thought Stovepipe as he and Dan headed higher in the hills. Logically, he knew an ambush would be waiting for them, and what he felt in his gut confirmed that.

  The dark, brooding brow of the Mogollon Rim hung over them as they climbed. Stovepipe had no idea how far they would have to go before they sprung the trap. All they could do was keep their eyes open.

  “If they’ve hurt Laura, I’ll kill every one of them,” vowed Dan as they rode.

  “They won’t do anything to her,” Stovepipe assured him. “You know even rustlers and killers won’t mistreat a decent woman.”

  “But she’s seen their faces now. They can’t afford to leave her alive. The same goes for Hamp and Charley.”

  Stovepipe knew he was right. Whoever had carried off Laura and the two old punchers, in the end they wouldn’t want to leave anybody alive to tell what had really happened. More than likely, they wanted to kill everybody and make it look like Dan was responsible for the murders, losing his own life in the process. That would write a bloody finish to the whole affair and leave the impression the killers wanted to leave, that Dan Hartford was a mad dog and a murderer.

  That would leave them a free hand to carry on with their long-term plan of looting the Tonto Basin.

  “Are there any more line shacks up here?” Stovepipe asked. “Any good places they can hide out?”

  “No line shacks that I know of,” Dan replied. He thought for a moment. “But there’s a box canyon where some of the Box D crew have camped before. Sometimes they hold cattle there when they’re combing these hills for stock to drive back down to the lower range in the fall. I haven’t been there myself, but I remember hearing the place mentioned in the bunkhouse.”

  “Could be that’s where they’ve holed up, then,” mused Stovepipe. “Reckon you could find it?”

  Dan shook his head and said, “I never heard it described in anything but the most general terms. If we keep going in this direction, though, we ought to come across it.”

  Stovepipe nodded to the tracks they were following.

  “That seems to
be what those fellas have in mind.”

  Dan frowned and said, “These trees are thick enough that they shouldn’t be able to see us. Why don’t you drop back, Stovepipe, and join up with Wilbur? I’ll go on alone while the two of you circle around a little. Maybe you can find the canyon, and if the bunch we’re after is there, you could get behind them and take them by surprise while they’re concentrating on me.”

  Stovepipe’s forehead creased in thought as he scraped a thumbnail along his lean, beard-stubbled jaw.

  “You really would be paintin’ a target on yourself if you did that,” he said.

  “I don’t mind the risk if it means we’re able to rescue Laura.” Dan’s voice caught a little. “I don’t even mind that much if they kill me, as long as she’s safe. I reckon I can count on you and Wilbur to keep poking around until you find out who really killed Dempsey.”

  “Yeah, that’s the truth,” said Stovepipe. “Once I’ve got my teeth set in somethin’, I don’t like to let go, as Wilbur’d be only too glad to tell you if he was here.” He came to a decision and nodded. “All right, we’ll give it a try like you said. Keep your eyes open, though. There’s still no tellin’ what we might run into up here.”

  Dan returned the nod and kept riding as Stovepipe reined in. After a moment the young cowboy disappeared in the thick growth of pines that covered these slopes. Stovepipe turned the Appaloosa and rode slowly downhill.

  A few minutes later he came in sight of Wilbur, who looked surprised to see him. The redheaded cowboy reined in and asked, “What in blazes, Stovepipe? I thought you were going with Dan.”

  “He had another idea, and I think it’s a pretty good one,” Stovepipe explained. “He remembered there’s a box canyon up here that’d be a good place for that bunch to set their trap for us, so you and me are gonna swing around and try to find it first while he keeps goin’ the way he was. The hope is that while those varmints are watchin’ him and waitin’ for him to ride into their trap, we can spring one on them.”