The Range Detectives

by William W. Johnstone

  Dan pointed at his ear, then at hers. Understanding dawned on her face, and then her eyes widened with fear.

  “I’m deaf?” she said.

  “It’ll go away,” Dan told her. Whether she was able to read his lips or her hearing was already starting to come back, Stovepipe didn’t know, but she nodded as if she had heard at least a little of what he said.

  Hamp and Charley came back and reported that the other two kidnappers were dead as well. So much for questioning them, thought Stovepipe. But he would trade that opportunity for saving the lives of Laura, Hamp, and Charley any day.

  Stovepipe looked up on the rim and didn’t see Wilbur. He figured his old friend had climbed down to fetch their mounts. Sure enough, Wilbur appeared in the canyon mouth a few minutes later, riding the dun and leading Stovepipe’s Appaloosa.

  “Everybody all right?” asked the redheaded cowboy as he trotted up.

  “Reckon they will be,” Stovepipe told him. “Miss Laura’s havin’ a mite of trouble hearin’ just now because a gun went off right beside her head.”

  “We’ve all had that problem at one time or another, I suppose,” said Wilbur. He asked Hamp and Charley, “You boys aren’t hurt?”

  “No, just mad as can be,” Charley replied. “Who in blazes were those fellas?”

  Hamp added, “I know they wanted to ambush the three of you and were just usin’ us as bait, but how come they hankered to see you all dead?”

  Stovepipe exchanged a glance with Dan and Wilbur. Maybe the time had come to tell the truth to the old punchers after all, instead of keeping them in the dark. After a moment’s thought and a nod from Wilbur, Stovepipe said, “You tell ’em about it, Dan. I reckon you know more of the story than anybody else.”

  “Story?” repeated Charley. “What story?”

  “You boys may find this hard to believe, but I swear it’s the truth,” Dan said. “Here’s what’s been happening for the past few days.”

  He spent the next ten minutes explaining everything to Hamp and Charley, including his history with Laura. At first the two old-timers looked angry, which was understandable enough because of the natural loyalty they felt toward Abel Dempsey. But they were very fond of Laura, too, Stovepipe sensed, which tempered their reaction.

  They were angry again when they heard about Dempsey’s murder. Hamp said, “We’re supposed to believe that you didn’t have nothin’ to do with that, Dan?”

  “He didn’t,” said Laura, taking them all by surprise because they hadn’t realized she was able to hear that well yet. She went on, “Dan was with me when Abel was shot. I swear he was. We were sitting on our horses on Apache Bluff, talking. He couldn’t have had anything to do with Abel’s murder, no matter what everyone else thinks.”

  “Sheriff Olsen and a posse caught me and threw me in jail,” said Dan, “along with Stovepipe and Wilbur because they tried to help me get away.”

  Charley frowned at the two drifters and asked, “How do you boys figure in this?”

  “We’re just natural-born hoodoos, I suppose,” said Wilbur. “Always stumbling into one mess of trouble after another.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Stovepipe. “That seems to be our lot in life. And once we’re up to our necks in it, we don’t have no choice but to try to straighten ever’thing out. Otherwise we’d’ve been strung up or shot a long time ago. Ain’t that right, Wilbur?”

  “Unfortunately, it is.”

  Dan told Hamp and Charley how they had gone to the site of Abel Dempsey’s murder to investigate, and run into the three gunmen who later had kidnapped Laura and the two of them.

  “I don’t suppose you recognized any of them,” he said.

  “Never laid eyes on any of the varmints before,” said Charley as Hamp shook his head, “but you could tell by lookin’ at ’em that they were the scum o’ the earth.”

  “Owlhoots, pure and simple,” added Hamp.

  “That’s what we figure,” said Stovepipe. “My thinkin’ is that there’s a gang of rustlers behind all the devilment in these parts, includin’ Abel Dempsey’s murder. They’ve laid the blame for that at Dan’s feet and got away with it, as far as everybody in the basin is concerned except for the six of us here.”

  “You’re assumin’ we believe you,” Charley pointed out.

  Laura stood up from the log. She was still a little shaky on her feet as she faced the two old-timers, but her back stiffened and she said, “I’m asking you to believe us. We needed your help before, and we still do.”

  “You want to go back to the line shack and keep hidin’ out there?” asked Hamp.

  “No,” Laura replied as she shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about that, and I believe it would be best if we got off the Box D entirely.”

  Stovepipe had considered that himself and decided it might not be a bad idea. Sheriff Olsen wasn’t likely to give up searching the spread, and clearly the rustlers knew they were here, too.

  He wasn’t sure where it would be safe for them to go, however. It sounded like Laura had some thoughts on the matter, so he said, “What do you mean, ma’am?”

  “My friend Jessica Stafford will help us. I’m sure she will.”

  A dubious frown creased Dan’s forehead. He said, “I don’t know about that. Henry Stafford and Abel Dempsey were old friends. I’m sure he thinks I’m guilty, just like everybody else in the Tonto Basin.”

  “If Jessica asks him to let us stay with them, he’ll go along with it,” Laura insisted. “If we sit down with him and tell him the truth, he’ll believe us.”

  Stovepipe wasn’t so sure of that, but he didn’t know Henry and Jessica Stafford, had not even heard of them until this moment, in fact. Clearly Laura considered Jessica a good friend, though, and if she was right, it was unlikely anyone would suspect that they were hiding on the Stafford ranch.

  If Stafford was like everybody else in the basin, his herd had been hit by rustlers, too, so that would give him another reason to help Stovepipe and Wilbur get to the bottom of this. Stovepipe was convinced that when they uncovered the truth about the gang, they would also find proof of who was behind Dempsey’s murder.

  As usual, those thoughts flashed through his brain, leading him to make up his mind swiftly. He said, “Sounds to me like an idea worth tryin’, Dan. Where is this Stafford spread?”

  “The HS Bar is up at the northern end of the basin,” Dan replied. “Stafford’s range partially borders the Box D.”

  “So we can get there without havin’ to ride back toward Hat Creek.”

  “Yeah, we can.” Dan looked up at the sky, which had turned a deep, deep blue now that the sun was gone. The stars would be popping out within minutes. “Night’s falling. We can get to Stafford’s place by midnight, I’d say. Before morning, for sure.”

  Laura laid a hand on his forearm and said, “I’d like that, Dan. To soak in a hot bath and be able to sleep for a while in a real bed . . .”

  “All right,” Dan said with a nod. “We’ll go. And if Stafford refuses to believe the truth, we won’t be in much worse shape than we already are. We know the Box D isn’t safe for any of us.”

  “What about Charley and me?” asked Hamp. “I don’t know if I’d feel right about leavin’ them cows we was told to look after.”

  “You don’t have to leave them,” said Stovepipe. “You two fellas can stay here and go on about your regular business—just keep your eyes open. Since the three varmints we just tangled with are all dead, the bunch we’re after don’t know that you’ve thrown in with us. If you come across anything you think we ought to know, you can send word to Miz Dempsey at the Stafford ranch. Just be careful about it.”

  “I don’t recall sayin’ we were gonna throw in with you,” said Hamp. “What do you think, Charley?”

  “Well . . .” Charley rubbed his chin as he frowned in thought. “Ever’thing Dan and these other fellas told us sort of had the ring of truth about it, don’t you think?”

  Hamp shrugged his scrawny shoulder
s and said, “Yeah, I reckon so.”

  “And with the boss dead, Miz Dempsey’s callin’ the shots now. That’s just plumb simple.” Charley nodded. “I say we help as much as we can, Hamp.”

  “Good enough for me,” Hamp agreed. He stuck out a hand to Dan and added, “Shake on it, boy, and if you’re lyin’ about any of this, heaven help you.”

  “I’m not lying,” Dan said as he clasped Hamp’s hand and then shook with Charley as well. “And I’m mighty glad you’re going to give me a chance to prove I’m innocent.”

  “If you ain’t, I figure it’ll catch up to you sooner or later.”

  Wilbur waved a hand at the horses tied nearby and asked, “What about the horses those three varmints were riding? If Hamp and Charley take them back to the line shack, some of the gang might come around, see them, and recognize them.”

  “We’ll take off their saddles and throw ’em in the back of the canyon here,” Stovepipe decided. “Then we can turn the horses loose and let ’em wander. There’s plenty of graze for ’em.” He frowned. “Or maybe we ought to just turn ’em loose and then follow ’em. Could be they’d lead us right back to the hideout.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Dan with some excitement in his voice.

  “Not you,” Stovepipe said. “You need to make sure Miss Laura gets safely to where she’s goin’, and then both of you lie low there while Wilbur and me see if we can round up that bunch of no-good cattle thieves.”

  Dan frowned, clearly torn between wanting to make sure Laura was safe and feeling an obligation to help Stovepipe and Wilbur backtrack the rustlers.

  “Why should the two of you have to risk your lives like that, just to help us?” he asked.

  “Just consider it sort of our job,” Stovepipe told him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Laura said that her hearing was back to normal, except for a slight ringing in her ears, by the time she and Dan rode out of the canyon a short while later. Dan was glad to hear that, although of course he would have still loved her if her ears had been affected permanently. It was good that she would be able to hear him when he told her how he felt about her—if they ever got a chance to talk about such things again, instead of rustlers and murder and the desperate situation in which they found themselves.

  Dan wasn’t familiar with the Stafford ranch, since he had only set foot on HS Bar range one time, to retrieve some cattle that had strayed over the border between the two spreads. Because of Laura’s friendship with Jessica Stafford, though, the two women had been back and forth between each other’s homes many times, and even in the dark Laura was able to find the trail that ran between the two ranch headquarters.

  “We’d better keep our eyes open,” Dan said as they rode along at an easy pace. “I don’t expect to run into anybody after dark like this, but you never know. If we hear anybody coming we’ll need to get off the trail and lie low until they’ve gone past.”

  “I understand,” said Laura. “Who would be out in the middle of the night like this, though?”

  “We are,” Dan pointed out with a smile.

  Laura laughed and said, “Yes, that’s true.”

  It was good to hear her laugh, he thought. After everything she had been through in the past few days, no one could blame her if she never laughed again. She had the sort of resilient streak, though, that people needed to live on the frontier. The two of them could make a fine life together, he knew, if they ever got the chance.

  He was still musing on that a few minutes later, when his senses and instincts alerted him and he hauled back on his reins. Laura came to a stop beside him and asked tautly, “What is it?”

  “I thought I heard hoofbeats up ahead somewhere,” said Dan. “Wait . . . There they are again!”

  There were horses coming toward them, all right. A good number of them, from the sound of it. Dan looked around in the starlight, spotted a clump of brush about twenty yards off the trail, and turned toward it.

  “Come on,” he told Laura. He wasn’t sure if the brush was thick enough and tall enough to conceal them, but it was the only cover nearby.

  The horses pushed through the branches, then Dan and Laura dismounted and stood holding the reins. Dan put a hand over his horse’s nose to keep the animal quiet and whispered to Laura that she should do the same. Then they waited tensely.

  A large group of riders, at least a dozen in all, came in sight, trotting along the trail between the Box D and the HS Bar. Dan wondered if the men were a posse from Hat Creek, then another even more chilling possibility occurred to him.

  These hombres could be part of the outlaw gang that had murdered Abel Dempsey and at least two other men, along with wreaking havoc in the basin. They could be the ones responsible for the threat of the gallows that loomed over Dan’s head. A part of him wanted to ride out there, confront them, and demand the truth—but of course that wouldn’t accomplish anything except to get him killed and put Laura in even more danger.

  So he stayed where he was and waited as the mysterious riders swept past. In the poor light, it was almost impossible to make out any details about them. Dan certainly didn’t see anybody he recognized.

  Between the shadows and the brush, he and Laura must not have been visible from the trail. The riders thundered past without slowing. Dan heaved a sigh of relief when they were gone.

  “Who in the world was that?” asked Laura.

  “You didn’t recognize any of them?”

  She shook her head and said, “No. I couldn’t make them out. They were just dark shapes.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” said Dan. “But if you stop and think about it, there are only two real possibilities. Either that was a posse from Hat Creek—or some of the rustlers who are raising hell around here.”

  She took a sharp breath and said, “You mean . . . the men who killed Abel and framed you?”

  “Yeah. It was a little hard not to stop them and demand some answers. But of course, that wouldn’t have done us any good. For the time being, I reckon we’re going to have to rely on Stovepipe and Wilbur for that.”

  “They’re turning out to be good friends, for men you haven’t known very long.”

  “That’s the truth,” agreed Dan. “I get the feeling that Stovepipe is a lot smarter than you might think from the way he talks and acts. If I was an outlaw, I’m not sure I’d want to tangle with either one of them.”

  With the group of riders safely gone, Dan and Laura swung up into their saddles again and continued on toward the HS Bar. It wasn’t long before Dan estimated that they were on Stafford range.

  They didn’t encounter anyone else, but even so, it was after midnight according to the stars before they came in sight of the ranch headquarters. The main house was surrounded by large, carefully tended trees, and there were a lot of outbuildings scattered around it as well. Dan saw a large barn with a sprawling array of corrals attached to it, a long, low bunkhouse, a building with a stovepipe sticking up from its roof that probably meant it was the cook shack, and other structures that were undoubtedly a smokehouse, a blacksmith shop, and cabins for the foreman and any married ranch hands. Everything Dan could see told him that the HS Bar was quite a successful spread.

  He reined in when they were still a couple of hundred yards from the house and motioned for Laura to do likewise. When they were both stopped, he said quietly, “We don’t want to ride up and raise enough of a ruckus to rouse the whole place. The fewer people who know we’re here, the better. I know you trust Mrs. Stafford and figure she can convince her husband to help us, but we can’t count on everybody else on the place keeping quiet about us.”

  “You’re right,” Laura said. “What should we do?”

  Dan thought about it for a moment, then said, “We’ll leave the horses here and go the rest of the way on foot. Once we’ve talked to the Staffords and know that they won’t turn us over to the law, I can slip back out here and fetch the horses.”

  They dismounted and tied the reins t
o a scrubby bush, then walked toward the ranch house, circling a little to avoid most of the other buildings. Dan had his right hand resting on the butt of the gun in his holster. Laura was to his left, and without thinking he reached out with that hand and clasped her right hand. It was an instinctive gesture, but when he did it, it felt right, natural.

  “Jessica would never betray us,” said Laura in a voice a little above a whisper. “I’m certain of that.”

  “I believe you,” Dan said. Deep down, though, he still remained to be convinced, and he knew the tension inside him wouldn’t go away until they had talked to Henry Stafford.

  The buildings were all dark except for a faint glow from the partially open door of the one Dan had pegged as the cook shack. Even though the hour was very early in the morning, it was possible the ranch cook was already in there getting started on the biscuits for the crew’s breakfast. They gave that building a wide berth.

  As they approached the house, a dog began to bark. It was a deep-throated sound, and as the animal stood up on the front porch, Dan saw that it was a large dog with a massive torso. Laura’s hand tightened on his.

  “You’ve been here quite a few times,” he said. “That dog might know you, might recognize your scent.”

  “Yes, he might,” Laura said. “I know his name, too.”

  “That’ll help. Call to him.”

  Softly, Laura said, “Dash! Dash, it’s me. You know me, sweetheart. Remember how I rubbed your ears the last time I was here and we were all sitting on the porch?”

  The dog wouldn’t understand the words, of course, thought Dan, but Laura’s voice might be enough to strike a chord of familiarity in him. He was counting on that, along with the animal’s sense of smell, to tell the dog that they were friends.

  It seemed to work. The dog stopped barking and sat down, although it remained alert. Dan felt the eyes watching him as he and Laura came to the bottom of the steps leading up to the porch.

  The front door opened and a man stepped out. He said, “Dash, what the devil were you raisin’ a ruckus about, you big ol’—”