The Range Detectives

by William W. Johnstone

  “Yeah, but we don’t know for sure that Hogan’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  “I’d bet my hat it was murder just like the other two, and you know how much store I set by this hat, Wilbur.”

  “Well, that’s true,” Wilbur agreed. “I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  “The Leanin’ T and the Big Nine are southwest and west of Hat Creek, down on the other end of the basin. If you work your way up this side, you come to the Box D next, and then the HS Bar. We know that from the maps we looked at before we ever headed in this direction.”

  “Yeah, come to think of it, I guess you’re right. That could mean . . . Yeah, I see what you’re saying, Stovepipe. The gang’s knocking off the ranchers one after the other, just following the way the spreads are laid out in the basin. They’ve got themselves a nice little system going. And if you are right, they’ll be targeting Henry Stafford next, just like you said.”

  “What I’m wonderin’ now,” said Stovepipe, “is if we ought to be followin’ this herd, or if we should head for Stafford’s place to warn him.”

  Wilbur frowned and said, “We’re on the run from the law, remember? If we show up at Stafford’s ranch, he’s liable to point a gun at us and try to hold us for the sheriff. He and Dempsey were old friends, after all, and as far as Stafford knows, we’ve been helping the man who dry-gulched Dempsey.”

  Stovepipe shook his head.

  “You’re forgettin’ that Dan and Miss Laura were headin’ for the HS Bar the last time we saw ’em. Chances are, they’ve made it there by now, explained the whole thing to Stafford and his wife, and they’ve agreed to help ’em.”

  “What if Stafford didn’t believe their story and turned Dan over to the law?”

  “Then we’d be ridin’ into trouble, sure enough. That’s why I figure we’d best be careful when we get there, maybe do a little scoutin’ first before we let anybody know we’re around.”

  “Be careful, eh?” said Wilbur. “Well, that might be a nice change for us.” He waved a hand toward the tracks they had been following. “So we’re not going to trail that herd anymore?”

  “We can always find that herd later on,” Stovepipe said confidently. “Right now I just want to make sure Henry Stafford don’t wind up dead like so many other folks around here.”

  * * *

  Laura had said that she wanted a hot bath and the chance to sleep in a real bed. The bed sounded good to Dan, too, although he was willing to pass on the bath for the time being.

  Once he had stretched out in one of the spare bedrooms in the Stafford ranch house, though, he’d found that he had trouble dozing off. Too much upsetting had happened in recent days, and his thoughts were whirling so fast in his brain that he wasn’t able to relax and go to sleep.

  But no matter how much he pondered, he wasn’t able to come up with any answers to the dilemma that faced him, other than waiting for Stovepipe and Wilbur to sort everything out. Relying on someone else to solve his problems rubbed Dan the wrong way, but right now he didn’t see any other option.

  At one point he heard a horse and figured that was Henry Stafford coming back from hiding his and Laura’s horses up in the hills.

  Exhaustion finally claimed him, but his sleep was restless and not very refreshing. When he woke up, the gray light coming through a tiny gap in the curtains at the window told him it was dawn and he had slept for only a few hours. He hoped that Laura was getting more rest than that.

  Dan had taken off only his shirt, boots, and gun belt when he lay down. Now he pulled them on and went downstairs, drawn by the smell of coffee brewing.

  He found Jessica Stafford in the kitchen, pouring herself a cup from the pot that was heating on the stove. She turned toward Dan, forced a smile, and asked, “Would you like some, Dan? I promise it’s fresh this time.”

  She was already dressed, wearing a dark green silk blouse and a brown riding skirt. Her honey-colored hair was loose and tumbling around her shoulders. She would have been stunningly beautiful, even at this hour of the morning, if not for the haunted look in her eyes and the taut lines of her face.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Dan. All he had to do was look at Jessica to know that something wasn’t right.

  Her hand started to shake. She turned and set the coffee cup on the table so she wouldn’t drop it. Then she said, “It’s Henry. He . . . he hasn’t come back.”

  “Good Lord,” Dan said. “You mean from wherever he was going to take our horses last night?”

  “That’s right. That rock corral up in the hills he mentioned.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “I’ve seen it before,” said Jessica. “Henry pointed it out to me once when we were out riding.”

  “Reckon you could find it again?”

  She nodded and said, “I believe I could. In fact, I was thinking about going up there. That’s why I’m dressed the way I am.”

  “You’re not going alone. I’ll come with you.”

  “You can’t. You shouldn’t leave the house. That was the whole purpose of you and Laura coming here, remember? To hide out?”

  “Maybe so,” Dan said, his face and voice grim. “But if anything’s happened to Mr. Stafford, it’s because he was trying to help us. I can’t forget about that. If he needs help . . .”

  Dan didn’t finish the sentence. Jessica looked intently at him for a moment, then said, “The crew will be at breakfast right now. I’ll go out to the barn, saddle a couple of horses, and bring them around back of the house. I think we can ride out without anyone noticing us, if we’re careful and don’t waste any time.”

  “I have to let Laura know what’s going on.”

  Jessica nodded and said, “Of course. And get a couple of rifles for us, too.”

  She started out of the kitchen. Dan stopped her by saying, “Mrs. Stafford . . . I’m sure sorry we’ve brought all our trouble down on you like this.”

  She managed a faint smile as she shook her head.

  “You didn’t bring all the trouble down on the basin, Dan,” she said. “Whoever’s behind the rustling . . . they’re responsible for everything that’s happened. I believe that now, and sooner or later . . . they’re going to pay for what they’ve done.”

  * * *

  Dan was waiting on the back porch a few minutes later when Jessica rode around the corner of the house on a big, cream-colored gelding. She led a chestnut horse with white stockings and a blazed face for Dan.

  “Did anybody see you?” he asked as he swung up into the saddle.

  “I don’t think so. Did you talk to Laura?”

  “Yes. She’s upset and worried about Mr. Stafford, too. But she understands that she needs to stay out of sight while we’re gone.”

  “You may not be able to come back, Dan. You may have to stay in the hills and lie low until after dark.”

  “Yeah, I already thought about that. But I’m not going to worry about it at this point. I just want to find out what happened to Mr. Stafford and make sure he’s safe.”

  “That’s the way I feel, too. Come on.”

  Jessica turned her mount and heeled it into a trot. Dan fell in alongside her.

  The sun was still well below the horizon, although the eastern sky was rosy enough that it provided plenty of light for them to see where they were going. The sky quickly grew brighter, although the two riders were well out of sight of the ranch house before the orange orb poked its way into sight.

  The HS Bar was a vast spread, like the Box D, and according to Jessica, the old rock corral where her husband had been taking the horses was miles away from the ranch headquarters.

  “This was all a Spanish land grant at one time,” she explained. “The rock corral dates back to that time period. There are also the remains of an old rock house up there, but most of it has fallen in. Henry talked about wanting to rebuild it sometime—it would be a place where he and I could go during the summer, he said, so it would be cooler—but of course he
’s never gotten around to it.”

  “Sounds nice,” said Dan. It wasn’t the sort of romantic notion he would have expected from Henry Stafford, but of course he didn’t really know the man at all.

  The sun rose higher by the time they approached a range of low hills covered with pine and juniper. Jessica pointed and said, “We go through that gap there and on the other side is a trail that leads higher.”

  Dan had been listening for shots. If Stafford had been thrown off his horse and broken his leg or encountered some other sort of mishap like that, he probably would have fired signal shots in the air to alert searchers to his location. He had to know that his wife would be worried about him by now and would send men to look for him, if she didn’t come herself—as, of course, she actually had.

  But Dan hadn’t heard a thing, and that silence didn’t bode very well, he thought. He didn’t say anything about that to Jessica, however.

  She was smart enough to figure out things for herself, and he knew from her increasingly worried expression that she probably had.

  The trail they were following led higher into the hills. Stafford was right: the air was cooler up here than down on the flats, although the bright sunshine was still warm.

  “The corral is up there, just on the other side of that hill,” said Jessica, pointing. She stiffened in the saddle and went on, “Wait a minute. Is that—”

  She broke off with a gasp, because she had seen the same thing Dan had.

  Buzzards were circling over that hill.

  “No,” Jessica said, her voice catching in her throat. “No . . .”

  “Stay here,” Dan told her.

  “No, I have to—”

  “Stay here!” he said again, sharper this time. He jabbed his boot heels into the chestnut’s flanks and sent the horse lunging forward at a run.

  More death, he thought as he rode hard toward the hill. More death that might not have struck if he hadn’t ever come to this basin, or if he’d had the sense to ride on as soon as he recognized Laura.

  Then he remembered what Jessica had said about the rustlers being responsible for everything that had happened. Maybe that was true, but Dan couldn’t help but feel that his presence in the basin had contributed to it as well.

  He shoved those bleak thoughts out of his brain and concentrated on his riding instead. He topped the hill, started down the slope, and spotted the stone corral ahead of him. Two horses were in the enclosure, and Dan recognized them immediately as the ones he and Laura had been riding the night before.

  Another saddled horse stood outside the corral. That had to be Henry Stafford’s mount . . .

  Then a bitter curse erupted from Dan’s mouth as he saw the motionless figure of a man lying sprawled facedown on the ground nearby. He started toward the man, knowing in his gut that he was going to find Henry Stafford dead.

  That was when a gun blasted somewhere nearby and a bullet whistled past Dan’s ear, barely missing him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Stovepipe and Wilbur were familiar with the general layout of the spreads in the Tonto Basin, but they didn’t know where the headquarters of each ranch was located. So all they could do was head in the approximate direction of the Stafford ranch house.

  “This is good range, Stovepipe,” Wilbur commented as they rode. “Maybe not as prime as some we’ve seen, but with hard work a fella could wind up with a mighty nice outfit here in this basin.”

  “And those old-time cattlemen like Dempsey and Stafford knew how to work hard,” said Stovepipe. “That’s how they were able to carve places for themselves outta the frontier, surrounded by enemies who wanted to kill ’em.”

  “These days people don’t appreciate that,” Wilbur groused. “They just want to come in and take away from the folks who worked so hard to make this a decent place to live.”

  “Reckon you’re always gonna have greedy varmints like that,” said Stovepipe. He grinned. “But as long as there are outlaws, we’ll never be outta work, will we?”

  “I suppose you could look at it like that,” Wilbur replied with a shrug.

  They continued riding until a few minutes later when Stovepipe raised a hand and said, “Hold on. You see those riders way over yonder, Wilbur?”

  “Where?” asked the redhead.

  Stovepipe pointed across a broad expanse of flats and said, “They’re about a mile away, headin’ for those hills.”

  “You’ve got eyes that’d put an eagle to shame, Stovepipe. I think I see something moving over there, but I never would have spotted it if you hadn’t pointed it out.”

  Stovepipe reached in his saddlebags and brought out his field glasses. He lifted the lenses to his eyes, studied the distant riders through them for a moment, and said, “Jehoshaphat! That’s Dan, ridin’ with some woman I don’t know.”

  “It’s not Miss Laura?”

  “Nope. This gal’s just as good-lookin’, but she’s got lighter-colored hair.”

  “Mrs. Stafford, maybe? Miss Laura’s friend?”

  “Could be,” said Stovepipe as he lowered the field glasses. “Likely, in fact, considerin’ that we’ve got to be on HS Bar range by now.”

  “Well, what are we gonna do?”

  “What do you reckon we’re gonna do?” Stovepipe asked with a chuckle. “We’re gonna follow ’em.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured you’d say.”

  The two men heeled their horses into motion again.

  The riders they were following had a long lead on them, but the Appaloosa and the dun were still fresh and strong enough to run free and easy across the flats toward the hills. Their hooves raised some dust, which worried Stovepipe a mite because somebody might spot it, but it was still early enough in the morning that he considered that unlikely.

  He was more concerned about the fact that Dan was out riding the range when he was supposed to be lying low and hiding out at the Stafford ranch along with Laura. It must have taken something important to get him out in the open like this.

  Or something pretty bad . . .

  They had cut down the distance between themselves and their quarry enough that Wilbur could make out the other riders with the naked eye. He said, “That’s a bright green shirt the lady has on. Or is that Dan?”

  “No, that’s Miz Stafford,” said Stovepipe. “Reckon she likes bright colors.”

  “Sometimes that’s not too smart out here on the frontier. Makes you too easy to spot.”

  “Yeah, but nobody’s gonna mistake you for a wild animal and shoot you, either,” Stovepipe pointed out.

  “I dunno. I’ve seen birds that were a bright green like that. Remember when we were down in Central America on the trail of that owlhoot who called himself the Macaw?”

  “Ain’t likely to forget it,” said Stovepipe. “As I recollect, we almost got ourselves killed.”

  Wilbur snorted disgustedly and replied, “You could say that about almost every place we’ve ever gone.”

  Dan and Mrs. Stafford—assuming that’s who the woman was—had reached the hills by now. They were about half a mile ahead of Stovepipe and Wilbur, maybe a little less. As they rode over a hilltop and went out of sight, the two cowboys pushed their mounts a little harder.

  Stovepipe suddenly exclaimed, “Dadgum it!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Look yonder,” said Stovepipe, pointing again. His finger indicated some black shapes wheeling above the hills, stark against the blue sky of morning.

  “Oh, I hate to see that,” Wilbur said.

  “Yeah, me, too. Them zopilotes are never good news.”

  “Could be just a dead cow.”

  “Maybe,” said Stovepipe. “I ain’t gonna pin my hopes on that, though. Come on.”

  From what he could tell, the two riders they were following were heading toward the spot the buzzards were circling, too. Stovepipe couldn’t see them anymore, but he knew they couldn’t be very far ahead.

  With no warning, a shot slammed through
the morning air. From the sound of it, Stovepipe didn’t think it was directed at him and Wilbur, but he couldn’t be sure of that. Even if someone was shooting at them, they had to keep going and find out what was happening up ahead.

  Stovepipe pulled his Winchester from the saddle boot. Wilbur did likewise. They reached the base of the nearest hill and sent the horses pounding up the slope.

  * * *

  Dan jerked the borrowed horse to the side as he felt the wind-rip of the slug next to his ear. He yanked his revolver from its holster and looked around for the source of the shot, but he didn’t see anything and he didn’t want to return the fire blindly.

  Fear for Jessica Stafford welled up inside him. Laura might not ever forgive him if her friend was hurt, or worse, killed. Dan was about to charge back over the hill toward the spot where he had left Jessica when another shot cracked from the hidden rifleman and the chestnut staggered. The horse was hit, and Dan could tell it was about to go down.

  He kicked his feet free of the stirrups and flung himself out of the saddle before the chestnut could collapse and pin him underneath it. He landed hard on the ground and rolled over, and as he did another bullet kicked up dirt right beside him. Out in the open like this, he was an easy target.

  The old stone corral was the nearest cover. The gate, made out of peeled pine poles, was closed, but Dan knew he could climb it. He leaped to his feet and sprinted toward it, another shot whistling past him as he did so. He jammed the Colt back in the holster so he would have both hands free.

  He jumped onto the gate, grabbed the top pole, and vaulted over as a slug chewed splinters from the pine less than a foot from him. Dropping to the ground on the other side, he rolled behind the protection of the old stone wall.

  He was penned in here with the two horses he and Laura had ridden the night before, but at least now he had that thick wall between him and the man who was trying to kill him.

  Unfortunately, Jessica Stafford was still out there somewhere, in deadly danger herself. Dan grimaced as he tried to figure out his next move.