Kid Wolf of Texas

by Paul S. Powers

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE RESCUE

  The stranger's crisp words had their effect, since "Kid Wolf" was aname well known west of the Chisholm Trail. His reputation had beenpassed by word of mouth along the border until there were few who hadnot heard of his deeds. His very name seemed to fill the riffraff ofthe barroom with courage. Some of them cheered, and all prepared toobey the young Texan's orders. Every one was soon busy loading andexamining six-guns.

  Garvey was the one exception. He was infuriated, and his malignanteyes gleamed with hate. Kid Wolf had made an enemy. He was, however,accustomed to that. Smiling ironically, he faced Garvey, who wasquivering all over with helpless rage.

  "Yo' won't need to come along," he drawled. "I'd rathah have Apachesin front of me than yo' behind me."

  Kid Wolf lost no time in rounding up his hastily drafted posse. Ahorse was procured for Robbins and The Kid prepared to ride by hisside. Kid Wolf's horse was "tied to the ground" outside, and a shoutof genuine admiration went up as the men caught sight of themagnificent creature, beautiful with muscular grace. Swinging into hisCalifornia saddle, the Texan, with Robbins at his side and the posse,numbering eleven men, swept down toward the mountain pass.

  Some of the men carried Winchesters, but for the most part they werearmed with six-guns. Now that they were actually on the way, the menseemed eager for the battle. Perhaps Kid Wolf's cool and determinedleadership had something to do with it.

  Young Robbins reached over and clasped the Texan's hand.

  "I'll never forget this, Mr. Kid Wolf," he said, tears in his eyes."If it wasn't for you----"

  "Call me 'Kid,'" said the Texan, flashing him a smile. "We'll save yo'fathah and the men in the stage if we can. Anyway, we'll make it hotfo' those Apaches."

  After a few minutes of fast going, they could hear the faint cracklingof gunfire ahead of them, carried on the torrid wind. Robbinsbrightened, for this meant that some survivors still remained on theirfeet. Kid Wolf, experienced in Indian warfare, understood thesituation at once, and ordered his men to scatter and come in on theIndians from all sides.

  "Robbins," he said, "I want yo' with me. Yo' two," he went on,singling out a couple of the posse, "ride in from the east. The restof yo' come in from the west and south. Make every shot count, fo' ifwe don't scattah the Apaches at the first chahge, we will be at a bigdisadvantage!"

  It was a desperate situation, with the odds nearly five to one againstthem. Reaching the pass, they could look down on the battle from thecover of the mesquites. From the overturned stage, thin jets of firestreaked steadily, and a pall of white smoke hung over it like a cloud.From the brush, other gun flashes answered the fire. Occasionally awrithing brown body could be seen, crawling from point to point. Thethicket seemed to be alive with them.

  Kid Wolf listened for a moment to the faint popping of the guns. Thenhe raised his hand in a signal.

  "Let's go!" he sang out.

  A second later, Blizzard was pounding down the pass like a snowstormbefore the wind.

  The leader of this band of murderous Apaches was a youthful warriornamed Bear Claw, the son of the tribal chief. Peering at the coachfrom his post behind a clump of paloverde, his cruel face was lightedby a grin of satisfaction. From time to time he gave a hoarse order,and at his bidding, his braves would creep up or fall back as theoccasion demanded.

  Bear Claw was in high good humor, for he saw that the ambushed victimsin the stage could not hope to hold out much longer. Only threeremained alive in the coach, and some of these were wounded. The whitemen's fire was becoming less accurate.

  The young leader of the Apaches was horrible to look at. He was nakedsave for a breechcloth and boot moccasins and his face was daubed withocher and vermilion. Across his lean chest, too, was a smear of paintjust under the necklace of bear claws that gave him his name. He wasarmed with a .50-caliber Sharps single-shot rifle and with the onlyrevolver in the tribe--an old-fashioned cap-and-ball six-shooter, takenfrom some murdered prospector.

  Bear Claw was about to raise his left hand--a signal for the final rushthat would wipe out the white men in the overturned coach--when aterrific volley burst out like rattling thunder from all sides.Bullets raked the brush in a deadly hail. An Indian a few paces fromBear Claw jumped up with a weird yell and fell back again, piercedthrough the body.

  The young chief saw whirlwinds of dust swooping down on the scene fromevery direction. In those whirlwinds, he knew, were horses. Bear Clawhad courage only when the odds were with him. How many men were in theattacking force, he did not know. But there were too many to suit him,and he took no chances. He gave the order for retreat, and thestartled Apaches made a rush for their ponies, hidden in an arroyo.Bear Claw scrambled after them, with lead kicking up dust all about him.

  But it did not take Bear Claw long to see that his band outnumbered thewhite posse, more than four to one. Throwing himself on his horse, hedecided to set his renegade warriors an example. Giving the Apache warwhoop, he kicked his heels in his pony's flanks and led the charge.Picking out the foremost of the posse--a bronzed rider on a snow-whitehorse--he went at him with leveled revolver.

  What happened then unnerved the Apaches at Bear Claw's back. The manBear Claw had charged was Kid Wolf! The Texan did not return theIndian's blaze of revolver fire. He merely ducked low in his saddleand swung his big white horse into Bear Claw's pony! At the same time,he swung out his left hand sharply. It caught Bear Claw's jaw with aterrific jolt. The weight of both speeding horses was behind theimpact. Something snapped. Bear Claw went off his pony's back like abag of meal and landed on the sand, his head at a queer angle. Hisneck was broken!

  Then Kid Wolf's guns began to talk. Fire burst from the level of bothhis hips as he put spurs to Blizzard and charged with head low directlyinto the amazed Apaches. The others, too, followed the Texan'sexample, but it was Kid Wolf who turned the trick. It was the decidingcard, and without their chief, the redskins were panic-stricken. Theonly thing they thought of now was escape. The little hoofs of theirponies began to drum madly. But instead of rushing in the direction ofthe whites, they drummed away from them. Kid Wolf ordered his men notto follow. Nor would he allow any more firing.

  "No slaughter, men," he said. "Save yo' bullets till yo' need them.Let's take a look at the stage."

  Wheeling their mounts, the posse, who had lost not a man in theencounter, raced back to the overturned coach. The vehicle, riddledwith bullets and arrows, resembled a butcher's shop. On the groundnear it was the body of the driver, while the guard, hit in a dozenplaces, lay half in and half out of the coach, dead.

  Young Robbins had left four men alive when he made his escape towardLost Springs. There now remained only two. And one of these, it couldbe seen, was dying.

  "Dad!" Robbins cried. "Are yuh hurt?"

  "Got a bullet in the shoulder and one in the knee," replied his father,crawling out with difficulty. "Good thing yuh got here when yuh did!See to Claymore. He's hit bad. I'm all right."

  Kid Wolf drew out the still breathing form of the other survivor. Hewas quick to note that the man was beyond any human aid. Thefrontiersman, his six-gun still emitting a curl of blue smoke, wasplaced in the shade of the coach, and water was given to him.

  "I'm all shot to pieces, boys," he gasped. "I'm goin' fast--but I'mglad the Apaches won't have me to--chop up afterward. Take my word forit--there's some white man--behind this. There's twenty thousanddollars in the express box----"

  His words trailed off, and with a moan, he breathed his last. Kid Wolfgently drew a blanket over his face and then turned to the others.

  "I think he's right," he mused, as he took off his wide-brimmed hat."When Indians murdah, theah's usually a white man's brains behind them."

  Garvey, when Kid Wolf had left with his quickly gathered posse, went tothe bar and took several drinks of his own liquor. It was a fiery redwhisky distilled from wheat, and of the type known to the Indians as
"fire water." It did not put Garvey in any better humor. Wiping hislips, he left his saloon and crossed the road to a tiny one-room adobe.

  A young Indian was sleeping in the shade, and Garvey awakened him witha few well-directed kicks. The Indian's eyes widened with fear at thesight of the white man's rage-distorted face, and when he had heard hisorders, delivered in the hoarse Apache tongue, he raced for his pony,tethered in the bushes near him, and drummed away.

  "Tell 'em to meet me in the saloon pronto!" Garvey shouted after him.

  The saloon keeper passed an impatient half hour. A quartet of Mexicansentered his place demanding liquor, but Garvey waved them away.Something important was evidently on foot.

  Soon the dull _clip-clop_ of horses' hoofs was heard, and he went tothe door to see five riders approaching Lost Springs from the north.He waved his hand to them before they had left the cover of thecottonwoods.

  The group of sunburned, booted men who hastily entered Garvey's Placewere individuals of the Lost Springs ruler's own stamp. All weregunmen, and some wore two revolvers. Most of them were wanted by thelaw for dark deeds done elsewhere. Sheriffs from the Texas Panhandlewould have recognized two of them as Al and Andy Arnold--brothermurderers. Another was a killer chased out of Dodge City, Kansas--aslender, quick-fingered youth known as "Pick" Stephenson. HenryShank--a gunman from Lincoln, New Mexico--strode in their lead.

  The fifth member of the quintet was the most terrible of them all. Hewas a half-breed Apache, dressed partly in the Indian way and partlylike a white. He wore a battered felt hat with a feather in the crown.He wore no shirt, but over his naked chest was buttoned a dirty vest,around which two cap-and-ball Colt revolvers swung.

  His stride, muffled by his beaded moccasins, was as noiseless as acat's. This man--Garvey's go-between--was Charley Hood. He grinnedcontinually, but his smile was like the snarl of a snapping dog.

  "What's up, Garvey?" Shank demanded. "We was just ready to start outfer a cattle clean-up."

  "Plenty's up," snarled Garvey. "Help yoreselves to liquor while I tellyuh. First o' all, do any of yuh know Kid Wolf?"

  It was evident that most of them had heard of him. None had seen him,however, and Garvey went on to tell what had happened.

  "How many men did he take with him?" Stephenson wanted to know.

  "About a dozen."

  "Bear Claw will wipe him out, then," grinned Al Arnold.

  "Somehow I don't think so," said Garvey. "And if that stage deal failsus----"

  "A twenty-thousand-dollar job!" Shank barked angrily. "And we gethalf!"

  "We get all," chuckled Garvey. "The Apaches will give their share tome for fire water. That's why this must go through. If Bear Claw andhis braves slip up, we'll have to finish it. As for Kid Wolf----"

  Garvey's expression changed to one of malignant fury, and he made thesignificant gesture of cutting a throat.

  "I hear that this Kid Wolf makes it his business to right wrongs,"Shank sneered. "Thinks he's a law of himself. Justice, he calls it."

  "Well, one thing!" roared Garvey, thumping the bar. "There ain't nolaw west o' the Pecos! And he's west o' the Pecos now! The only lawhere is this kind," and he tapped his .44.

  "What's happened to yore gun?" one of them asked.

  Garvey's face suddenly went dark red.

  "I dropped it this mornin' and busted the handle," he lied. "If it hadbeen in workin' order, I'd have got this Kid Wolf the minute he openedhis mouth."

  "Well, if the Apaches don't get him, we will," Stephenson declared."By the way, Garvey, there's another deal on foot. What do yuh thinko' this?" And he laid a chunk of ore on the bar under the saloonkeeper's nose.

  "Solid silver!" Garvey gasped. "Where's it from?"

  "From the valley of the San Simon. It's from land owned--owned, mindyuh--by an hombre named Robbins. Gov'ment grant."

  "We'll figger a way to get it," returned Garvey, then his eyesnarrowed. "What name did yuh say?"

  "Robbins. Bill Robbins."

  Garvey grinned. "Why, he was on the stage! It was his kid that camehere and made his play fer help. Looks like things is comin' our way,after all."

  The conference was interrupted by the sound of galloping hoofs. AnIndian pounded up in front of the saloon in a cloud of yellow dust.The pony was lathered and breathing hard.

  "It's a scout!" Garvey cried. "Let him in, and we'll see what he hasto say."

  The Indian runner's words, gasped in halting, broken English, broughtconsternation to Garvey and his treacherous gunmen:

  "No get money box. Have keel two-three, maybe more, of white men instage wagon. Then riders come. White chief on white devil horse, hebreak Bear Claw's neck. Bear Claw die. We ride away as fast as coulddo. White men fix stage wagon. Hunt for horse to drive it to LostSprings."

  Garvey clenched his huge fists.

  "Get me another gun!" he rasped. "We'll have this out with Kid Wolfright now!"

  Charley Hood spoke for the first time, and his bestial face withdistorted with rage.

  "Bear Claw son of Great Chief Yellow Skull! Yellow Skull get Keed Wolfif he have to follow him across world! And when he get him----"

  Charley Hood, the half-breed, laughed insanely.

  "I never thought of that," said Garvey. "Maybe we'd be doin' Mr. Wolffrom Texas a favor by puttin' lead through him. Bear Claw was YellowSkull's favorite. The old chief is an expert at torture. I'd like tobe on hand to see it. But I've got an idea. Shank, have Jose dig agrave on Boot Hill--make it two of 'em. We've got to get that expressmoney."

  "And the silver," chuckled the desperado, as he took a farewell drinkat the bar.