Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  Lance accosted men in service stations and stores without any success. What he wanted to encounter was a cowboy. But this type appeared remarkably scarce. One man, evidently a cattleman, laughed gruffly at Lance: “Wal, son, thet kind of two-laiged critter has been aboot washed up on this range.”

  “You don’t say. What by?” queried Lance, blankly.

  “I reckon by hard times. North of heah a ways there’s some cattle left. But down heah the only successful business is bootlegging.”

  That discouraged Lance, and he strolled around, slowly succumbing to the need of pawning his watch. Walking in high-heeled cowboy boots was not exactly a joy. It was noon and Lance was hot. Presently he heard voices near at hand, and turning discovered that he had halted close to a big black car, from which issued sharp voices. A second glance at that car struck him singularly. How like the black car that had followed the girl Madge to the parking place where he had chosen to avoid meeting her! With a pang he realized he had not thought of her for days. He was in another world. But this car!... Shiny black, without a gleam of metal anywhere, a fine high-priced machine, it certainly resembled....

  “Hey, buddy, come here,” called a voice that shot through Lance. A young man, with pale face and eyes like gimlets, was leaning out of the front seat opposite the driver. Lance recognized him immediately. The young man Madge had designated as a gangster and who had called himself Honey Bee Uhl.

  CHAPTER II

  LANCE ADVANCED SLOWLY, hiding an intense curiosity. Somehow he wanted to find out all he could about this fellow.

  “Hello, yourself,” he replied.

  “You look sort of on the loose.”

  “Well, I look just what I am,” Lance replied.

  “No offense. We’re loafing here for a guy, and I just wanted to be friendly. Care for a drink?”

  “Not till I have a feed.”

  “Broke?”

  “Flat as a pancake. And I can’t find a job in this slow burg.”

  “Say, buddy, there’s plenty jobs for the right guys. Can you drive a truck?”

  “Mister, I could drive two trucks,” retorted Lance, boastfully.

  “Yeah? Well, how’d you like to grab a century?”

  “Uhuh! Sounds good to me. I’d pull almost any kind of a job for that much dough. Only I’d want to be sure I was going to get it,” laughed Lance.

  “Exactly. It’s okay. Now who are you and what have you been doing?”

  “You never heard of me, mister,” said Lance, evasively. “But I’ll say I’ve been beating it from L. A.”

  “Dicks after you?”

  Lance laughed grimly and looked blankly silent, and averted his face somewhat from the piercing scrutiny bent upon him.

  “Come clean with me, buddy, if you want your luck to change. What you been doing in L. A.?”

  “Are you asking me, mister?”

  “Yes, I am. It’s not for you to ask me questions,” replied Uhl, with impatient sharpness. “Take it or leave it.”

  “Aw, what the hell? I’m hungry.... I beat it out of Portland ahead of Latzy Cork,” hazarded Lance, remembering the name of a shady underworld character who had recently been eluding the police on the coast.

  “That racket, eh?” flashed Uhl, snapping his fingers. And with his eyes like gray fire he turned in the seat to his companions. Lance took advantage of this moment to make certain that he would recognize the driver of the car, and the three hard-faced individuals in the back seat, if he ever saw them again. At the side of the one farthest toward the road Lance espied the muzzle of a machine gun. “Cork may have been spotting me. What do you think, Dipper?”

  “Not a chance, Bee. He’s been in Frisco and north for two months,” replied the one addressed.

  “We don’t know that,” said Uhl, doubtfully, and turning again he pulled out a roll of bills, the wrapper of which bore the denomination one hundred. “Here’s your dough, buddy.... You’re on the spot. But the only risk you run is if you double-cross me.”

  “If I undertake the job, I’ll be straight,” interposed Lance.

  “That’s how you strike me.... See the big canvas-covered truck across there, back of the service station? Well, she’s your bus. You’re to take her to Tucson. She’s empty, but you drive slow, as if she was loaded heavy. See? You’ll be held up sooner or later, probably after dark outside of Tucson. That’ll be okay. You’re dumb. You just drove the truck over and you don’t know me. See?”

  “I don’t know whether I see or not,” rejoined Lance, dubiously. “Who’ll hold me up — and why?”

  “Say, you won’t need to fake being dumb. All you got to do is stop when you’re held up. See? You don’t know nothing.”

  “Does that truck belong to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rumrunner?”

  “I told you it was empty,” snapped Uhl. “Is it a go?”

  “You bet,” declared Lance, taking the proffered money. “What’ll I do when I get to Tucson?”

  “You’ll be on the main highway. Stop at the first service station on the edge of town. Right-hand side.”

  “Then what?”

  “If I don’t meet you someone else will.”

  “Suppose these holdup gents take the truck away from me?”

  “That won’t be your loss.”

  “Boss,” interposed the sallow-faced Dipper, “this husky bird is packin’ a rod.”

  “Say, are you telling me? I hope he turns cowboy with it on those dopes.... Buddy, if you turn this trick there’ll be more.”

  “This one doesn’t strike me so hot,” declared Lance, tersely. “But one at a time. I’m on my way.”

  As Lance strode off, carefully pocketing the money he heard Uhl say: “Dip, if he comes through we’ll take him on.”

  “No gamble, Boss. That fellow will do....”

  Lance passed on out of earshot. At the station he said to the operator: “That truck ready?” Upon being informed that “she’s all set,” Lance climbed into the driver’s seat and took a look. The machine was a fine make. As he moved out of the station yard he observed that the big black car had gone. Lance did not look to see what had become of it. A block away he turned into the highway and got through Douglas without a stop. Once beyond the town he opened up to twenty-five miles an hour and faced the north with a grim realization that he was in for an adventure he never would have hazarded but for a blonde college girl named Madge who had intrigued him.

  “Queer setup,” soliloquized Lance, now giving rein to his conjectures. “I hit the bull’s-eye with that crack about Latzy Cork.... Racket? Wonder which racket? Cork was suspected of most everything up north.... Anyhow I got away with it.... And this Bee Uhl. He’s a crook all right. From Chi.... I get it. Chicago, of course. He doesn’t seem to care who knows it. And this big truck must have to do with bootlegging. Over the border, maybe. Or up from some harbor on the Gulf.... Nothing to me. It gets my goat, though, what this slick bozo had to do with that girl.”

  Lance reflected presently that he ought to have that circumstance mastered. Madge’s own words testified to that. She had flirted with Uhl, obviously for the thrill of it. She certainly knew he was a gangster. Perhaps that was the secret. A girl like her must be besieged by admirers, importuned and bored until she was tired of them. Still Uhl was handsome, and perhaps his hard and insolent way might have appealed to the girl. Assuredly that had been the inception of the affair. Lance felt glad to convince himself that she had realized her mistake, and in a thoroughbred but kindly way had made it clear to Uhl.

  “But what in the hell did she want to fall for a guy like that?” bit out Lance, jealously. “Oh, be yourself, Lance!” Just because this Majesty, the student Rollie had called her, happened to be the loveliest and most fascinating girl Lance had ever met, was no reason for him to think her on the plane of the angels.

  Lance did not need to bring back the vision of her. That was limned on his memory. No use faking it, he thought — he had fallen in lo
ve with her at first sight. That was all right. But he wished the thought and beauty and charm of her would not stick so tenaciously. He could not banish her and again came the regret that he had not stood right out like a man to meet her that day. He could at least have spared her the encounter with Uhl.

  All at once Lance had a disturbing thought. Uhl, gangster, racketeer, bootlegger, might have another slant to his crookedness. He might be a kidnaper. That seemed reasonable enough, and the idea grew on Lance. The girl must belong to a rich California family. Her style, her patrician air, her talk of a ranch full of Arabian horses, surely these attested wealth. And that might explain Bee Uhl’s interest in her. With the near approach of repeal of prohibition these bootleggers must work up other rackets. Already there had been a nationwide activity in kidnaping.

  “Goofy or not, I take it as a hunch,” muttered Lance, with finality. “Believe me, I’ll get a line on that slicker with his roll of centuries, if I can.” And in the stress of the moment Lance thought that if he did verify such suspicion of the gangster, it would not be beyond him to go back to Los Angeles to warn the girl. Then the realization of his sudden tumult of delight made him look aghast at himself. “Quit your romancing, kid,” he said. “This is hard pay. And I’m on a job I should have passed up.”

  But nothing he thought or reasoned out changed the essential sentiment and presagement of the situation. The way accidents and circumstances fell across his path and what came of them had taught him to believe any strange and far-reaching adventure could befall him.

  Cars and trucks going and coming passed Lance now and then, the southbound traffic being the heavier. Lance did not see the big black automobile belonging to Uhl. Once he looked back down a league-long stretch, half expecting to discover the car following. But he did not.

  Driving a truck did not permit of close attention to the desert scenery, which had been his pleasure while riding Umpqua. However, that labor and his concentration on the peculiar circumstances leading to this ride, certainly made the time fly. Almost before he knew it, he was climbing the tortuous grade through Bisbee, keeping keen lookout for the holdup he had been told to expect. About midafternoon he went through picturesque Tombstone on the outskirts of which he halted for gasoline. This necessitated his breaking the hundred dollar bill Uhl had given him. The service station man, a westerner of middle age, glanced from the bill to Lance with keen blue eyes. “Seen bills like this before — an’ also that truck you’re drivin’. How aboot yore company?”

  “Don’t savvy,” returned Lance, gruffly. “What you mean by company?”

  “Wal, usually thar’s two or three trucks like this one strung along. Reckon you’re new to...”

  “To what, mister?” interrupted Lance.

  “Wal, I ain’t sayin’,” responded the operator, in cool evasion.

  “Yeah? Well, as a matter of fact, I’m damn new at this job.”

  That little wordy byplay roused Lance anew to the possibilities that might be thickening ahead of him. Thereafter he kept keen as a whip, increasing his speed a little. It was almost dark when he passed Mescal, a desert hamlet, and he did not halt to appease thirst or hunger. He wanted to get this job over. The desert night was soft and balmy, cooling as the radiation of the day’s heat passed away. Jackrabbits and coyotes leaped across the road, gray in the flash of his lamps. The headlights of cars grew from pin points in the blackness to yellow orbs, rushing at him and passing by, to leave the distant road dark again. The dry odor of dust and desert growths clogged his nostrils. Under favorable circumstances Lance would have liked closer acquaintance with that desert. The spectral arms of cactus and the dense thickets of mesquite accentuated the lonesomeness.

  Some miles beyond Vail there appeared to come a brightening to the north. Soon Lance made that out to be the lights of Tucson, miles away still, but clear in the rarefied atmosphere. Lance rolling along at forty miles or more an hour, began to feel an edge for the expected holdup. Every time he caught the gleam of headlights behind he prepared for the order to halt. But so many cars passed him the next hour and so bright grew the illuminated horizon that he began to believe he might reach the first service station on the right without being stopped.

  Presently a car came up behind and held its place for a couple of miles. Lance anticipated that this was the one, and he forced himself to be ready. He slowed down to thirty, then to twenty. The car kept behind him, somewhat to the left. At length it slipped up alongside Lance. “Hey, you driver. Halt!” rang out a hoarse voice. Lance shut off, and applying the brakes, screeched to a stop.

  “Stick ’em up!” came from the car. A flashlight blinded Lance.

  “Okay!” he yelled, complying with the order.

  Two men leaped out and a door clicked. The car moved on ahead to come to a standstill in front of the truck. Lance’s door was jerked open. Light flooded his cab. Over an extended gun he caught indistinct sight of two faces, the foremost of which was masked. Lance heard footsteps running back behind his truck and the clank of bolts.

  “Bud, j’ever see this one before?” queried the bandit with the gun.

  “Nope. Another new one,” came the laconic answer.

  “Who are you?” followed the demand.

  “Arizona cowpuncher,” replied Lance. “Broke. Agreed to drive this truck.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “I don’t know. Five men in a black car at Douglas.”

  From behind clanked the hinge and there was a slap of canvas. “Empty, by God!” cried a hoarse voice, in anger. Footsteps preceded the appearance of two more men, one of whom Lance managed to distinguish despite the blinding flashlight. “Henny, we’re tricked. He’s made suckers out of us again. This truck is empty.”

  “Ah, hell no!”

  “Aw, hell yes! It’s a cattle car. As late as yesterday, when we picked them cars up, this one was full of steers. The other one had the...”

  “Shut up!” yapped the leader, pounding his gun on the door. “Hey, driver, how many trucks like this have you lamped lately?”

  “Off and on I’ve seen a good many,” rejoined Lance, glibly. “Three in a row day before yesterday.”

  “Goin’ which way?”

  “North, out of Douglas.”

  “Ah-ha! I told you, Henny,” yelled the enraged bandit. “An’ they’ll all come back full of steers. He’s took to buyin’ steers. What you think of that? In the cattle bizness. A blind. Ha! Ha! An’ it made a sucker out of you.”

  “Driver, is there a short cut to El Paso without goin’ through Douglas?” queried the leader, sharply.

  “Yes, at Benson,” replied Lance, readily. “Poor road, but passable.”

  The leader snapped off his flashlight. “Beat it, cowboy, wherever you’re goin’. An’ tell your boss we’re onto his racket.”

  “Henny, if there’s a short cut, no matter how bad, we might head off that car,” rasped the man Bud. He had a bitter raucous voice that Lance would remember. The four bandits ran to pile into their car. “Turn an’ step on it!” ordered the leader. In another moment their car was roaring east on the highway, and Lance had a clear road ahead. Relieved, and more interested than ever, he threw in his clutch and sped on toward Tucson. Lance saw that he had been used merely to throw this gang off the track. The cattle slant to the business seemed a trick that would take more than one carload of bandits to beat.

  The run from that lonely stretch of road to the service station designated was accomplished in short order, Lance driving at a fast clip. The truck appeared to ooze along as smoothly as a limousine. Hardly had Lance come to a halt in the station yard when two men in dark garb, slouch hats pulled down, hurried out to meet him. Lance was ready for them, and opening the door he stepped out with a long whew of relief.

  “Hello. Am I glad to see you? Take her away,” he said, vociferously.

  “Dey stick you up?” queried one, tensely, while the other leaped into the seat.

  “You bet. About five miles out. You s
hould have heard Bud and Henny cuss to find her empty. I gave them a bum steer.”

  “Yeah? An’ how bum?”

  “They asked me if there was a short cut to El Paso and I told them yes, at Benson. I heard it was some road. They’ll get lost.”

  “Thet’ll go hot with the boss. How much’d you dole out for gas? He forgot thet, an’ told me to square it.”

  Lance named the sum, which was handed to him in a five dollar note and no change wanted.

  “Blick, have we got all night?” demanded the man in the driver’s seat. “Cut it.”

  “Keep your shirt on. Honey Bee gave me an order, didn’t he?... Driver, yer come through clean. I’m to tell you thet if you’re hangin’ round Douglas next run, you can get another job.”

  “Swell. I’ll hang around, if it’s not too long. When’s the next run?”

  “I don’t know. Mebbe in a month — mebbe longer.”

  When they had gone Lance went into the service station, aware that his arrival and the short conference had been observed.

  “How far to a hash joint? I’m sure starved,” he began, genially.

  “Stranger hereabouts?” the man returned, with a keen look. “Plenty grub places up the street.”

  “Thanks. Yes, I’m a stranger. And I don’t mind telling you I drove that truck because I was broke. I was held up out here and scared stiff.”

  “You don’t say. Well, that’s not strange considerin’ the company. You got off lucky.”

  “Yeah? What was I up against?”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  “Did you ever see that truck before?”

  “Yep, an’ some more like it. They been comin’ and goin’ every six weeks or so.”

  “Cattle business must be good when steers get hauled in trucks,” commented Lance; then waiting a moment for an answer, which did not come, he strode up the street. In the middle of the second block he found a café, where he obtained his supper. At the next corner there was a hotel. Inquiry brought the information that he could take a bus early next morning for Douglas. Then he went to bed. Events of the day had been thought-provoking, but they did not keep him awake.