by Zane Grey
Wade wheeled with his smoking gun low. “Friend of Kent’s, eh?”
“Not particular,” choked out the sheriff, ghastly of face. “An’ so you’re Mr. Brandon?”
Wade backed against the wall, where Kinsey joined him. The four men guardedly left the wall to move forward, still aghast, fastening eyes of amaze and incredulity upon the dead Kent. Clatter of boots sounded from up and down the saloon, and the adjoining stores. If Wade had desired an audience, here it was. His glance oscillated like a compass needle. He missed no newcomer while he still held the eyes of this sheriff and his companions. He saw Bilt and Kid approaching, and Hal, white-faced with a strained look.
“Boss, he’s Sam Hiles, sheriff down Winslow way, an’ not so damn much,” drawled Hogue, cool as ice.
“Hey, cowboy, I’ve seen you somewhere,” snapped Hiles, reddening.
“Dare say you have. An’ you’re seein’ me now” retorted the cowboy.
At that juncture Kid Marshall and Bilt Wood came sidling in between the gathering crowd and the wall. They got inside the circle but did not at once line up with Hogue. Kid’s glittering eyes took in Kent on the sidewalk, Wade backed against the wall, his gun still in his hand. Then they swerved to the sheriff and the others.
“Hiles, are you a friend of Kent’s?” repeated Wade, sharply.
“I said not particular. I’m sheriff of this county. But I’ll say Holbrook had many friends hyar.”
“Did they know he was hand in glove with a cow thief?”
“Who? Holbrook Kent. Say, you’re drunk or crazy. You can get away with thet now, shore, after killin’ him.”
“Declare yourself, Hiles,” demanded Wade, coldly. “You’ve no call on the law against me. It was self-defense. And if you don’t clear me I’ll consider you one of Kent’s many friends.”
“Wal, you can consider an’ be damned. An’ if you don’t rustle, I’ll arrest you.”
“Rustle? That should be a familiar word with you—along with the rest of Kent’s many friends.”
“What you mean?” rasped Hiles, turning green.
“I mean this. There’s a crooked ring in Holbrook, and I’ll bet you belong to it.”
“Crooked ring? Brandon you’re talkin’ heap brave with Kent daid there an’ you with the drop on me.”
Wade’s keen intuition sensed the interest of that listening crowd and the moment which had seemingly been made for him.
“Crooked ring, I said. You’re one who profits from it directly or indirectly. Holbrook Kent was the right-hand man of Band Drake. And Band Drake is Rand Blue. He’s here to meet Mason, the cattle buyer from Mariposa. Mason buys rustled cattle. . . . Hiles, you’ve got a crook right here with you now. That rider!”
Wade pointed his gun at the man who had recognized him. “He was in the outfit when I shot Urba for trying to rob Pen-carrow.”
“I don’t know him,” replied the sheriff.
“Maybe you don’t. All the same if I run across him again I’ll bore him. And you bet we’re going to ramsack this town for Drake.”
“By Gawd, man, you’re a bold one, whoever you are,” replied Hiles, hoarsely, and he looked the guilt he had so brazenly denied. “Mason will have you run out of Arizona for thet.”
“No, not Mason!” retorted Wade. “Hiles, you and your town crowd, and your range neighbors, take this and swallow it. . . . Mason was a buyer from Harrobin and Drake. He was that vilest of range corruptors because he fostered rustling and escaped its consequence—for a time. Harrobin rustled Aulsbrook’s herd. My outfit with Aulsbrook’s riders took that trail. We caught those rustlers, killed most of them and got the confession of others. We rounded up Harrobin and Mason. At Red Gulch, south of Cedar Range. Harrobin gave Mason away, betrayed him, told of the money he had just accepted for Aulsbrook’s herd. . . . Gentlemen, cattle-buyer Mason will never buy another head of stock— or try to draw his gun on a better man. . . . Harrobin we hanged! And we’re going to hang his pardner Band Drake, otherwise Blue. The day of this rustler combine is done.”
“Brandon!” cried an excited voice from the crowd. “He’s thet Texas gunman with his half-breed outfit!”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WADE had little fear that Blue would make a break to escape by daylight. He would hide until after nightfall. Nor would Rand Blue ever come out to fight! Nevertheless, Wade sent Hal to the highest roof in Holbrook, there to watch, while he and his cowboys ranged about like hounds on the scent.
“Show me thet geezer who called us a half-breed outfit,” Kid Marshall kept calling out, as he prodded this and that pedestrian with his rifle.
“Where have you got ’em hid?” Hogue Kinsey demanded of all whom he met.
Wade beat locked doors with his rifle butt until they were opened.
“You may be honest,” he said, to merchants, clerks, bartenders, even to white-faced women. “Sure, we know most of you are honest. But if you won’t help you must permit us to find Rand Blue and his rustlers.”
The main street of Holbrook became empty of its customary movement. Holbrook Kent lay dead where he had fallen, his hand still clutching his half-drawn handkerchief.
Wade, lean-faced and pale, like a wolf, led his three cowboys on that hunt. They held their rifles ready. They trusted no roof, no window, no alley, no corner. They kept close to the walls. They had eyes in the backs of their heads. They entered every building on that street, searched high and low, in lofts and cellars, in grain bins and storerooms, in stables. When the day was done, only the private houses remained unsearched. Hal had not seen a single horseman ride away from town.
But when night fell Susie came weeping to Bilt Wood, almost falling at his feet. “Bilt—that cowboy Steele—was one of them,” she sobbed. “He hid Drake—an’ three other men—in our house— scared Pa an’ Ma half to death. . . . When it got dark, they took a sack—of food an’ things—an’ left. . . . Pa heard our horses kicking—in the corral.—Soon as he dared he went out. . . . They’d gone—with only two saddles.”
“Haw! Haw!” shouted Bilt, but whether he was demented with gladness or ferocity Wade could not tell. “It’d served you right if Steele had made off with you—you damned little hussy. . . . Which way’d they go?”
“South, on the Pine Mound road.”
“Where’n hell else could they go?” queried Kinsey, scornfully. “Back to their hole-up. . . . Tex, the yellow dawgs would have done better to come out here an’ fight. It’s sixty miles to Pine Mound an’ the road’s bad. Not cut off. Rocks an’ mud, dark as hell. Four men on farm hosses with two saddles!”
“Boss, you can head them off,” added Kid Marshall exultantly.
“Fork your hawse, Tex,” chimed in Bilt. “Ride for home, you hangin’ son of a gun! We’ll foller with the wagons. You can make the ranch before daybreak. Bust in on the boys. Take Miss Jackie’s fast hawses. Ride Pen yourself, an’ set Hicks to haid off Blue.”
“Boys, you all must be mind readers,” flashed Wade, grimly.
“Oh, Tex, let me go with you?” begged Hal, wild-eyed.
“Pard, I’d like to go, too, but heah I cain’t,” drawled Hogue, with his frank smile. “You won’t need me.”
“Aw!—I won’t get to see thet Rand Blue kick on a rope,” wailed Kid Marshall.
“Hell! What’s thet to miss?” yelped Bilt Wood. “I won’t get to haul on the rope thet strangles Mister Steele. I won’t get to see his handsome mug. . . . Ha!”
“That’ll do, you-all,” returned Wade, peremptorily. “Miss Susie, thanks for your help. It was a tough place for a girl. But you’ve made up for what you did,, Bilt will forgive you.”
“Like hell I will,” replied Wood, but it was a crow rather than a growl.
“Rustle, boys. m off,” added Wade, and turned to run down the vacant dark street.
Holbrook had had a day to remember, he thought, one that augured well for the future. The worst feature of rustling cattle was its almost universal practice in the first days of new ran
ges. The indifference to fear of ranchers, perhaps the knowledge that they transgressed the letter of the law, the connivance of stock buyers and railroads, the profit to a whole community, more or less—these were the things that gave rustlers more power than the cattle barons. Cattle meant money. Merchants, saloons, gamblers, cowboys, rustlers, dance-hall girls, everybody lived off cattle. It took some such revolution as Wade had started to awaken a rich range to its senses, to what was right and what was wrong.
The only man Wade encountered in his hurry down the main street was Holbrook Kent, lying as he had fallen, ghastly and stark in the moonlight. This time Wade stopped to take the gunman’s gun. That the citizen of whom the town had boasted with pride should lie dead all day in the street proved the panic which had prevailed.
Wade arrived at the corrals out of breath from running. It took him a little while to find his horse Baldy, a big rangy roan, noted for his endurance. Wade saddled him and remembered to sheath his rifle. His extra gun and Kent’s he put in the saddlebags, one on each side. Then he reflected a moment. The wagons were gone. There was nothing left in the corral. By this time the cowboys would be driving south. Then mounting, he urged Baldy to a gallop. What a clatter the big hoofs of the roan made down the quiet street! Lights had begun to show and groups of men in doorways and at the street corners. These men watched him ride by, his lean horse stretching out. At the outskirts of town Wade caught up with the wagons. He passed them without slowing down. Hal Pencarrow greeted him with a wild whoop.
“Ride thet hoss, Tex!” yelled Hogue, in his clear high voice.
“Fork him, cowboy!” added Kid Marshall. And Bilt Wood’s unintelligible shout, fierce and vengeful, floated after him.
The level road, pale in the moonlight, stretched ahead across the desert. Wade eased the horse to a lope, a gait Baldy could hold indefinitely over good ground. Far to the south dark buttes loomed above the horizon. To the west the great mountain stood up black and grand, its ragged peaks splitting the blue.
At the river Wade slowed to a trot. Baldy went splashing across the shallow sand bars. The moonlight glistened on the frostlike margins of alkali. Beyond began the only ascent on that road to Cedar Range, a gradual climb for a mile through rocky country. Wade saved the horse. From the ridge he looked back to see the ragged black patch that was the town marked by a few lights.
From that point the road descended gradually. The roan settled to a steady lope. The bleak desert, denuded of trees, flashed by on either side of Wade, gray and shadowy. Jack rabbits streaked away into the sage. The air was cool and as Wade rode on, his eye piercing the melancholy moonlit obscurity, his thoughts were centered on Rand Blue.
The rustler, with his men, would expect pursuit on the Pine Mound road. But their calculations would begin from the next morning at the earliest. They would spare nothing on that night ride. On the morrow they would be within striking distance of their hiding place in the brakes.
Wade’s plan was to head Blue off before he left the road. If that failed, however, it would only prolong the pursuit. Hicks would trail the rustlers to their lair.
Absorbed in his ruthless concentration, Wade rode on. He walked the horse through dark stretches of woods, trotted him over the rough going, and loped him in the open. The moon soared high. The hours passed as swiftly as the miles. By midnight the rolling range of cedars and pines dropped away in front of Wade, a vast gray vale, pale and obscure under the moon. Lost somewhere in that basin grazed his herd of cattle. He had the length of that valley to ride, and calculating he was ahead of his schedule, he gave Baldy a good long walk. The moon began to wane and the desert to lose its opaque curtain. Soon he resumed the alternate lope and pace that had covered distance so satisfactorily. The moon slid behind the mountain and a wan twilight intervened. That gave place to the dark hour before dawn.
When this lightened to gray, Wade was riding across the flat toward the ranch. Dawn soon followed, with ruddy streaks on the horizon. He galloped the last mile along the pasture lane, and on to the bunkhouse of the cowboys. Leaping off he uncinched the heaving Baldy, and threw the saddle with a flop.
Hicks appeared in the door with a gun in his hand.
“Mawnin’, boss,” he said. “I heard thet hawse comin’ an’ I kinda reckoned it’d be you.”
“It’s me, all right.. . . Wake the boys.”
“Hyar, you Injuns!” yelled Hicks. “Pile out. . . . Boss hyarrarin’ to go.”
Wade led the steaming heaving roan to the pasture gate and turned him in, adding to his memorable list another great horse he had ridden.
The cowboys, with tousled hair, were getting into their boots.
“Hogue an’ the boys all right?” asked Jerry, anxiously.
“Yes. They left Holbrook before me, just after dark.”
“Whew!—I had a peep at Baldy. . . . Wal?”
“How many riders out?”
“Five. They’ll be in at sunup.”
“We won’t wait. . . . Listen, all of you. . . . Rand Blue and three of his men left Holbrook at dark last night. Poorly mounted, two riding bareback. They’d hid from us all day. . . . Do any of you know a cowboy named Steele, from Mariposa?”
“Sure. I rode with Steele. Fancy fellar. He’s in Mason’s outfit,” replied one of Aulsbrook’s riders.
“Well, he’s with Blue. It seems Steele beat Bilt out of his girl, Susie something. Bilt had a fight with Steele night before last. And that’s how we came to find out where Blue hid all day. Susie came and told Bilt that Steele had hid Blue and the other men in her house.”
“Was they hidin’ from you, boss?” queried Jerry, curiously.
“They were. After I killed Kent, we treated the town pretty rough hunting for Blue. He had friends there. But they all went back on him yesterday. Scared, I reckon. We had rifles and we prodded whoever we run into and banged at the door. Kid and Hogue were tough. This fellow Steele who’d double-crossed Bilt forced Susie’s folks to hide him and Blue and the other two till after dark. Then they escaped on farm horses, taking the Pine Mound road. . . . It’s our job to head them off. How about that, Hicks?”
“Take some ridin’,” replied the half-breed.
“Then jump, all of you. Rustle Miss Jacqueline’s horses. Saddle Pen for me while I stretch my legs. Make some strong coffee. Pack some meat and biscuits.”
“Want any word left?” asked Jerry.
“No.”
Before the sun tipped the gray sage with rose, Wade’s riders were up on prancing fiery horses.
“Hicks, you lead. It’ll be trail riding.”
“I reckon. Shorter across country. But rough. We can beat thet time.”
“How far?”
“Thirty odd miles.”
“Where will Blue be heading for?”
“Somewhere in the brakes. Harrobin’s Hole, they call it. Trail heads beyond Pine Mound.”
“Blue will stay on the road as far as Pine Mound,” asserted Wade, grimly.
“Yes, an’ he’ll never get thet far,” chimed in Jerry. “Blue’s no cowboy. He’s got a bad ankle. An’ I never seen the farm hoss thet could travel from Holbrook to Pine Mound in one night.”
“Boss,” spoke up Strothers, another of Aulsbrook’s men and one that Wade wanted to keep on at Cedar Ranch. “I calkilate Blue hasn’t heard what happened to Harrobin’s outfit, or he wouldn’t be makin’ for Pine Mound atall.”
“Any old buck will make for his old stampin’ ground,” vouchsafed another rider.
“We’re not concerned with Blue’s reasons,” returned Wade. “Probably he hadn’t heard about Harrobin. But I told that Holbrook sheriff. About Mason, too. With Kent out of the deal and only a couple of men Blue showed yellow.”
“Boss, we’re wastin’ time,” interposed the half-breed. “All you need to know is thet if Blue leaves his tracks anywhere I can trail him.”
“Right. . . . Cut loose, Hicks.”
With clattering rhythmic beat of swift hoofs on the hard grou
nd the spirited horses swept down the lane and out upon the reddening sage.
Of all Wade’s wild cowboy riders the half-breed was the wildest. He had all the Indian’s matchless horsemanship and all the range rider’s daredevil boldness. Wade expected a breakneck pace which even he would be unable to hold, though he had in Pen the swiftest horse on the range. He expected to have to caution the reckless Hicks.
In this calculation Wade was deceived. The half-breed at the very outset displayed a scrutiny of the ground ahead and consideration for a horse. Nevertheless he rode like the wind, with the cowboys strung out behind.
“For once Hicks is riding careful,” called Wade to Jerry who rode beside him.
“Shore. He ain’t gonna miss gettin’ a shot at Steele. He’s Bilt’s pard, you know.”
“Aha! So that’s it.” Wade had been giving the half-breed credit for thought of the great importance of this ride, of what its successful issue meant to his boss and to Pencarrow and the range. But Hicks’ thought was to avenge the betrayal of his friend.
The rising sun shone on the flat sage and grass valley with its thousands of grazing cattle. Wade’s grim mood admitted appreciation of the beauty and color of that scene, of its significance to him. But it was only a fleeting thought. There was also something wonderful about riding this swiftest of the Pencarrow thoroughbreds. Pen’s running gait, like his pace, was something to incite a range rider’s love for a great horse.
Hicks swerved off the flat into the cedars, on the trail Wade had ridden so often. It wound snakelike through the gray trees, giving up a ringing clatter from the iron hoofs. The flash of gray-green, the reaching out of dead snags, like clutching hands, the dry fragrance of cedar mixed with sage, the rhythmic beat, beat, beat, the dark little half-breed’s crouch in the saddle as he peered ahead, the long single file of riders behind, silent, formidable— all these encroached upon Wade’s hard concentration of mind, and warned him for a flashing thought that he was not only an engine of destruction but a man who would have to face himself soon.
From the cedar forest Hicks led into rocky country where he trotted his horse and walked him down into the canyon. On a sandy trail he spared the horse. Climbing out he rode into the pine belt that reached all the way to Pine Mound. A bad trail for miles slowed down the cavalcade. An hour’s tedious vigilant riding put behind the zone of rocks and gullies. Hicks left the trail to head into the main pine forest. For centuries the Apaches had burned the grass and brush in this forest, so that it was open like a park.
