by T. T. Flynn
The Ladrone headquarters was on Manzanilla Creek, where old man Riggins had lived. Buildings had been added, low massive adobe buildings, each one as good as a fort in case of trouble. Corrals were well built and strong. Windmills were creaking briskly in the night wind and horses moved in the corrals as the three of them rode to the main house. From black shadows on the verandah a voice hailed them:
"Clarkson says for all of you to come in."
"They sent word from the gate we was coming. I don't like it," Buckshot muttered in Spanish.
In Spanish Jim said: "We'll see. Maybe he'll show some of his hand tonight. I'll do the talking. Keep our friend here quiet."
"What's he sayiri ?" Red asked as they dismounted.
"Said for you an' me to mind our manners."
"I ain't got any manners." Red chuckled. "But I'm primed to see how Clarkson takes his new partner."
One man with a rifle guarded the verandah. Henry Clarkson bulked inside the lamplit doorway when Jim walked to it.
"Buenas noches, senor," Jim greeted him.
"Come in," Clarkson said.
All three carried their rifles in the house. The guns seemed out of place in the cool quiet under the log vigas of the big room where Clarkson took them.
Deer heads, a wildcat skin, a mountain lion skin were on the walls. Bearskins were on the floor. The furniture had been brought from the East and old Mexico.
Clarkson's fat pink face was smiling as he addressed Jim in Spanish. "You like it?"
"Ah, si, senor."
"These are your men?"
"The ranch can use them, no?"
"We'll try." Clarkson nodded. "Anything on your mind tonight?"
"Senor, I but wanted to see this ranch of ours."
Henry Clarkson beamed. "All yours, Don Antonio. Have the goodness to be seated. You will have whiskey?"
"You trouble yourself too much, senor"
Clarkson was smiling broadly as he motioned to a table against the wall that held a whiskey bottle and glasses. Red Carney read the gesture right and stepped to the bottle, grinning.
'First drink ever I got in here an' I'll make it a big one."
"That's right," Clarkson said. "Make it a big one, Carney. You'll need it."
"Yeah?" Red said, wheeling warily from the whiskey bottle. "Why'll I need it?"
Tension had been there in the room behind the smiling talk. Now suddenly the tension was out in the open, fairly crackling as Red hurled his terse question. Buckshot felt it, and Jim looked about the room for an answer.
Clarkson was still smiling but the broad fat face had gone pale with a new strain The smile shaded to little more than a grimace before the threat on Red Carney's face.
Something moved slightly on the end wall of the room. Jim caught the movement. He looked at the other end of the room, then quickly glanced over his shoulder at the windows.
Clarkson saw him. The chuckle that followed had a rasp of unpleasant satisfaction.
"Tell him, Don Antonio, before he gets shot down like a dog," Henry Clarkson said in English. "And then we'll drink to Jim Tennant's luck in getting away from Zamora."
Buckshot Bledsoe went for his six-gun. Jim was close enough to grab the wrist.
"Don't move, Buckshot! You too, Red! It's a trap! Look at the walls and windows!"
The harsh warning in English from the man who called himself Don Antonio Ponchito y Rio stunned Red Carney for a moment. In that moment he looked and saw gun muzzles protruding from slits in the end walls and sighted through the open windows. Rifles. Six at least. Enough to drop all three of them before one could get a gun into action.
Red looked as if he were going for his gun anyway. Then he swore and lifted his hands shoulder high and spoke to Clarkson, and then to Jim.
"Might have knowed you'd have a trick, Clarkson. An' who'n hell are you, feller, makin' a fool outta me this way?"
"Jim Tennant's the name, Red. I bought into this ranch legal enough but I didn't figure Clarkson got news across the border so fast."
"Come and get them, Salazar!" Clarkson called.
"Salazar?" Jim repeated, frowning. "From Colonel Chavez's Hacienda Gorda?"
The man who entered the room with a drawn gun had the chunky build, heavy features, flat nose, thick lips, chocolate skin, and coarse black hair that showed a heavy mixture of Indian. Jack Black and another Ladrone gunman followed him in and helped disarm the prisoners.
Salazar's smile as he looked at Jim had gloating mockery in it.
"Plenty nice, thees Don Ponchito?" The blow of his hard hand split Jim's lip.
"Tally one," Jim said through his teeth. "An' I deserve it for letting you beg off that day on the Gorda."
Salazar hit him again. Henry Clarkson laughed as he poured whiskey in a glass and drank, smacking his lips.
"Too bad we can't watch Chavez handle you, Tennant. It'd almost be worth a ride to Zamora."
"So we're going back to Zamora?"
"In a day or two," Clarkson promised. "The sheriff here would hang you. But Chavez will do it better. From what Salazar tells me, I believe it. I've seen what Chavez can do. Salazar, get them out of here."
"Who's Chavez?" Red asked, as Jack Black's gun prodded him toward the door.
"He's the turkey that'll take you down to pin feathers an' then get the skin," jeered Black. "Red an' Black on the same payroll, is it? You're lucky. I'd have gut-shot you quick. This way you get a ride across the border."
Other gunmen appeared and helped escort the three prisoners back to a small, low outbuilding constructed of heavy peeled logs. The plank door was massive. The inside was a single dark room into which they were shoved. The door was slammed and padlocked on the outside.
Moonlight was visible through two small, barred openings under the ceiling. There were no win dows. A match flared in the back corner as a voice greeted them.
"Make yourselves to home, boys. There's a bed for everyone ... on the floor."
The face in the match light was like a dried, windscoured bit of the border desert from which keen eyes peered under bristling brows.
"Hondo!" Jim exclaimed.
"I sure rode hard to get my neck in a sling," Hondo said as the match went out. "Started soon as I got back to Zamora an' seen Seferino."
"Buckshot, Red ... this is Hondo, who'll do anywhere," Jim said. "I left word in Zamora for him and any friends to ride by the ranch here if they got a chance. Anyone come with you, Hondo?"
"I come alone," Hondo said, lighting another match. "Which one of you punched Chavez an 'went out the window with Jim?"
"Wisht I'd bent a gun barrel on that sidewinder's head," Buckshot growled.
"You done worse," Hondo retorted. "The women are still laughin' at him behind his back. Chavez is frothin' and swearin' he'll get you both back."
Jim had been rolling a cigarette in the dark. He lighted it and his face was bleak in the match flare. His comment was bleak, too.
"Looks like he'll get us, too. I can't figure how he knew I'd be here. Seferino wouldn't talk. Or did he?"
"Not Seferino. You can trust that Mexican."
"But Salazar beat me here."
"When I hit Zamora," Hondo said, "Colonel Chavez sent for me and asked me personal what about this Ponchito who had been called a gringo name at the dance. Wouldn't believe me at first when I told him I had never heard the name Jim Tennant. Chavez didn't know where to find Jim Tennant then. He wanted to know. Right after that I seen Seferino an' left town in the night. Only Seferino knowed I was going. I made sure I wasn't followed an' I traveled fast. And south of the Laguna Tres Madres I run into nigh a dozen riders going north, too. Three of them were gringo hardcases. The rest was vaqueros. High man was Salazar who backed down when you called his bluff at the Gorda Ranch last year. Salazar knowed me right away and asked if I'd seen Ponchito. I told him not for a month. He told me what Chavez was going to do to Ponchito if he caught him. Just before Salazar left the ranch he heard about the trouble at the dance and ha
d orders to keep an eye out for you, Jim. He knowed about the name Jim Tennant. But that's all he knowed. He didn't know I'd been to Zamora and talked with Chavez. He wasn't trailing you. He had other business. They were heading north and didn't want no company. Salazar made it plain after he got through askin' questions about you. So I cut off by myself. An' later I seen where they swung to the west after they passed the laguna."
"Head that way from the Laguna Tres Madres," Buckshot said from the darkness, "and you'll come out at the Little Chipaderas. From there you can cut acrost the dry flats an' go north toward the Gila country."
"Or take Gray Ghost Canon and reach the Ladrones," Jim amended. "When the 'breed herb doctor turned me loose, I went across the border that way. Salazar could have got his men here quicker that way."
"I ain't seen any of his men," Hondo said. "I got here yesterday and talked myself into a job at gun pay. Salazar rode in today, about half high sun before noon. Me bein' here didn't mean much to him after he heard I was workin' for the outfit. A man rode to town for the boss ... and before sundown him and Salazar was makin' talk in the house. Orders come out to saddle and get ready for two or three days' work. I was saddling with the rest, and Salazar and this Clarkson, the boss, was watching, when Salazar grinned at me and told Clarkson to keep his eyes peeled for a friend of mine that the gringos called Jim Tennant and Colonel Chavez wanted in Zamora. Salazar said they knowed you acrost the border as Ponchito."
"So that's what happened?" Jim grunted. "Salazar told it right there."
"I wasn't sure," Hondo confessed. "Clarkson said he didn't know nothing about a man with those names and then remembered something in the house he'd forgot to show Salazar. They went in and I started figuring how to head you off. Next thing guns was in my back and I was in the house with Clarkson asking why I was here and who else'd come acrost the border with me. He was riled and jumpy."
"I'Il bet he was," Jim said. "He thought Jim Tennant was long dead. I'd just told him in town my name was Ponchito and I owned part of this ranch now.,,
"I told him where to go," continued Hondo. "An' he had me throwed in here. What do you make of it, Jim?"
"It's bad," Jim said without hesitation. "I never thought Chavez, down there in Zamora, would get a hand in this business. I knew he'd been making big money in stolen cattle, even having it thieved from the folks in his district that he was supposed to protect, and trailed north across the border. And rustled stock on this side was run down to the ranches Chavez owns. But I didn't figure Chavez would have men riding this way so quick. And I didn't think they'd pay much attention to Buckshot calling me Jim Tennant at the dance. But that's Chavez. He's a fox."
"So now what?" Red Carney demanded out of the darkness.
"Hard to say about you, Red," Jim admitted. "It's Buckshot and Hondo and me. The sheriff here can put an old rustling charge against me if Clarkson says the word. But we'll get worse than that at Zamora. I've found bodies spread-eagled on cactus an' left for the sun and ants. Chavez is full of such tricks."
"I'll get it, too," Red told him dryly. "Mind telling me what's back of all this'? I ain't heard enough yet to make sense."
"Hondo had better know, too," Jim said.
They listened to his terse outline of the past five years, and at the end Hondo's grim comment summed it up.
"Clarkson don't want anybody left to talk. He's on top and he aims to stay on top."
"The highest buzzard on the tree gets picked off first when the shooting starts," Jim pointed out. "And Henry Clarkson has roosted high an' fed on dead meat too long. Buckshot, how many folks around here would help themselves if they had a chance?"
Buckshot replied promptly. "Plenty ... if they knowed there was somethin' they could do. But they'd have to be sure they had a chance to do it. Clarkson's gun riders have got 'em buffaloed. The best men have been kilt off or froze out or got disgusted an' moved on. Clarkson stays inside the law, an' he's got shut of folks most likely to make him trouble."
Two riders came to the small log building as Buckshot finished. One of the small barred air openings let in Henry Clarkson's jeering voice.
"Adios, Don Antonio. Tomorrow or next day you start to Zamora. The first man who tries to break out gets shot. A pleasant trip south to all of you."
Red Carney replied with a savage and fluent stream of oaths. "Your number's up, Clarkson, if I get out with a gun!"
"Eees beeg noise from leetle rooster," Salazar jeered outside, and the two men rode away at a gallop.
Red swore again.
"That don't help," Jim said calmly. "Hondo, did those Clarkson riders leave?"
"Uhn-huh. Right after I was throwed in here."
"Know where they were going?"
"Nobody said."
"Salazar rode here alone?"
"I didn't see no one with him," Hondo grunted.
"Then they must be over around the Ladrones and Gray Ghost Canon," Jim said. "Camping out. They don't want to be seen. Which means more crooked work. Can't be anything but rustling. Clarkson's gunmen are helping. They know the country. Clarkson's either got rustled beef on the ranch that he's ready to move or he knows where to gather a bunch for the Chavez men to get over the border fast."
"Most likely both," Buckshot declared. "Nobody gits a chance to look over brands inside Clarkson's wire. What comes in stays in till Clarkson moves it ary way he likes. But there's good beef on the other ranches if a man knows where to look. Clarkson don't have to send honest meat across the border. It'll bring him more on this side. You can bet ary head that moves south is wet and crooked."
"That would settle Clarkson's hash before any honest jury if it was laid to him."
"It won't be," Buckshot stated dourly. "Clarkson'll git by with this like he has everything else. I ain't a man to say I told you so, Jim, but if we hadn't stuck our necks out by ridin' out here, we wouldn't be fixed like this."
"If we'd stayed in town, we wouldn't know all this," countered Jim.
"What good's it doin' us?"
"Maybe none. Anybody got a gun left?"
"They wasn't fool enough to miss no guns," Buckshot said glumly. "I got that knife that was stuck in my shoulder down in Zamora, though. Tied 'er down the back of my neck fer luck afore I rode after you an' Red. But a crowbar wouldn't get us through them logs, let alone a knife. An' they'll have plenty of guns ready to use when the door's opened."
Jim hammered on the door.
"Never mind that!" a gruff voice shouted outside.
"How about some water?"
"Won't be no water until Clarkson comes back with the key! Might be morning or later!"
"I figured there'd be a guard," Jim said under his breath. "Buckshot, gimme that knife ... and start singing."
"Singin'?" Buckshot snorted. "I ain't that crazy. If cussin' would help, I'd try that."
Jim chuckled. "It'll have to be singing. These logs would stop an axe. But the vigas aren't too close together. There's only boards under the dirt. Clarkson's smart ... but there's plenty ways to skin a cat. We'll skin him with this knife if there's enough noise so that the guard outside don't hear."
They saw instantly what he meant. The log walls and door were massive and strong. The roof had been built flat in the custom of the country. Crosslog vigas had been notched in atop the side walls. Rough-sawed boards had been laid over the vigas. Some two feet of dirt atop the boards formed the easily built adobe roof of the border country.
If a man could cut through the rough-sawed planks without the guard outside hearing, only dirt overhead would bar him from the sky. A knife, handled right, might cut through the tough, dry wood.
Hondo's husky whisper sharpened with hope. "It might work, Jim. Here's the box I was sittin' on."
Jim struck a match, held it up, selected a spot on the ceiling, and stepped on the box.
"I feel like a fool," Red Carney growled. "But I'd sing like a fool fer a chance at Clarkson. Come on, you birdies. Give 'em 'Mushmouth Magee'."
I
t wasn't music but it made noise. Jim grinned as Buckshot's harsh voice bayed out in the little lowceilinged room, then grimly Jim attacked the boards above with the bone-handled knife.
It was hard, slow work, gouging, cutting across the wood grain overhead. Perspiration started to roll down Jim's face and neck. His arms began to ache. Bits of wood rained on his head and face.
When the third song ended, the guard outside called with loud sarcasm: "Sounds like coyotes yowlin' at the moon! Shut up an' go to sleep!"
"Come in and make us!" Red invited.
"I can hold out longer than you jaspers can howl without water."
Buckshot took a spell at the knife while Jim joined in the singing. Hondo and Red were too short to reach the ceiling boards from the low box.
When Buckshot gave out, Jim climbed back on the box. It took an hour and a half to get the first short length of board cut through against the supporting vigas and pulled down. Dirt showered down after it. Thereafter small showers of dry dusty dirt were constantly falling.
Buckshot got the second length of board out and staggered off the box, spitting dirt and growling as he brushed out his whiskers.
"Feels like digging with your face. We're a-gettin' there, boys ... if they don't spot us. Two more boards an 'we can git through."
Jim hacked and cut the third length of board out without stopping, and kept on desperately. The singing voices were harsh and cracked now as dry throats protested. The guard had cursed them and men had walked over from the bunkhouse to jeer, and then gone back to turn in.
Jim's arms were leaden with weariness as he wrenched the fourth board down and stumbled off the box.
"Hondo an 'Buckshot can boost me up," he rasped. "Hondo can follow and pull Buckshot up. When you hear me outside, Red, jump for the box and let 'em pull you up."
"If they ain't waitin' on the roof when you poke your head out," Red warned.
"I'll know when I get up there. Let's go."
Red kicked on the heavy plank door and yelled for water as Hondo and Buckshot boosted Jim up into the small ceiling opening. The knife brought chunks of dry dirt down on the three of them. Jim's hand shoved through into the fresh air. Half a minute of furious work enlarged the hole. A boost shoved him through and up to a scrambling crouch on grass, weeds growing on the dirt.
