Looking down, Nevada studied the teeming courtyard below. In the darkness, men were eddying about the plaza like ships in a whirlpool. A handful of the black-clad Mexican guardsmen, some armed with rifles, and others with those wicked, small, machine guns moved about the crowd of white-clad Penitentes. They were keeping the crowd back from seven men who stood in a group near the base of the tower. Nevada had to admit this Commandante was a clever jasper. Through the gloom, those seven Oriental faces peering upward looked exactly alike. Each of the men was wearing a black uniform with gold buttons, and a gold belt he’d heard called a Sam Browne. One of those seven was all set to tear hell out of the greatest nation in the world!
“They ain’t goin’ to git away with it!” Nevada said fiercely. Then he fell silent again, studying the eddying throng with a keen attentiveness.
The Penitentes, he knew, were a queer bunch of hombres. They would cut themselves to ribbons with a cactus whip, crucify their own people, practice all sorts of torture rites in parts of this grim old castle. A proud, mysterious sect, they would do all this to themselves, but to a man they would rise and kill an outsider who mistreated one of their strange clan.
The Commandante, and the Penitentes he had duped into siding his cause of treachery and anarchy were few. Nevada could see that much from the number of uniformed men who were patrolling the courtyard. And, suddenly, it came to him why that patrol was in action. A picture crossed his mind. He remembered the sight of dead Penitentes sprawling in the street behind them when he and Utah fled to the Castle. A nervous guardsman had used a machine-gun to try and cut them down, and had succeeded in killing some of his own people. That was why the Penitentes were being watched now. The Commandante was afraid of the strange sect! Afraid they might rise and drive his Fifth Columnists from Tres Cruces.
On the thought, he turned. “We’re goin’ back the way we came, Utah,” Nevada said quietly. “The three of us.”
“She’s nothin’ but a death walk,” Utah grumbled.
“Since when you been afraid to gamble with yore worthless life?” Nevada demanded.
“What do you plan?” Tarrant cut in.
Nevada’s thin face lit with excitement as he explained his deductions. He finished: “If we can show that Commandante up for the stuffed shirt that he is by pullin’ another sneak on him mebbe the Penitentes will rear right up on their hind laigs and smash the whole danged bunch. And while they’re doin’ it,” he added with a grin, “we’ll slip out and they’ll never miss us!”
Tarrant had caught some of Nevada’s excitement. “It’s worth trying,” he said eagerly. Quickly he stepped to a gun case in a corner and selected one of those ugly sub-machine guns. “Lead off,” he said grimly.
Utah was not so optimistic as they moved toward the window through which they had entered this tower room. “If they took our hosses, we’re goners,” he pointed out. “And I ain’t so sure but what I’d rather land in this furriner’s hands than in the grip of them Penitentes.”
But for all his grumbling, he was agile as a fox and as quick as he slipped through the open window to the roof. Nevada pushed Tarrant after his partner. But he was cut off himself, for they had been seen.
* * * *
A gun started its hellish song, spraying the roof with screaming lead. It did not come for long. Mustaches whipped back on his leathery jowls, Utah lifted cautiously. He shoved his old Peacemaker over the parapet, braving death for his partner. The Colt spoke once and the machine gun down there cut out abruptly.
Utah dropped back, beckoning. Nevada gathered his muscles. He went through the window in a flat dive, as lead from another machine gun screamed upward.
Yells, and more yells from down below almost drowned the sound of the second Thompson. Something was happening down there, Nevada knew, as he crawled swiftly along after Utah and Tarrant, but he dared not risk lifting his head to see if his hunch concerning the Penitentes reaction to their defiance of the Commandante was working as he hoped.
The answer to that would come later. One danger was past, and then another, for Nevada had more than half expected death to come searching for them from the tower they had first entered, but the old oak door had evidently withstood all attempts to batter it down.
Utah McClatchey was the first to dive through the window they had left open in the tower. Swiftly Tarrant followed, and then Nevada.
The F.B.I. man’s blue eyes widened at sight of the destruction Utah had wrought here. “This was the radio room!” he exclaimed. “We’ve been trying for a long time to trace the source of the powerful, short-wave station that’s been bombarding the States with propaganda. They won’t be using it again very soon, though,” he added grimly.
“Thanks to you.”
“So I done a good job, eh?” Utah drawled. He glanced at his hard-bitten partner. “You see,” he said, “I tole you this place was wuss than a den of sidewinders.”
“You’ve done a wonderful piece of work for your country,” Tarrant said, deep warmth in his voice.
“If this here mutual admiration society is ready tuh disband now,” Nevada Jim said with an exaggerated drawl, “I’d suggest we git downstairs and make a run for it before everybody figgers out that’s what we’re aimin’ to do.” Briefly, he looked to his two guns as he led the way down the stairs to the second floor.
The wounded radio man was still lying where they had left him. “So it’s you again!” he spat out the words.
Nevada looked at him, smiling, though his pale eyes were like ice. “Yeah, it’s us,” he said pleasantly. “And I’m shore as hell sorry you got a broken laig. If you didn’t have, I’d work you over proper. Any gent tryin’ to wreck a country like our’n is lower than scum on stagnant water!”
He passed on down, the stairs, the other two following. A glance showed him the thick, stout oak had withstood all assaults. Quietly as possible, he lifted the bar from its notches. Tarrant, right behind him, reached for the wall switch to turn out the lights. Nevada caught his wrist. “Nada,” he said softly. “You want to tell the bunch waitin’ for us that we’re comin’ out?”
“You think of everything,” Tarrant answered.
“I think we’re headin’ straight for hell in a basket,” Nevada Jim said casually.
“A gent’s gotta die sometime,” Utah growled. “But I’m aimin’ tuh take that Commandante with me.”
Tarrant’s penetrating gaze turned on the old Heller. “We’ll all try to do that,” he said, and couched the Thompson under his arm.
Nevada nodded. He cast one last glance at his guns, at the strained faces of his two companions. “Let’s go,” he said quietly.
* * * *
Hell was in the air when Nevada flung the oak door wide and catfooted through it. A machine gun’s wicked rattle was filling the night, but the bullets were not for them. For a moment Nevada had to blink to adjust his eyes to the darkness, and the surprise that met them. For horsemen were tearing into the plaza!
Wild horsemen, young Penitentes, howling like demons from hell, as they stormed the Commandante’s black-uniformed guards. Men who had been waiting out in the hills behind the plateau, their smoldering hatred of the foreign interlopers gathering until now they had no fear of modern guns. Utah McClatchey, Nevada realized instantly, had given them their chance to come in by destroying the power plant on the second floor of the tower behind them. For even from here, looking down the hill over the town, he could see where a great gap had been torn in the once-electrified fence. A gap through which those wild young horsemen were still streaming.
But they were dying almost as fast as they came! The machine guns were taking a terrible toll. Nevada made a leap for a riderless horse as it raced past, caught the bridle reins, and swung to leather. Tarrant and Utah were also mounted in minutes.
They came together at the base of the tower.
Above the roar of battle filling the castle courtyard, Utah howled: “Ain’t nobody payin’ attention to us. We can ride right out!�
��
Nevada Jim James laughed ringingly. “You danged old coot,” he yelled, “you know we ain’t goin’ to do that.”
“I know we oughter,” Utah growled, “but these Penitentes are fightin’ our fight, and I guess we better help ’em.”
Tarrant seemed to be in complete sympathy with them, though he was wasting no time on words. His Thompson was already cracking out a steady stream of death at the Commandante’s black-shirted gunners.
Old Utah’s Colt boomed as they struck spurs to their mounts, racing them around the inner edge of the plaza to get behind the machine-gunners. Nevada’s guns were echoing his partner’s, and this was one time he had no compunctions about shooting men in the back. Men who were dying before they had time to know what hit them.
They were half around the square, where broad steps led up to a wide, arcaded verandah looking out over the plaza, when Nevada caught the glimpse of a golden Sam Browne lighted by muzzle flame coming from there.
Utah saw it, too. “They’re up thar!” he shouted. “That danged Commandante and all them hombres who look like him. Pard, what we waitin’ fer?”
Nevada met McClatchey’s challenge by whirling his mount up steps worn smooth by countless generations of sandaled feet. A saffron-hued face, high-lighted by the muzzle blast of an automatic, loomed before him as his mount hit the tiles of the verandah. He felt lead sear his arm, as his Colt spoke. Red film covered that face immediately. Another man leaped toward the bridle reins. Nevada reared his mount. Iron-shod hoofs pawed out. The man met death screaming, his skull smashed by those striking hoofs.
It was a wicked way to kill, but he had no mercy for any of them. Men bent on destroying a nation by violence deserved this or worse. Lead creased his ribs from the shadows to the left. Nevada wing-shot the man, dropping him in a huddled heap to mingle with the shadows.
Only one of the seven who had taken refuge here on the porch was escaping. Nevada saw him leap down the steps, and race toward those waves of horsemen, and white-clad Penitente men out there in the plaza. Utah was beside him as they whirled their mounts down the stairs after him, and then he reined in as Tarrant drew up alongside them. The Government man’s face was bloody from a bullet crease, but he was smiling grimly, as the three of them watched a veritable wave of those yelling horsemen and white-clad townsmen seem to engulf the man.
“And that finishes things!” Utah howled. “I allus say yuh should git all the peas in a pod—and we shore got ’em this time!”
* * * *
Two hours later, with bloody Tres Cruces far behind them, Tarrant reined in, glancing at Nevada Jim’s blood-soaked shirt. “We ought to be far enough away now to take time out to bandage your wounds,” he said quietly. “It’s a sorry man, I am,” he went on, “that I can’t take you back to Arizona with me to collect the reward the Government has offered for the capture or death of the man known as The Commandante. Boys,” emotion had crept into his voice, “the United States owes you a debt it will never be able to pay.”
“Hell,” Utah cut in, “the U.S. don’t owe us nothin’, Dick. We’d be a coupla danged pore Americans if we had to get paid for doin’ our country a good turn!”
“There’s some sheriffs and a governor or two who will hear of what you’ve done,” Tarrant said earnestly, “I can promise that much.”
Nevada Jim turned his ironic gaze on McClatchey. “Nobody’s goin’ tuh pardon a coupla old owlhooters like us, Dick,” he drawled. “We been hellin’ around too long, thumbin’ our noses at sheriffs and posses, to ever have any peace across the Line. You can collect that thar ree-ward yuh mentioned, though, in our names, if you want to do us a favor, and give it to ol’ Dan Conover’s widder. She’ll need it now a lot wuss than us. Hyar, I’ll give yuh an order, tuh make it legal, if you got a pencil.”
But Dick Tarrant seemed not to have heard him. His blue eyes were bulging from his head, as he stared at the little red leather notebook Nevada had pulled from his hip pocket. Then a yell that echoed across the canyon down which they were traveling sped from the F.B.I. man’s lips. He grabbed the notebook from Nevada Jim’s hands and leafed rapidly through it. “Good gosh, Jim,” he said hoarsely at last, “is there anything else you can do for your country? Next to liquidating the Commandante, this book will do more to break the hold of the Fifth Columnists on the U.S. than anything else. We’ve been trying since the start of the war in Europe to lay our hands on this book, which we knew existed. It contains the key to the secret Fifth Column code, the locations of other radio stations in the U.S., and the names and addresses of their State and District leaders.”
“Seems like that ought to be enough fer one book!” Utah drawled. “We found it underneath one of them danged furriners we shot at Dan’s. Which brings up the p’int, Jim,” he looked at Nevada, “that we didn’t lay hands on nobody who could prove tuh this here lawdog that we weren’t the ones who salivated Conover.”
Laughter shook Dick Tarrant’s shoulders. “Was that what you came all the way here to disprove,” he demanded. “Why, boys, you were cleared of that charge within an hour after you pulled out! The bullet that killed Conover was from an automatic, not one of those old cannons you boys still carry.”
Utah’s mouth fell open. “Gosh-a-mighty, then we made this hull danged trip tuh Tres Cruces fer nothin’ but Dan’l’s gold!”
“Which we didn’t get none of,” Nevada put in dryly. “Fact is, we didn’t get nothin’ outta this jaunt, Utah, ’cept a couple of bullet-scraped ribs, and a pair of hosses not as good as the ones we had to leave behind. And on top of that, I got a thirst that it’s goin’ to take leastways a keg of beer to drown!”
Tarrant was reaching for a money belt, hidden beneath his shirt. “Boys,” he said earnestly, “I haven’t got much, but it’s yours—”
“Naw,” Utah waved grandly. “We ain’t got no right tuh honest money. We’re gittin’ jist what we deserve for bein’ ornery owlhooters. No glory. No dinero. No nothin’. Feller, you get that hoss of yores movin’ while we stick here awhile just to make sure no trouble comes traipsin’ along the back-trail.”
“But—” Tarrant started to argue.
Utah’s old mustache bristled fiercely. His spurred heel kicked out, caught Tarrant’s mount in the rump. Squealing, the animal buck-jumped down the trail, and for the first time since they had escaped from Tres Cruces, Nevada saw his old partner straighten fully in his kak.
His eyes were gleaming as he reached inside the front of his shirt. “I jest had to get rid of that lawdog, Jim,” he drawled, “afore this stuff fell out all over the trail.”
“Wh—” Nevada started to say, and then he halted, and a grin started on his lips. For Utah was pulling packets of green, American money from inside his shirt. “I dunno jest how much I got here, pard,” he said apologetically, “but a drawer of that thar Commandante’s desk was full of this stuff, and I helped myself, figgering turn about wuz fair play. He stole the gold we wuz goin’ tuh lift, so I figger it was all hunky dory for us tuh lift some of his dinero. They’s enough here tuh pay for a good beer bust when we hit the nearest town whar the Rurales ain’t too nosey.”
Nevada caught a packet of the money as his partner passed it to him, and even in the darkness he could read the thousand-dollar mark on the top bill. “Yeah,” he said dryly. “I guess there is.
‘Course, knowin’ you had this wouldn’t have influenced that thar noble gesture about not acceptin’ the reward for salivatin’ the Commandante, would it?”
Utah McClatchey’s parched old face looked hurt, as only a man who had ridden the owlhoot trails for forty years could look. “Why Jim,” he said gently, “that thar kid lawdog figgers you and me for heroes. You know we couldn’t spoil his delusions!”
TOM’S MONEY, by Harriet Prescott Spofford
Mrs. Laughton had found what she had been looking for all her life—the man under her bed.
Every night of her nearly thirty years of existence this pretty little person had stoop
ed on her knees, before saying her prayers, and had investigated the space beneath her bed, a light brass affair, hung with a chintz valance; had then peered beneath the dark recess of the dressing-case, and having looked in the deep drawer of the bureau and into the closet, she fastened her door and felt as secure as a snail in a shell. As she never, in this particular business, seemed to have any confidence in Mr. Laughton, in spite of the fact that she admired him and adored him, neither his presence nor his absence ever made any variation in the performance. She had gone through the motions, however, for so long a time that they had come to be in a manner perfunctory, and the start she received on this night of which I speak made her prayers quite impossible.
What was she to do? She, a coward par eminence, known to be the most timorous of the whole family; her tremors at all sorts of imagined dangers affording laughter to the flock of sisters and brothers. Should she stay on her knees after having seen that dark shape, as if going on with her prayers, while revolving some plan of procedure? That was out of the question. Scream? She couldn’t have screamed to save her life. Run? She could no more have set one foot before the other, than if her[Pg 1956]body had melted from the waist down. She was deadly faint and cold and shaking, and all in a second, in the fraction of a second, before she had risen from her stooping posture.
Oh, why wasn’t it Virginia instead? Virginia had always had such heroic plans of making the man come out of his hiding-place at the point of her pistol; and Virginia could cock a pistol and wasn’t covered with cold shivers at the sight of one, as she was. If it had only been Francie, whose shrill voice could have been heard over the side of the earth, or Juliet, whose long legs would have left burglar, and house, too, in the background between the opening and slamming of a door. Either of them was so much more fit than she, the chicken-hearted one of the family, to cope with this creature. And they were all gone to the wedding with Fred, and would not be at home till to-morrow; and Tom had just returned from the town and handed her his roll of bills, and told her to take care of it till he came back from galloping down to the works with Jules; and she had tucked it into her belt, and had asked him, a little quakingly, what if any of the men of the Dead Line that they had heard of or Red Dan or an Apache came along; and he had laughed, and said she had better ask them in and reproach them for making such strangers of themselves as not to have called in the two years she had been in this part of the country; and she had the two maids with her, and he should be back directly. And she had looked out after him a moment over the wide prairie to the hills, all bathed in moonlight, and felt as if she were a spirit alone in a dead world. And here she was now, the two maids away in the little wing, locked out by the main house, alone with a burglar, and not another being nearer than the works, a half-mile off.[Pg 1957]
The Second Western Megapack Page 5
