“It’s not our man,” said Balwin. “Did you or I hit him?”
“We’re gone, anyhow,” said Powell, quietly. “Look!”
A dozen rifles were pointing at their heads on the bank above. The Indians still hesitated, for there was Two Knives telling them these officers were not enemies, and had hurt no Sioux. Suddenly Cutler pushed among the rifles, dashing up the nearest two with his arm, and their explosion rang in the ears of the lieutenants. Powell stood grinning at the general complication of matters that had passed beyond his control, and Balwin made a grab as the head of the man in the river washed by. The false braid came off in his hand!
“Quick!” shouted Cutler from the bank. “Shove him up here!”
Two Knives redoubled his harangue, and the Indians stood puzzled, while the lieutenants pulled Toussaint out, not dead, but shot through the hip. They dragged him over the clay and hoisted him, till Cutler caught hold and jerked him to the level, as a new noise of rattling descended on the crowd, and the four blue mules wheeled up and halted. The boy had done it himself. Massing the officers’ need, he had pelted down among the Sioux, heedless of their yells, and keeping his gray eyes on his team. In got the three, pushing Toussaint in front, and scoured away for the post as the squaw arrived to shriek the truth to her tribe—what Red Cloud’s relation had been the victim.
Cutler sat smiling as the ambulance swung along. “I told you I belonged in this here affair,” he said. And when they reached the fort he was saying it still, occasionally.
Captain Brent considered it neatly done. “But that boy put the finishing touches,” he said. “Let’s have him in.”
The boy was had in, and ate a dinner with the officers in glum embarrassment, smoking a cigar after it without joy. Toussaint was given into the doctor’s hands, and his wounds carefully dressed.
“This will probably cost an Indian outbreak,” said Captain Brent, looking down at the plain. Blanketed riders galloped over it, and yelling filled the air. But Toussaint was not destined to cause this further harm. An unexpected influence intervened.
All afternoon the cries and galloping went on, and next morning (worse sign) there seemed to be no Indians in the world. The horizon was empty, the air was silent, the smoking tepees were vanished from the cottonwoods, and where those in the plain had been lay the lodge-poles, and the fires were circles of white, cold ashes. By noon an interpreter came from Red Cloud. Red Cloud would like to have Toussaint. If the white man was not willing, it should be war.
Captain Brent told the story of Loomis and Kelley. “Say to Red Cloud,” he ended, “that when a white man does such things among us, he is killed. Ask Red Cloud if Toussaint should live. If he thinks yes, let him come and take Toussaint.”
The next day with ceremony and feathers of state, Red Cloud came, bringing his interpreter, and after listening until every word had been told him again, requested to see the half-breed. He was taken to the hospital. A sentry stood on post outside the tent, and inside lay Toussaint, with whom Cutler and the ambulance-boy were playing whiskey-poker. While the patient was waiting to be hanged, he might as well enjoy himself within reason. Such was Cutler’s frontier philosophy. We should always do what we can for the sick. At sight of Red Cloud looming in the doorway, gorgeous and grim as Fate, the game was suspended. The Indian took no notice of the white men, and walked to the bed. Toussaint clutched at his relation’s fringe, but Red Cloud looked at him. Then the mongrel strain of blood told, and the half-breed poured out a chattering appeal, while Red Cloud by the bedside waited till it had spent itself. Then he grunted, and left the room. He had not spoken, and his crest of long feathers as it turned the corner was the last vision of him that the card-players had.
Red Cloud came back to the officers, and in their presence formally spoke to his interpreter, who delivered the message: “Red Cloud says Toussaint heap no good. No Injun, anyhow. He not want him. White man hunt pretty hard for him. Can keep him.”
Thus was Toussaint twice sentenced. He improved under treatment, played many games of whiskey-poker, and was conveyed to Cheyenne and hanged.
These things happened in the early seventies; but there are Sioux still living who remember the two lieutenants, and how they pulled the half-breed out of White River by his false hair. It makes them laugh to this day. Almost any Indian is full of talk when he chooses, and when he gets hold of a joke he never lets go.
NO REPORT, by S. Omar Barke
Border Patrolman Gregg McPhail had keen eyes, and right now, to help them, a pair of powerful field glasses. But in the growing dusk, even this combination was not quite keen and powerful enough to see what he wanted to see. From the little high spot in the sandhills where he sat on his horse, he could make out the dull sheen of sluggish water in the Rio Grande, and on both of its banks he could see the movement of men. One man, on the American side, hurried out onto the sand-flats of the half dry river, and from the water’s edge, threw something across to two men on the Mexican side; following which he speedily disappeared into the brush.
So much McPhail’s field glasses pulled to him out of the distance—so much and a little more: something about the man on this side of the river looked familiar. What bothered McPhail was that he could not be sure whether this familiarity was real or imagined. He shoved the glasses back in their leather case as the figures, too dusk-blurred and distance-dwarfed to be recognized, moved indistinctly out of sight. Still uncertain, he reined his horse around and hit off across the sandhills westward.
With a tipped-off smuggler crossing in prospect at Macho Gully some time within the next few hours, McPhail could not take time to drop down to investigate what he had seen. His assignment was to be at Macho Gully by nine o’clock. Besides, this other suspicious business was not strictly on his beat. Down the river was in the patrol of Hank Johns—old Silent Hank, they called him. Johns had not been with the Patrol long, but he was a veteran cowpuncher and knew his stuff.
Patrolman McPhail’s whangy-muscled body sat the saddle easily as he followed the rough, trailless route westward toward Macho Gully in the darkness. But his mind was not so easy. That hombre on the American side had looked too damned familiar.
The ambush at Macho Gully turned out to be a cold party. Four Border patrolmen—three besides McPhail—lay crouched in hiding until the chill of the desert night got into their cramped bones, but the expected smuggler train did not show up. The tipoff had been considered a good one, too. This was but the second time a word from Nico Mike, working under cover south of the Border, had failed to bring fish to their net.
Nine o’clock passed, ten, eleven. At midnight McPhail crawled out of hiding, said a low word or two to the others, hurried to his horse and mounted.
“Playin’ a hunch, boys,” was all he had told them. He had his own reasons for not saying more.
Like a tall black wolf he streaked off through the starlit night, back the way he had come. He loped past the lookout spot whence he had watched the Rio through the glasses, without pausing. But instead of heading on downriver, he took out farther northeast. If the smugglers, whatever their load, had taken advantage of the Patrol’s concentration at Macho Gulch to sneak over at Ox Tail, they would already be across by now, and either they or their accomplices would be well on their way—probably up Ox Tail Arroyo, en route to a delivery point somewhere on the road north of the sandhills.
McPhail knew that he was violating standing orders by snooping without call or special order into another patrolman’s beat. Hank Johns might even get sore about it—he was such a touchy old ram—but McPhail did not let that stop him tonight. He passed near enough to Hank’s camp to have stopped and called him, but he did not. With a certain grim, purposeful speed he hurried on, lone-handed, toward the upper end of Ox Tail Arroyo.
His hunch had evidently been right, but he got there a jiffy too late—just in time to hear the hum of a car and glimpse the flash of its lights as it turned and sped back up the road. He let it go, whirled his lathe
red horse and sped on around to the head of the Arroyo, where the only passable trail up from the Ox Tail Crossing tops out to the mesa. He drew sharp rein and listened. Sure enough, his ears caught the faint clangy-clank of horses’ hoofs on the rocks. Evidently the smugglers had made their delivery—dope, probably—and were already on their way back, secure in the knowledge that the Border Patrol would be watching for them at Macho Gulch instead of here. But why so secure? How should they know Patrolman Johns would be asleep?
McPhail kicked spurs to his horse and clattered down the trail after them. To his surprise the hoof sounds stopped. McPhail rode on down to the arroyo bottom, then got off and pussyfooted ahead in the darkness. Suddenly, around a curve of jutting rock he came upon a small campfire, just in the making. Two men were bending over it. McPhail stepped, quickly toward them, his hand ready for his gun. But the two hombres only gazed at him casually.
“Hullo, Mac,” grinned one of them. “Lookin’ fer somebody?”
The Border officer recognized them both now. Bat Hennepin, who had spoken, and Tito Solano, the other, both notoriously suspicious characters, but both American citizens.
“Howdy, boys!” he drawled. “Put ’em up!”
Grinning, they obeyed. McPhail searched them and their saddle bags. He found nothing.
“Nosey, ain’t yuh?” remarked Hennepin with a half sneer. “I thought this was Hank Johns’ beat? Or maybe yuh’ve been promoted to Sergeant-Inspector so yuh kin coyote around where all yuh please? Ketch any runners this evenin’—over to Macho Gulch?”
Bat’s voice carried a taunting note. McPhail did not bother to answer. He knew these birds were smugglers, but he had nothing on them. He got his horse and took out at a lope for Ox Tail Crossing. The night was graying into morning but still too dark to see tracks. McPhail used his flashlight. There was plenty of sign of a smuggler crossing, but McPhail was looking for other tracks, and he found them: the footprints of the man he had glimpsed through the glass the evening before. He had been a large-footed man, in his sock feet.
McPhail reached the shack camp of Patrolman Hank Johns just as the gray morning twilight broke into the salmon pink of sunrise. He spoke at the door, then went in. Hank Johns, grizzly, weather-beaten, almost old-looking, was just rolling out.
“What the hell, Mac?” he asked. “Yuh been out all night?”
McPhail nodded. He was watching Hank dress. Hank pulled on his socks and gave them a casual brush with his hand. A little fine sand dusted off onto the floor. Hank, cowboy-like, turned up each boot topside down and gave it a little shake before he drew it on. More sand.
McPhail suddenly felt mighty damn sorry for old Hank Johns. What the hell would make the old fool all at once turn traitor to the Border Service? For a second McPhail considered telling him, out and out, his suspicions, and give the old boy, if he was guilty, a chance to clear out. But for all his tender heart, Gregg McPhail’s sense of duty was strong—duty and loyalty to the Service.
“No ketchum on the Macho last night,” he remarked. “Anything hot on your beat?”
Hank shook his head.
“In that case you better ride in with me today. The chief—” McPhail hated to lie, but if old Hank was guilty, as he suspected, of tipping off the smugglers, he’d better get him in to the Chief without arousing his suspicions. The Chief would give Hank his chance to explain, but as for his own report, he’d have to make it. The Border Patrol couldn’t survive double-crossing in its own ranks.
“The Chief,” lied McPhail, “wants all hands in for a confab, see?”
Old Hank grunted. McPhail thought he looked nervous.
“All right,” he said. “Soon’s we git some breakfast. I was goin’ in anyhow, today or tomorrow.”
He mumbled something about personal business.
On the trail in, old Hank rode slumped down in his saddle, his grizzled face gloomy. After awhile he began to talk.
“Don’t never git married, Mac,” he said. “An’ if yuh do, don’t have no kids; an’ if yuh do, don’t have no boys; but if yuh do, by God, whale the hell out of ’em, Mac, whilst they’re, still little enough to learn somethin’ frum it! Raise ’em right, fer if yuh don’t—”
Gregg McPhail, turning in surprise at Hank’s unexpected jump into the subject of matrimony, topped a little hill all unprepared for what smacked up into his face from down in the next draw. It was the crack—crack—crack of rifle fire. The bullets fell a little short, sputting into the gravelly sand just ahead of him.
One look as he whirled his horse back out of sight, told him what was up. They had stumbled onto a southbound pack train loaded with firearms and ammunition, like as not, to be traded in Mexico for dope or liquor; four pack mules and four riders with them, all in broad daylight! Even as he yanked out his rifle to answer their fire, McPhail remembered grimly that this was on Silent Hank’s beat. It confirmed his suspicions.
Of course, he couldn’t count on Hank any more now. He would be tackling them practically single-handed, for like as not old Hank would only stall at helping him, just to make a showing. Then suddenly he realized that Hank was clearing out—already getting out of his sight.
For half a second he hesitated over whether to go after him or the smugglers. Then with a grim, short-clipped oath, he kicked the hooks to his horse, slanted up the ridge and crossed it. The next instant he was charging down a shallow draw toward the smugglers, partially protected from their bullets by its banks.
The pack mules were on the move now, at a high gallop, rushed forward by the whacking of two riders behind them. The other two smugglers had dropped into the gully and with their rifles speeding lead in the direction of the charging Border patrolman, were covering the retreat of their pack train.
McPhail reined to an abrupt stop, stepped down from his horse, flung himself flat behind a bank of the arroyo and opened fire in answer. He could not see the two men in hiding, so he sent his bullets whizzing after the two with the pack train.
Already they were out of easy range. McPhail saw his first few shots miss. Then one of the pack mules went into a somersaulting tumble and lay kicking. Almost at the same instant McPhail became aware that somebody had opened fire on him from somewhere back in the sandhills to his right. He wondered if it could be old Silent Hank, throwing in with the smugglers against him. Even in the excitement the idea gave him a sort of a sinking, sorrowful ache inside, rather than anger. He had always liked Silent Hank—and respected him.
But Patrolman McPhail had no time now to give to his feelings. Bullets showered around him like hailstones. Apparently the hidden hombre back to the right, whether Hank Johns or a rear guard of the smugglers, was shooting with a six-gun, instead of a rifle, for his bullets were falling short. But with every volley they came closer. With no cover from that side, McPhail saw that he would have to move out. With a last shot from his position back of the bank, he leapt down to the arroyo bottom where his horse was and jumped into the saddle.
Sure-footed, jumping and zigzagging over the rough spots like a mountain goat, his horse sped down the side arroyo to the main draw. The shooting had stopped. McPhail could hear nothing except hoof sounds. When he came out into the open sand-flat, trying to watch both directions at once, his first glimpse showed him that all four of the smugglers, driving their remaining three pack mules before them, were fleeing at a gallop down the main draw Borderward.
It was like trying to aim at running jackrabbits, but McPhail nevertheless swung up his rifle, yet he did not fire. Almost simultaneously with the pow of a six-gun somewhere back of him, his eyes seemed to see a sudden ball of fire, then blackness. Down he tumbled, gun and all, onto the sand-flat. There was a hole in his hat where a sluggish bullet had torn through, struck his head at an angle and glanced off, leaving a little blood-oozing rip in his scalp.
* * * *
It was nearly five minutes before McPhail came to. When finally he staggered to his feet, his head throbbed so that the gripping pain seemed to clamp his ey
es down into a blurred squint. Even if he had been able to see clearly, he would have caught no sight of the smugglers.
They were gone.
Dazed as he was, McPhail was not too woozy to feel his former pity for old Silent Hank changing now to an anger that was as grim and cold as a blue gun barrel. He wanted to kick himself for not disarming the treacherous patrolman and taking him in a prisoner—even dodging these smugglers and passing them up in order to make sure that the Patrol should be rid of its snitcher. But now there was nothing left to do but take one more whack at these smugglers.
He didn’t know how long he had been “out,” but there was still a faint haze of dust in the air where the last smuggler had passed from the sand-flat down into another hilly break-off. His horse had not left him. There still might be a chance to catch them. McPhail wobbled to his horse, got on somehow, hung to the saddle horn with one hand and rein-lifted him into a lope with the other. Within a hundred yards the gait became a dead run. In another jiffy he was joggling down the steep trail where the broad sand-flat funnels into a narrow arroyo.
Two minutes later he heard shots ahead. If he had been himself he would have slowed up and approached cautiously. As it was he rounded a curve to gallop almost headlong into the midst of the smugglers, five of them now. Even so, the advantage of surprise was his more than theirs. They had left him for dead back on the sand-flat—one “maldito oficial” out of the way for good. But the chief reason that McPhail’s charge hit them on their blind side was that they were busy. Crouching behind boulders and bushes, they were talking back sharply to some hidden gun on down ahead behind a cliffy narrows in the arroyo.
McPhail left his horse in a swift leap that sent him tumbling, but his hand grabbed the rifle from its scabbard as he leapt. In a tenth second he was on his feet, shooting. One smuggler, turning to fire at him, went down with a thirty-thirty slug through his middle. A second leaped up to scramble for cover on the opposite side of his boulder, and the next second a bullet from the hidden gun down at the narrows stretched him out.
The Second Western Megapack Page 88
