The Second Western Megapack

by Various Writers

  “If anyone had been near enough to hear,” he thought, “the sound of that fight would certainly have brought them. I’ll take a chance.”

  He whistled sharply, and heard a responsive whinny come back to him from the darkness. He stood tense and guarded, waiting for anything his whistle might have brought, but no one came. Pounding hoofs, however, announced the approach of Silver as the stallion beat across the grass. Still no sign of any other presence.

  The Lone Ranger didn’t know, then, that the solid timber walls of the big rambling house where Penny and her cousins were faced by Sawtell and his men were practically soundproof. The quality that made it impossible for the masked man’s whistle or the noise of the fight to be heard inside the house likewise muffled the sounds in the house, so that the masked man didn’t hear the pleas and cries of Vince and Jeb Cavendish.

  Leading Yuma’s horse with its unconscious burden, the Lone Ranger moved away from the lighted bunkhouse and met Silver in the darkness. He fumbled in a pocket for a pencil, then scribbled a hurried message on paper from a saddlebag and tied it to the pommel of his saddle.

  He knew that some hard rider had already gone up the Thunder Mountain trail. If it were in the cards for someone to find, talk with, and perhaps release Rangoon, this would have already transpired, and Tonto’s mission would be finished.

  “Now,” he said softly to Silver, “go find Tonto.”

  He slapped the white horse firmly, repeating the name “Tonto.” Silver tossed his head and rushed away.

  The masked man made another quick examination of his prisoner. He found him still unconscious, but the pulse was steady, and the breathing normal. Assured that nothing was seriously wrong, he led the loaded horse to the ranch house, walked to one side of the building, and tossed the reins about a post. Then, on soundless feet, he stepped upon the porch. He felt in his pocket and found the silver bullet Penelope had refused. It served to remind him that he owed the girl a debt that would be hard to repay.

  He must, he decided, catch Bryant by surprise before the old man could shout for help; must speak quickly, reassure the man and make him listen to the purpose of the call. He opened the outer door without a sound, and then heard Penny’s voice.

  The girl sat between Lonergan and Lombard at a round table near the fireplace. Sawtell was in another chair a little distant, keeping one eye on a red-hot poker in the coals, the other on two bound men on the floor. Vince was whimpering like a beaten cur, while Penny looked at him with disgust evident in her face.

  “I won’t never ferget this, Cousin Penny, honest tuh God I won’t,” said Vince. “As sure as hell yer savin’ us from havin’ our eyes burned out with that poker.”

  “I haven’t signed this agreement yet,” the girl replied.

  “But yuh will, you’ve got tuh, yuh know blamed well that Uncle Bryant is waitin’ fer Sawtell tuh take it to him in Red Oak. Hurry up an’ sign it.”

  Lonergan dipped a pen in a bottle of ink and held it toward the girl.

  “Here you are,” he said suavely, as he pointed to a line at the bottom of a long page of close writing. “Sign right there beneath the others and then we’ll sign as witnesses.”

  Penelope took the pen and tapped the un-inked end meditatively against her small, even teeth.

  “Just let me get everything straight,” she said. “In the first place, if Uncle Bryant doesn’t want to leave his property to us, he doesn’t need to. He can make a will, can’t he?”

  Lonergan nodded and glanced at Sawtell.

  “Tell her,” the bland-faced man suggested.

  Lonergan went into a lengthy discourse on the legality of wills that left estates to others than the blood relations, and told how there had been times in courts of law when those wills had been contested.

  “Bryant’s one desire,” he went on, “is to leave his outfit to someone and have no question about the will being valid. He wants all four nephews and you to sign to the effect that you relinquish all claims whatsoever to the Basin property for a consideration not described.” Lonergan didn’t make it as simple as he might have done. He seemed to gloat in the opportunity to air his knowledge of legal phrases and quote from his experiences as a lawyer in the East.

  “Doesn’t it,” asked Penny, “make some difference when the signature is secured by threat of torture?”

  Lonergan smiled, “Of course.”

  “If I don’t sign you’ll use that red-hot iron on Vince and Jeb.”

  “That would be hard to prove,” suggested Lonergan.

  Sawtell broke in impatiently.

  “Hurry up and sign—we can’t wait all night.”

  “One thing more,” said Penny. “What about Wallie, and Mort?”

  “Bryant’ll get their names signed when we take that paper to town.”

  Penny still hesitated. She knew everything was topsy-turvy. There were lies and liars on every side; no one could be trusted. She wondered why all the cries hadn’t brought old Gimlet from the kitchen. She almost wished that she had left when Yuma wanted her to go with him.

  “Look,” said Penny suddenly. “I’ve been listening to what you’ve said. Now suppose you listen to me for just a minute. I’m going to sign this paper, simply because it won’t make a particle of difference to me. If anything happened to Uncle Bryant, I’d want no part of this ranch as long as the place is infested with vermin.”

  Lonergan showed resentment at this statement, and leaned forward to speak, but a glance at Sawtell changed his mind. The smooth-faced killer held up a silencing hand. Lonergan relaxed.

  Penelope looked at Vince.

  “You,” she said hotly, “turn my stomach! I know very well that you and Mort have been scheming all along. You helped Rangoon kill those Texas Rangers. You’re as much to blame for Becky’s murder as Mort. You told him he had to shut her up.”

  Vince looked wide-eyed at his cousin as she went on.

  “You’re nothing but a little squirt without spunk enough to even look like a man, let alone act like one. You’ve been whimpering like a whipped cur, trying to arouse a lot of sympathy with your crocodile tears. Well, I knew all along that you were faking. Now don’t you feel like a jackass?”

  As Penelope warmed to the subject, all the bitterness of the past weeks found outlet in her lashing words.

  “Maybe this is Uncle Bryant’s desire. If so, it’s all right with me, but I’m going to find out what’s possessed him to turn on me. If it isn’t his idea, I’ll find that out, too.”

  She turned toward Jeb. “As for you, I’m sorry for you. You’re a worthless dreamer. You might have been an artist or a writer or a poet, if you hadn’t been too lazy to get some education. As it is you’re not worth a plugged dime to anyone, least of all to these crooks. As soon as they’re satisfied that you can’t help them, they’ll kill you.” Jeb squirmed uneasily in his ropes. “You’re little men, both of you, and so are your brothers.”

  The girl jabbed the pen into the ink and rapidly signed her name to the paper.

  “You can have your paper all signed as you want it,” she said, almost trembling with the white heat of her rage. “Take it to Bryant, if that’s what you’re going to do, and tell him that as long as those kids are upstairs, without anyone to take care of them, a six-in-hand can’t drag me from here, and as soon as Wallie brings that woman he promised to, there isn’t any power on earth can keep me here.”

  She thrust the paper, signed, toward Sawtell. “Here you are, and have fun while you can, because pretty soon someone is going to ask a lot of questions about six murdered Texas Rangers.”

  “I’ll take that,” a new voice said. All eyes turned toward the door. A tall man with lean hips and broad shoulders stood there; a man whose hat was white, whose face was masked.

  “Who the hell are you?” barked Lonergan.

  The masked man stepped forward, reaching for the paper.

  “I’ll be damned before you—” started Lombard, as he rose from his chair. A gun appear
ed as if by magic in the tall masked man’s right hand. Lombard fell back before the weapon’s threat.

  “Who is he?” “Whar’d he come from?” “How’d he git here?”

  There was a chorus of amazed exclamations. There were threats: “Yuh won’t git away with this”; “Yuh better drop them guns afore we git mad”; “You won’t leave this Basin alive.” But no one made a move of aggression. The Lone Ranger glanced quickly at the document, folded it, and tucked it in the pocket of his shirt while his gun remained steady, covering the room at large.

  “I gathered from what I heard that Bryant Cavendish has gone to Red Oak,” he said. “If this paper is for him, none of you need worry, because I’ll take it to him.”

  The expression on Penelope’s flushed face was a mixture of admiration and resentment. She stared at the intruder, liking him instinctively in spite of herself. She couldn’t understand his part in the grim drama that seemed to be unfolding on a circular stage while she stood in the center.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  A Gambler Talks

  The masked man studied Vince and then the others in turn. He could feel the electric tension in the room. The killers were motionless and silent, returning his gaze with crafty eyes, watching for the slightest relaxation that would give them the split second required to drop a hand and fire from the hip. The Lone Ranger knew this type, and didn’t underestimate them. They were expert gunmen who would kill without compunction. When he spoke, his voice was low, but every word was sharp and distinct.

  “It’s something of a surprise to learn that three men who are wanted so badly by the law have stayed close by. You might have done better to have gotten out of Texas.”

  None of the men replied. Penelope watched the masked man as if hypnotized. Twice now he had arrived at a crisis. In spite of herself, she found that she was trusting him.

  “Of course, you felt secure here,” the Lone Ranger went on. “You knew that Thunder Mountain would make a fine hideout in case any law men managed to get through the Gap. You cleared out a trail and a campsite, and then concealed it. You felt pretty safe, or you wouldn’t have stayed here.”

  “Won’t yuh cut us loose?” pleaded Vince.

  “Where are the rest of the men who work here?” asked the masked man.

  “They went tuh town,” said Vince, “right after the buryin’. They made a sort o’ holiday of it. They’ll be comin’ back.”

  The masked man turned slightly toward Penny, still however watching the others. He would ask later about the burial.

  “How many of those other men are wanted by the law?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know but the whole pack of them are crooked. They must be. If they weren’t, they’d get out, like Yuma did.”

  “Yuma?”

  “He tried to persuade me to leave here. I wish to Heaven I could have. I thought I could depend on Uncle Bryant, but now—” Penny broke off in doubt.

  The Lone Ranger, realizing that the girl could add a great deal to his understanding of events, pressed her for more details.

  “There’s time to talk later,” she said.

  “Talk now. Tell me more about this man, Yuma.”

  Penny explained how she had trusted her uncle in spite of all that had been said, how she had tried to account for his unconcern in the face of events, by thinking that his eyes must be failing. Yuma, she explained, had tried to tell her that she was mistaken in her trust. Yuma had been fired at by Bryant; had fought with him, and finally had left the Basin. She explained that it was Bryant’s belief in Mort’s thin alibi for murdering Rebecca that had finally showed her her mistake, and now the clincher was the paper Bryant had left for her to sign.

  The Lone Ranger broke in from time to time with questions that brought out the story of Rebecca and the children upstairs. Penny told him that she felt compelled to remain for the sake of the children until Wallie returned. Gimlet, she said, was too old to take the responsibility.

  “So you believe in Yuma?”

  Penny nodded, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

  “I—I must.”

  “The last time we met,” the masked man said, “I offered you something that you refused. I’m going to offer it again, and what I said then still goes.” He reached one hand into a pocket, then dropped a silver bullet on the table. The men looked at it curiously. Penny glanced at it, then at the steady, level eyes behind the mask. For a time she said nothing. Then, “It means a lot to you to find out who killed those Texas Rangers, doesn’t it?”

  The Lone Ranger nodded. “Please,” he said, “pick up that bullet. You might need it. Remember what I told you to do with it. You mentioned an old man named Gimlet.”

  “Yes?”

  “Gimlet is dead.”

  The announcement was an obvious surprise to everyone. And to Penny it was much more. It was a severe shock.

  “He was stabbed,” the masked man explained. “I was with him when he died in the bunkhouse.”

  “But what was he doing there? He slept in the house here.”

  “I don’t know why he went to the bunkhouse, but that’s where I found him. He gave me the name of the man.”

  “Who?”

  The Lone Ranger spoke slowly. “He named a fellow you mentioned a few minutes ago. He said, ‘Yuma.’”

  “I don’t believe it!” declared Penny hotly. “Yuma was Gimlet’s friend. Yuma was my friend too. He tried to reason with Uncle Bryant, and when he couldn’t he left here. Oh, no, no, no! Yuma wouldn’t murder anyone, least of all old Gimlet.” Penny picked up the silver bullet and clutched it in her tiny fist. “There must be a mistake,” she sobbed.

  “If Yuma didn’t kill him,” said the Lone Ranger, “we’ll soon know who did. In the meantime, I’ll take this paper to Bryant to see what he has to say about it.”

  Lonergan, the gambler-lawyer, spoke.

  “D’you mind,” he drawled in a cocksure manner, “if I have a few words to say?”

  “Well?”

  “It strikes me, stranger, that you’re in a hell of a spot right now, and you don’t know just what to do about it. You’re like the gent that had a wildcat by the tail and didn’t dare let go.”

  “Go on,” snapped the masked man.

  Lonergan’s lean fingers, resting on the table, beat a soft rhythm. He spoke with an assurance that was annoying, to say the least.

  “You’ve ravaged the privacy of this ranch and illegally entered a private home without permission. You’ve flaunted that gun in our faces and asked a lot of questions. You’ve stolen a legal form that isn’t yours by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it’s none of your damned business what goes on here.”

  “Any more to say, Lonergan?”

  “Plenty. You can’t stay here from now on. You don’t know when the rest of the men will come back and make it hot for you. You can’t prove any of the charges you’ve made or hinted at, or anything that the girl has said. Besides, I don’t expect the law would listen to you while you’re wearin’ that mask. You’d like to turn us all over to the law and collect some rewards, but that’d be downright hard to handle because there’s quite a few of us here and you’d have to take us through the Gap and run the risk of meeting our friends. You can’t very well take the girl and the four youngsters away with you for the same reason. You leave here alone, and we’ll simply make out another form like the one you’ve stuck in your pocket and have the signatures made all over again. When you leave, there’s a damn good chance that one of us will drill you.”

  Penny thought she saw uneasiness in the masked man. She glanced from him to Lonergan while she too wondered what could be done. She wanted nothing less than to be left there with those killers, especially after what she had heard about Gimlet and Yuma. Now there would be no one to witness whatever might transpire.

  “Have you,” asked the masked man, “any propositions?”

  Penny saw the wink that Lonergan showed Sawtell; she wondered if the masked man saw it too.
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  “Maybe so,” the gambler said. “You seem to know a lot about things here. Now just forget what you know, take off that mask, and let us see who you are, and then either join up with us or ride away and keep your mouth shut.”

  The tall stranger seemed to be considering. Penny wanted to scream out a warning that he would never be allowed to leave the place alive. He would be killed, no matter what his decision might be.

  Lonergan went on.

  “You must have brains enough to realize that you wouldn’t be able to prove that any of us had a hand in murdering those Texas Rangers. Why, we could even prove we didn’t do it, by the footprints of an Indian around the place where they’ve been buried.”

  So the graves had been found. The masked man added this minute detail to his stored-up knowledge.

  “Anyone can see,” went on Lonergan, “that they must have been ambushed by Indians. Maybe old Gimlet, who took a message in to town for Captain Blythe, had a hand in framing them for murder. Gimlet might have had an old grudge he wanted to settle with Texas Rangers. He’s been around here for a good many years, you know.”

  “I admit,” the masked man said, “it would be pretty hard to prove who killed those men, but cattle-stealing is a different matter. Furthermore, the law wants you men for other things.”

  “As for us,” Lonergan argued, “the law’d have to find us first. As for the cattle-stealing, when we sell cattle the brands are right. We haven’t sold a head that hasn’t had the Cavendish brand.”

  Penny felt the world fall still further apart when the man she had begun to trust said, “What if I join up with you?”

  Lombard and Sawtell looked admiringly at Lonergan and more than ever appreciated his glib tongue.

  “In that case, you’d split the proceeds like the rest of us.”

  “But what about the stolen cattle?”

  Lonergan shook his head.

  “Never can be traced here,” he said. “We bring them down the mountain trail from the top of Thunder Mountain; we shove them in with older cows and run a new brand. We got a dozen brands recorded to work with. We keep the cattle here until the scar has healed to look old; meanwhile we take cattle from the last batch up the trail and sell them. We don’t have no trouble at all.”