by Zane Grey
MacNelly paused a moment in his rapid talk, chewed his cigar, drew his brows together in a dark frown, and went on. “No man on the border knows so well as you the deadly nature of this service. It’s a thousand to one that you’ll be killed. I’d say there was no chance at all for any other man beside you. Your reputation will go far among the outlaws. Maybe that and your nerve and your gun-play will pull you through. I’m hoping so. But it’s a long, long chance against your ever coming back.”
“That’s not the point,” said Duane. “But in case I get killed out there—what—”
“Leave that to me,” interrupted Captain MacNelly. “You folks will know at once of your pardon and your ranger duty. If you lose your life out there I’ll see your name cleared—the service you render known. You can rest assured of that.”
“I am satisfied,” replied Duane. “That’s so much more than I’ve dared to hope.”
“Well, it’s settled, then. I’ll give you money for expenses. You’ll start as soon as you like—the sooner the better. I hope to think of other suggestions, especially about communicating with me.”
Long after the lights were out and the low hum of voices had ceased round the camp-fire Duane lay wide awake, eyes staring into the blackness, marveling over the strange events of the day. He was humble, grateful to the depths of his soul. A huge and crushing burden had been lifted from his heart. He welcomed this hazardous service to the man who had saved him. Thought of his mother and sister and Uncle Jim, of his home, of old friends came rushing over him, the first time in years that he had happiness in the memory. The disgrace he had put upon them would now be removed; and in the light of that, his wasted life of the past, and its probably tragic end in future service as atonement changed their aspects. And as he lay there, with the approach of sleep finally dimming the vividness of his thought, so full of mystery, shadowy faces floated in the blackness around him, haunting him as he had always been haunted.
It was broad daylight when he awakened. MacNelly was calling him to breakfast. Outside sounded voices of men, crackling of fires, snorting and stamping of horses, the barking of dogs. Duane rolled out of his blankets and made good use of the soap and towel and razor and brush near by on a bench—things of rare luxury to an outlaw on the ride. The face he saw in the mirror was as strange as the past he had tried so hard to recall. Then he stepped to the door and went out.
The rangers were eating in a circle round a tarpaulin spread upon the ground.
“Fellows,” said MacNelly, “shake hands with Buck Duane. He’s on secret ranger service for me. Service that’ll likely make you all hump soon! Mind you, keep mum about it.”
The rangers surprised Duane with a roaring greeting, the warmth of which he soon divined was divided between pride of his acquisition to their ranks and eagerness to meet that violent service of which their captain hinted. They were jolly wild fellows, with just enough gravity in their welcome to show Duane their respect and appreciation, while not forgetting his lone-wolf record. When he had seated himself in that circle, now one of them, a feeling subtle and uplifting pervaded him.
After the meal Captain MacNelly drew Duane aside.
“Here’s the money. Make it go as far as you can. Better strike straight for El Paso, snook around there and hear things. Then go to Valentine. That’s near the river and within fifty miles or so of the edge of the Rim Rock. Somewhere up there Cheseldine holds fort. Somewhere to the north is the town Fairdale. But he doesn’t hide all the time in the rocks. Only after some daring raid or holdup. Cheseldine’s got border towns on his staff, or scared of him, and these places we want to know about, especially Fairdale. Write me care of the adjutant at Austin. I don’t have to warn you to be careful where you mail letters. Ride a hundred, two hundred miles, if necessary, or go clear to El Paso.”
MacNelly stopped with an air of finality, and then Duane slowly rose.
“I’ll start at once,” he said, extending his hand to the Captain. “I wish—I’d like to thank you!”
“Hell, man! Don’t thank me!” replied MacNelly, crushing the proffered hand. “I’ve sent a lot of good men to their deaths, and maybe you’re another. But, as I’ve said, you’ve one chance in a thousand. And, by Heaven! I’d hate to be Cheseldine or any other man you were trailing. No, not good-by—Adios, Duane! May we meet again!”
BOOK TWO
THE RANGER
CHAPTER 15
West of the Pecos River Texas extended a vast wild region, barren in the north where the Llano Estacado spread its shifting sands, fertile in the south along the Rio Grande. A railroad marked an undeviating course across five hundred miles of this country, and the only villages and towns lay on or near this line of steel. Unsettled as was this western Texas, and despite the acknowledged dominance of the outlaw bands, the pioneers pushed steadily into it. First had come the lone rancher; then his neighbors in near and far valleys; then the hamlets; at last the railroad and the towns. And still the pioneers came, spreading deeper into the valleys, farther and wider over the plains. It was mesquite-dotted, cactus-covered desert, but rich soil upon which water acted like magic. There was little grass to an acre, but there were millions of acres. The climate was wonderful. Cattle flourished and ranchers prospered.
The Rio Grande flowed almost due south along the western boundary for a thousand miles, and then, weary of its course, turned abruptly north, to make what was called the Big Bend. The railroad, running west, cut across this bend, and all that country bounded on the north by the railroad and on the south by the river was as wild as the Staked Plains. It contained not one settlement. Across the face of this Big Bend, as if to isolate it, stretched the Ord mountain range, of which Mount Ord, Cathedral Mount, and Elephant Mount raised bleak peaks above their fellows. In the valleys of the foothills and out across the plains were ranches, and farther north villages, and the towns of Alpine and Marfa.
Like other parts of the great Lone Star State, this section of Texas was a world in itself—a world where the riches of the rancher were ever enriching the outlaw. The village closest to the gateway of this outlaw-infested region was a little place called Ord, named after the dark peak that loomed some miles to the south. It had been settled originally by Mexicans—there were still the ruins of adobe missions—but with the advent of the rustler and outlaw many inhabitants were shot or driven away, so that at the height of Ord’s prosperity and evil sway there were but few Mexicans living there, and these had their choice between holding hand-and-glove with the outlaws or furnishing target practice for that wild element.
Toward the close of a day in September a stranger rode into Ord, and in a community where all men were remarkable for one reason or another he excited interest. His horse, perhaps, received the first and most engaging attention—horses in that region being apparently more important than men. This particular horse did not attract with beauty. At first glance he seemed ugly. But he was a giant, black as coal, rough despite the care manifestly bestowed upon him, long of body, ponderous of limb, huge in every way. A bystander remarked that he had a grand head. True, if only his head had been seen he would have been a beautiful horse. Like men, horses show what they are in the shape, the size, the line, the character of the head. This one denoted fire, speed, blood, loyalty, and his eyes were as soft and dark as a woman’s. His face was solid black, except in the middle of his forehead, where there was a round spot of white.
“Say mister, mind tellin’ me his name?” asked a ragged urchin, with born love of a horse in his eyes.
“Bullet,” replied the rider.
“Thet there’s fer the white mark, ain’t it?” whispered the youngster to another. “Say, ain’t he a whopper? Biggest hoss I ever seen.”
Bullet carried a huge black silver-ornamented saddle of Mexican make, a lariat and canteen, and a small pack rolled into a tarpaulin.
This rider apparently put all care of appearances upon his horse. His apparel was the ordinary jeans of the cowboy without vanity, and it
was torn and travel-stained. His boots showed evidence of an intimate acquaintance with cactus. Like his horse, this man was a giant in stature, but rangier, not so heavily built. Otherwise the only striking thing about him was his somber face with its piercing eyes, and hair white over the temples. He packed two guns, both low down—but that was too common a thing to attract notice in the Big Bend. A close observer, however, would have noted a singular fact—this rider’s right hand was more bronzed, more weather-beaten than his left. He never wore a glove on that right hand!
He had dismounted before a ramshackle structure that bore upon its wide, high-boarded front the sign, “Hotel.” There were horsemen coming and going down the wide street between its rows of old stores, saloons, and houses. Ord certainly did not look enterprising. Americans had manifestly assimilated much of the leisure of the Mexicans. The hotel had a wide platform in front, and this did duty as porch and sidewalk. Upon it, and leaning against a hitching-rail, were men of varying ages, most of them slovenly in old jeans and slouched sombreros. Some were booted, belted, and spurred. No man there wore a coat, but all wore vests. The guns in that group would have outnumbered the men.
It was a crowd seemingly too lazy to be curious. Good nature did not appear to be wanting, but it was not the frank and boisterous kind natural to the cowboy or rancher in town for a day. These men were idlers; what else, perhaps, was easy to conjecture. Certainly to this arriving stranger, who flashed a keen eye over them, they wore an atmosphere never associated with work.
Presently a tall man, with a drooping, sandy mustache, leisurely detached himself from the crowd.
“Howdy, stranger,” he said.
The stranger had bent over to loosen the cinches; he straightened up and nodded. Then: “I’m thirsty!”
That brought a broad smile to faces. It was characteristic greeting. One and all trooped after the stranger into the hotel. It was a dark, ill-smelling barn of a place, with a bar as high as a short man’s head. A bartender with a scarred face was serving drinks.
“Line up, gents,” said the stranger.
They piled over one another to get to the bar, with coarse jests and oaths and laughter. None of them noted that the stranger did not appear so thirsty as he had claimed to be. In fact, though he went through the motions, he did not drink at all.
“My name’s Jim Fletcher,” said the tall man with the drooping, sandy mustache. He spoke laconically, nevertheless there was a tone that showed he expected to be known. Something went with that name. The stranger did not appear to be impressed.
“My name might be Blazes, but it ain’t,” he replied. “What do you call this burg?”
“Stranger, this heah me-tropoles bears the handle Ord. Is thet new to you?”
He leaned back against the bar, and now his little yellow eyes, clear as crystal, flawless as a hawk’s, fixed on the stranger. Other men crowded close, forming a circle, curious, ready to be friendly or otherwise, according to how the tall interrogator marked the newcomer.
“Sure, Ord’s a little strange to me. Off the railroad some, ain’t it? Funny trails hereabouts.”
“How fur was you goin’?”
“I reckon I was goin’ as far as I could,” replied the stranger, with a hard laugh.
His reply had subtle reaction on that listening circle. Some of the men exchanged glances. Fletcher stroked his drooping mustache, seemed thoughtful, but lost something of that piercing scrutiny.
“Wal, Ord’s the jumpin’-off place,” he said, presently. “Sure you’ve heerd of the Big Bend country?”
“I sure have, an’ was makin’ tracks fer it,” replied the stranger.
Fletcher turned toward a man in the outer edge of the group. “Knell, come in heah.”
This individual elbowed his way in and was seen to be scarcely more than a boy, almost pale beside those bronzed men, with a long, expressionless face, thin and sharp.
“Knell, this heah’s—” Fletcher wheeled to the stranger. “What’d you call yourself?”
“I’d hate to mention what I’ve been callin’ myself lately.”
This sally fetched another laugh. The stranger appeared cool, careless, indifferent. Perhaps he knew, as the others present knew, that this show of Fletcher’s, this pretense of introduction, was merely talk while he was looked over.
Knell stepped up, and it was easy to see, from the way Fletcher relinquished his part in the situation, that a man greater than he had appeared upon the scene.
“Any business here?” he queried, curtly. When he spoke his expressionless face was in strange contrast with the ring, the quality, the cruelty of his voice. This voice betrayed an absence of humor, of friendliness, of heart.
“Nope,” replied the stranger.
“Know anybody hereabouts?”
“Nary one.”
“Jest ridin’ through?”
“Yep.”
“Slopin’ fer back country, eh?”
There came a pause. The stranger appeared to grow a little resentful and drew himself up disdainfully.
“Wal, considerin’ you-all seem so damn friendly an’ oncurious down here in this Big Bend country, I don’t mind sayin’ yes—I am in on the dodge,” he replied, with deliberate sarcasm.
“From west of Ord—out El Paso way, mebbe?”
“Sure.”
“A-huh! Thet so?” Knell’s words cut the air, stilled the room. “You’re from way down the river. Thet’s what they say down there—‘on the dodge.’… Stranger, you’re a liar!”
With swift clink of spur and thump of boot the crowd split, leaving Knell and the stranger in the center.
Wild breed of that ilk never made a mistake in judging a man’s nerve. Knell had cut out with the trenchant call, and stood ready. The stranger suddenly lost his every semblance to the rough and easy character before manifest in him. He became bronze. That situation seemed familiar to him. His eyes held a singular piercing light that danced like a compass-needle.
“Sure I lied,” he said; “so I ain’t takin’ offense at the way you called me. I’m lookin’ to make friends, not enemies. You don’t strike me as one of them four-flushes, achin’ to kill somebody. But if you are—go ahead an’ open the ball.… You see, I never throw a gun on them fellers till they go fer theirs.”
Knell coolly eyed his antagonist, his strange face not changing in the least. Yet somehow it was evident in his look that here was metal which rang differently from what he had expected. Invited to start a fight or withdraw, as he chose, Knell proved himself big in the manner characteristic of only the genuine gunman.
“Stranger, I pass,” he said, and, turning to the bar, he ordered liquor.
The tension relaxed, the silence broke, the men filled up the gap; the incident seemed closed. Jim Fletcher attached himself to the stranger, and now both respect and friendliness tempered his asperity.
“Wal, fer want of a better handle I’ll call you Dodge,” he said.
“Dodge’s as good as any.… Gents, line up again—an’ if you can’t be friendly, be careful!”
Such was Buck Duane’s debut in the little outlaw hamlet of Ord.
Duane had been three months out of the Nueces country. At El Paso he bought the finest horse he could find, and, armed and otherwise outfitted to suit him, he had taken to unknown trails. Leisurely he rode from town to town, village to village, ranch to ranch, fitting his talk and his occupation to the impression he wanted to make upon different people whom he met. He was in turn a cowboy, a rancher, a cattleman, a stock-buyer, a boomer, a land-hunter; and long before he reached the wild and inhospitable Ord he had acted the part of an outlaw, drifting into new territory. He passed on leisurely because he wanted to learn the lay of the country, the location of villages and ranches, the work, habit, gossip, pleasures, and fears of the people with whom he came in contact. The one subject most impelling to him—outlaws—he never mentioned; but by talking all around it, sifting the old ranch and cattle story, he acquired a knowledge calculated to
aid his plot. In this game time was of no moment; if necessary he would take years to accomplish his task. The stupendous and perilous nature of it showed in the slow, wary preparation. When he heard Fletcher’s name and faced Knell he knew he had reached the place he sought. Ord was a hamlet on the fringe of the grazing country, of doubtful honesty, from which, surely, winding trails led down into that free and never-disturbed paradise of outlaws—the Big Bend.
Duane made himself agreeable, yet not too much so, to Fletcher and several other men disposed to talk and drink and eat; and then, after having a care for his horse, he rode out of town a couple of miles to a grove he had marked, and there, well hidden, he prepared to spend the night. This proceeding served a double purpose—he was safer, and the habit would look well in the eyes of outlaws, who would be more inclined to see in him the lone-wolf fugitive.
Long since Duane had fought out a battle with himself, won a hard-earned victory. His outer life, the action, was much the same as it had been; but the inner life had tremendously changed. He could never become a happy man, he could never shake utterly those haunting phantoms that had once been his despair and madness; but he had assumed a task impossible for any man save one like him, he had felt the meaning of it grow strangely and wonderfully, and through that flourished up consciousness of how passionately he now clung to this thing which would blot out his former infamy. The iron fetters no more threatened his hands; the iron door no more haunted his dreams. He never forgot that he was free. Strangely, too, along with this feeling of new manhood there gathered the force of imperious desire to run these chief outlaws to their dooms. He never called them outlaws—but rustlers, thieves, robbers, murderers, criminals. He sensed the growth of a relentless driving passion, and sometimes he feared that, more than the newly acquired zeal and pride in this ranger service, it was the old, terrible inherited killing instinct lifting its hydra-head in new guise. But of that he could not be sure. He dreaded the thought. He could only wait.
