The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  Watching for a time, Sanderson made certain the man was not one of his own outfit, and then he shoved the muzzle of his rifle out, laid his cheek against the stock, and covered the partly exposed head of the man behind the boulder.

  Sanderson waited long with his cheek caressing the rifle stock, while the man behind the boulder wriggled farther out, exposing himself more and more in his eagerness to gain a more advantageous position.

  And presently, without moving his head, Sanderson discovered that it was Williams who was in danger.

  Williams had concealed himself behind a jagged rock, which protected him from the bullets fired from across the defile, and from the sides. But the rock afforded him no protection from the rear, and the man behind the boulder was going to take advantage of his opportunity.

  “That’s my engineer, mister,” he said grimly; “an’ I ain’t lettin’ you make me go to the trouble of sendin’ east for another. You’re ready now, eh?”

  The man behind the boulder had reached a position that satisfied him. Sanderson saw him snuggle the stock of his rifle against his shoulder.

  Sanderson’s rifle cracked viciously. The man behind the boulder was lying on a slight slope, and when Sanderson’s bullet struck him, he gently rolled over and began to slide downward. He came—a grotesque, limp thing—down the side of the defile, past the engineer, sliding gently until he landed in a queer-looking huddle at the bottom, near the trail.

  Sanderson intently examined other rocks and boulders on the opposite side of the defile. He had paid no attention to Williams’ “Good work, Sanderson!” except to grin and assure himself that Williams hadn’t “lost his nerve.”

  Presently at an angle that ran obliquely upward from a flat, projecting ledge, behind which another Double A man lay, partly concealed, Sanderson detected movement.

  It was only a hat that he saw this time, and a glint of sunlight on the barrel of a rifle. But he saw that the rifle, after moving, became quite motionless, and he suspected that it was about to be used.

  Again the cheek snuggled the stock of his rifle.

  “This is goin’ to be some shot—if I make it!” he told himself just before he fired. “There ain’t nothin’ to shoot at but one of his ears, looks like.”

  But at the report of the rifle, the weapon that had been so rigid and motionless slipped from behind the rock and clattered downward. It caught halfway between the rock and the bottom of the defile. There came no sound from behind the rook, and no movement.

  “Got him!” yelled Williams. “Go to it! There’s only two more on this side, that I can see. They’re trying mighty hard to perforate me—I’m losing weight dodging around here trying to keep them from drawing a bead on me. If I had a rifle—”

  Williams’ voice broke off with the crash of a rifle behind him, though a little to one side. Talking to Sanderson, and trying to see him, Williams had stuck his head out a little too far. The bullet from the rifle of the watching enemy clipped off a small piece of the engineer’s ear.

  Williams’ voice rose in impotent rage, filling the defile with profane echoes. Sanderson did not hear Williams. He had chanced to be looking toward the spot from whence the smoke spurt came.

  A fallen tree, its top branches hanging down the wall of the defile, provided concealment from which the enemy had sent his shot at Williams. Sanderson snapped a shot at the point where he had seen the smoke streak, and heard a cry of rage.

  A man, his face distorted with pain, stood up behind the fallen tree trunk, the upper part of his body in plain view.

  His rage had made him reckless, and he had stood erect the better to aim his rifle at the fissure in which Sanderson was concealed. He fired—and missed, for Sanderson had ducked at the movement. Sanderson heard the bullet strike the rock wall above his head, and go ricochetting into the cleft behind him.

  He peered out again instantly, to see that the man was lying doubled across the fallen tree trunk, his rifle having dropped, muzzle down, in some bushes below him.

  Sanderson heard Williams’ voice, raised in savage exultation:

  “Nip my ear, will you—yon measly son-of-a-gun! I’ll show you!

  “Got him with my pistol!” he yelled to one of the Double A men near him. “Come on out and fight like men, you miserable whelps!”

  The young engineer’s fighting blood was up—that was plain to Sanderson. Sanderson grinned, yielded to a solemn hope that Williams would not get reckless and expose himself needlessly, and began to examine the walls of the fissure to determine on a new offensive movement.

  He was interrupted, though, by another shout from Williams.

  “Got him!” yelled the engineer; “plumb in the beezer!”

  Sanderson peered out, to see the body of a man come tumbling down the opposite wall of the defile.

  “That’s all on this side!” Williams informed the others, shouting. “Now let’s get at the guys on the other side and salivate them!”

  Again Sanderson grinned at the engineer’s enthusiasm. That enthusiasm was infectious, for Sanderson heard some of the other men laughing. The laughing indicated that they now entertained a hope of ultimate victory—a hope which they could not have had before Williams and Sanderson had disposed of the enemies at their rear.

  Sanderson, too, was imbued with a spirit of enthusiasm. He began to climb the walls of the crevice, finding the ragged rock projections admirably convenient for footing.

  However, his progress was slow, for he had to be careful not to let his head show above the edge of the rock that formed the fissure; and so he was busily engaged for the greater part of half an hour before he finally reached a position from which he thought he could get a glimpse of the men on his side of the defile.

  Meanwhile there had been no sound from the bottom, or the other side of the defile, except an occasional report of a rifle, which told that Dale’s men were firing, or the somewhat more crashing report of a pistol, which indicated that his own men were replying.

  From where he crouched in the fissure, Sanderson could see some of the horses at the bottom of the defile. They were grazing unconcernedly. Scattered along the bottom of the defile were the men who had fallen at the first fire, and Sanderson’s eye glinted with rage when he looked at them; for he recognized some of them as men of the outfit for whom he had conceived a liking. Two of Williams’ men were lying there, too, and Sanderson’s lips grimmed as he looked at them.

  Thoroughly aroused now, Sanderson replaced the empty cartridges in the rifle with loaded ones, and, finding a spot between two small boulders, he shoved the muzzle of the rifle through.

  He had no fear of being shot at from the rear, for the men had permitted him to go far enough through the defile to allow the others following him to come into range before they opened fire.

  Thus Sanderson was between the Dale outfit and the Double A ranchhouse, and he had only to look back in the direction from which he and Williams had come. None of the Dale men could cross the fissure.

  Cautiously Sanderson raised his head above the rocky edge of the fissure. He kept his head concealed behind the two small boulders and he had an uninterrupted view of the entire side of the defile.

  He saw a number of men crouching behind rocks and boulders that were scattered over the steep slope, and he counted them deliberately—sixteen. He could see their faces plainly, and he recognized many of them as Dale’s men. They were of the vicious type that are to be found in all lawless communities.

  Sanderson’s grin as he sighted along the barrel of his rifle was full of sardonic satisfaction, tempered with a slight disappointment. For he did not see Dale among the others. Dale, he supposed, had stayed behind.

  The thought of what Dale might be doing at the Double A ranchhouse maddened Sanderson, and taking quick sight at a man crouching behind a rock, he pulled the trigger.

  Looking only in front of him, at the other side of the defile where Sanderson’s men were concealed, the man did not expect attack from a new quarter,
and as Sanderson’s bullet struck him he leaped up, howling with pain and astonishment, clutching at his breast.

  He had hardly exposed himself when several reports from the other side of the defile greeted him. The man staggered and fell behind his rock, his feet projecting from one side and his head from the other.

  Instantly the battle took on a new aspect. It was a flank attack, which Dale’s men had not anticipated, and it confused them. Several of them shifted their positions, and in doing so they brought parts of their bodies into view of the men on the opposite wall.

  There rose from the opposite wall a succession of reports, followed by hoarse cries of pain from Dale’s men. They flopped back again, thus exposing themselves to Sanderson’s fire, and the latter lost not one of his opportunities.

  It was the aggressors themselves that were now under cross fire, and they relished it very little.

  A big man, incensed at his inability to silence Sanderson, and wounded in the shoulder, suddenly left the shelter of his rock and charged across the steep face of the slope toward the fissure.

  This man was brave, despite his associations, but he was a Dale man, and deserved no mercy. Sanderson granted him none. Halfway of the distance between his rock and the fissure he charged before Sanderson shot him. The man fell soundlessly, turning over and over in his descent to the bottom of the defile.

  And then rose Williams’ voice—Sanderson grinned with bitter humor:

  “We’ve got them, boys; we’ve got them. Give them hell, the damned buzzards!”

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  NYLAND MEETS A “KILLER”

  Ben Nyland had gone to Lazette to attend to some business that had demanded his attention. He had delayed going until he could delay no longer.

  “I hate like blazes to go away an’ leave you alone, here—to face that beast, Dale, if he comes sneakin’ around. But I reckon I’ve just got to go—I can’t put it off any longer. If you’d only go an’ stay at Bransford’s while I’m gone I’d feel a heap easier in my mind.”

  “I’m not a bit afraid,” Peggy declared. “That last experience of Dale’s with Sanderson has done him good, and he won’t bother me again.”

  That had been the conversation between Ben and Peggy as Ben got ready to leave. And he had gone away, half convinced that Peggy was right, and that Dale would not molest her.

  But he had made himself as inconspicuous as possible while in Okar, waiting for the train, and he was certain that none of Dale’s men had seen him.

  Nyland had concluded his business as quickly as possible, but the best he could do was to take the return train that he had told Peggy he would take. That train brought him back to Okar late in the afternoon of the next day.

  Ben Nyland had been born and raised in the West, and he was of the type that had made the West the great supply store of the country. Rugged, honest, industrious, Ben Nyland had no ambitions beyond those of taking care of his sister—which responsibility had been his since the death of his parents years before.

  It had not been a responsibility, really, for Nyland worshiped his sister, and it had been his eagerness to champion her that had made an enemy of Alva Dale.

  He hated Dale, but not more than he hated Maison and Silverthorn for the part they were playing—and had played—in trying to rob him of his land.

  Nyland was a plodder, but there ran in his veins the fighting blood of ancestors who had conquered the hardships and dangers of a great, rugged country, and there had been times when he thought of Dale and the others that his blood had leaped like fire through his veins.

  Twice Peggy had prevented him from killing Alva Dale.

  Nyland was afflicted with a premonition of evil when he got off the train at Okar. To the insistence of the owner of the livery stable, where he had left his horse, Nyland replied:

  “I ain’t got no time to do any drinkin’; I’ve got to get home.”

  The premonition of evil still oppressed him as he rode his horse homeward. He rode fast, his face set and worried.

  When he reached the clearing through which Dale had come on the night he had visited the Nyland cabin, he looked furtively around, for the dire foreboding that had gripped him for hours had grown suddenly stronger.

  He halted his horse and sat motionless in the saddle, intently examining every object within view.

  It was to the horse corral that he finally turned when he could see nothing strange in the objects around him. He had looked at the house, and there seemed to be nothing wrong here, for he could see Peggy’s wash on the line that ran from a porch column to a corner of the stable.

  The actions of the three horses in the corral was what attracted his attention. They were crowding the rail at the point nearest him, neighing shrilly, though with a curious clacking in their throats that he instantly detected.

  “They’re wantin’ water,” he said aloud. He rode to the water trough and saw that it was dry, with a deposit in the bottom which did not contain a drop of moisture.

  “There ain’t been no water put in there since I left,” he decided; “them horses is chokin’ with thirst.”

  A pulse of anxiety ran over him. There was no doubt in his mind now that his presentiment of evil was not without foundation, and he wheeled his horse and sent it toward the house.

  “Peggy would give them water if she was able to be on her feet,” he declared, “she’s that kind.”

  But halfway to the house another thought assailed him. It drew his brows together in a scowl, it stiffened his lips until they were in straight, hard lines.

  “Mebbe Dale’s been here! Mebbe he’s still here!”

  He abruptly halted his horse and gazed around him. As though he expected to find something there he looked toward a little timber grove to the right of the house, far back toward the rimming hills. At the edge of the grove he saw a horse, saddled and bridled.

  A quick change came over Nyland. The blood left his face, and his eyes took on an expression of cold cunning.

  Dismounting, he hitched his horse to one of the rails of the corral fence. With his back turned to the house, his head cocked to one side, as though he were intent on the knot he was tying in the reins, he furtively watched the house.

  He took a long time to tie the reins to the rail, but the time was well spent, for, before he finished, he saw a man’s face at one of the kitchen windows.

  It was not Dale. He was convinced of that, even though he got only a flashing glance at the face.

  Danger threatened Peggy, or she had succumbed to it. There was no other explanation of the presence of a strange man in the kitchen. For if Peggy was able to walk, she would have watered the horses, she would have met him at the door, as she had always done.

  And if the man were there for any good purpose he would have made his presence known to Nyland, and would not have hidden himself in the kitchen, to peer at Nyland through one of the windows.

  Nyland was convinced that Peggy had been foully dealt with. But haste and recklessness would avail Nyland little. The great mingled rage and anxiety that had seized him demanded instant action, but he fought it down; and when he turned toward the house and began to walk toward the kitchen door, his manner—outwardly—was that of a man who has seen nothing to arouse his suspicions.

  Yet despite the appearance of calm he was alert, and every muscle and sinew of his body was tensed for instant action. And so, when he had approached to within a dozen feet of the kitchen door, and a man’s figure darkened the opening, he dove sidewise, drawing his gun as he went down and snapping a shot at the figure he had seen.

  So rapid were his movements, and so well timed was his fall, that he was halfway to the ground when the flash came from the doorway. And the crash of his own gun followed the other so closely that the two seemed almost instantaneous.

  Nyland did not conclude his acrobatic performance with the dive. Landing on the ground he rolled over and over, scrambling toward the wall of the cabin—reaching it on all fours and crouching th
ere, gun in hand—waiting.

  He had heard no sound from the man, nor did the latter appear. The silence within the cabin was as deep as it had been just an instant before the exchange of shots.

  There was a window in the rear wall of the cabin—a kitchen window. There was another on the opposite side—the dining-room. There was a front door and two windows on the side Nyland was on.

  Two courses were open for Nyland. He could gain entrance to the house through one of the windows or the front door, thereby running the risk of making a target of himself, or he could stay on the outside and wait for the man to come out—which he would have to do some time.

  Nyland decided to remain where he was. For a long time he crouched against the wall and nothing happened. Then, growing impatient, he moved stealthily around the rear corner, stole to the rear window, and peered inside.

  It took him long to prepare for the look—he accomplished the action in an instant—a flashing glance. A gun roared close to his head, the flash blinding him; the glass tinkling on the ground at his feet.

  But Nyland had not been hit, and he grinned felinely as he dropped to the ground, slipped under the window, and ran around the house. Ducking under the side window he ran around to the front. From the front window he could look through the house, and he saw the man, gun in hand, watching the side door.

  Nyland took aim through the window, but just as he was about to pull the trigger of the weapon the man moved stealthily toward the door—out of Nyland’s vision.

  Evidently the man considered the many windows to be a menace to his safety, and had determined to go outside, where he would have an equal chance with his intended victim.

  Grinning coldly, Nyland moved to the corner of the house nearest the kitchen door. The man stepped out of the door, and at the instant Nyland saw him he was looking toward the rear of the house.

  Nyland laughed—aloud, derisively. He did not want to shoot the man in the back.

  At Nyland’s laugh the man wheeled, snapping a shot from his hip. He was an instant too late, though, for with the man’s wheeling movement Nyland’s gun barked death to him.