* * * *
They came to the high, sheer bluff forming the western boundary of the little desert. A narrow, tortuous trail worked down the face of the bluff. They had to travel in single file and walk their ponies fearfully.
It was slow work, the trail switchbacking repeatedly. The better part of an hour had gone when they reached the bottom. Then Curtis was puzzled still more as they pushed directly east over the desert. The hideout must be close now.
Suddenly the boss shot up from his saddle as if lifted by some invisible hand. An animal-like screech started from his pain-contorted face, then was cut off. Right atop it came the prolonged ringing spang-g of a rifle shot.
The boss pitched slowly from the saddle to the sands, rolling over by a dwarf cactus. A red stain blossomed on the back of his blue silk shirt between the shoulder blades.
They wheeled their ponies, twisting in the saddles. Up at the top of the bluff overlooking the desert were the figures of Holiday men. The long barrels of rifles gleamed faintly.
“Spread—spread out!” bawled Ed.
He dropped from his kak and ran over to the man they’d called the boss. The bloodstain had ceased to spread. He was already dead.
“They got Charlie all right, blast them!” Ed spat out.
Other shots whipped the sands, but they were yards off. That first one had been a lucky shot. The Brunnermann bunch could not retaliate. They had no rifles in their saddle boots.
“All right,” Ed barked, his whipped-out Colts covering the prisoners. “They can’t catch us. By the time they get down that bluff, we’ll be about across the desert. Come on! Keep riding!”
“All right, Slip,” said Black Tom. “We’ll make ’em pay for it some other time, by grab!”
Other rifle shots snapped after them as they urged the cayuses on eastward over the desert strip. But soon the bullets were dropping short as the lobos moved beyond range.
They swung around the end of a big wind-piled dune and were out of sight of the men on the bluff top. And then realization came to Smoke Curtis.
Black Tom had called the man known as Ed by another name. Had called him “Slip.” It burst on the sheriff. The man who’d just been slain they had simply called “boss,” never referring to him as Slip or Brunnermann. It was obvious. He wasn’t Brunnermann, that one who had been shot in the back. He had just been a dummy for the real leader, impersonating him.
Smoke Curtis recalled how “Ed,” really Slip Brunnermann, had unostentatiously taken control in any crisis, how his suggestions had been readily accepted as if they were orders. “Ed” was the real Slip Brunnermann, the coldblooded killer and leader.
Then it was that Curtis understood why Slip Brunnermann had always been so difficult to capture, had seemed so impervious to bullets. When John Laws had wounded or downed Brunnermann in a gunfight, it had not really been the leader himself at all. It had been a substitute. The insignificant-looking, shabbily-garbed little man at the head of the bunch now, he with the fanatically bright eyes, Ed, was Slip Brunnermann.
The sun began to spike the watery gray light of dawn with its rays as the bunch rode across the desert strip. Steamy ribbons of mist which floated over the ground began to dissipate as it grew hotter. The horses were now
dragging themselves along and had to be constantly spurred faster.
The riders crossed a shallow ravine and then plunged into the mesquite jungle at the eastern rim of the strip. For some time now they had seen nothing of Sam Holiday and his bunch.
Now they’ll never track us down,” proclaimed Brunnermann cockily. His men agreed.
They wound through the mesquite, under the gray branches. And then, abruptly, they were on the fringe of the cow country, and Smoke Curtis was amazed. They had done the last thing he would have believed, riding right out onto the rangeland. He couldn’t imagine where, among these low hills, they could have a hideout.
They veered sharply to the left over a strip of trackless hardpan. Coming to Bittersweet Creek, they put their ponies in the water and proceeded to follow it downstream across the cow country. Its banks and the foliage along them masked them from the sight of any riders on the open range.
The saddle-weary sheriff recalled suddenly how the Bittersweet ran right by the ranchhouse of Matt Bridger’s Box B.
“Mebbe they’re planning a raid,” he said to himself as they passed a bunch of two-year-olds grazing off on the right.
But that hardly seemed probable. The outlaws acted as if they were going into the safety of their hidden camp.
* * * *
After passing beneath a rough wooden bridge, the creek bowed. A little while later, Curtis glimpsed the roof of the Box B through the trees. The creek angled sharply a few hundred feet below the ranch, down back of the bunkhouse.
They reined up and Brunnermann repeated a bird call a couple of times. A man came trotting down beside the bunkhouse. Right away the sheriff knew there was something wrong at the Box B.
The aging Matt Bridger had run the outfit with half a dozen cowhands, old timers who’d been with him over the years, typical, gnarled, bandy-legged cow nurses. But the man coming down from the bunkhouse was none of those.
He was a big brute, in his mid-twenties, a couple of Colts in thonged-down holsters on his legs. Sliding out one, he dropped behind a boulder and gave the same bird call Brunnermann had used. Brunnermann echoed it.
“That you, Slip?” the men called down.
“None other!” answered the lobo leader. “How’re things? Is the coast clear?”
“Sure, Slip. Come on in. We heard yuh was out of jail all right.”
They rode up out of the creek. More gunmen, Brunnermann’s main bunch, piled from the bunkhouse, greeting him. One of them recognized Smoke Curtis.
“Holy hades, Slip! Yuh brought back the big badge-packer with yuh!”
“Sure,” Brunnermann said. “Figured I’d return the favor and make him my guest for a spell.” He guffawed heartily.
Then they were swinging past the corral and up before the main house, an old sprawling place. Curtis and his two deputies were covered on all sides as they dismounted. Curtis had to admit to himself it looked like the end of the trail for certain now.
The front door opened and Stan Bridger, red-faced cousin of old Matt, stepped out. At sight of the John Laws, he threw a hand to his heavy mustache, then glared at Brunnermann ascending the steps.
“Are yuh crazy, Slip?” Stan Bridger barked. “A-bringing them John Laws here!”
Brunnermann told him to stop blowing his skypiece, that he knew what he was doing.
“But when they go away from here, they’ll know the set-up. There’ll be the devil to pay,” Stan Bridger ranted.
“Who said they’re going away?” Brunnermann moved nonchalantly inside to the big living room. Outside, the ponies were already being whisked down to the corral.
“But suppose a posse comes snooping around, Slip?”
“What’d make ’em suspect anything? We’ll throw ’em down in the dirt cellar.” He jerked his chin toward the upper story. “How’s the old fool—Matt?”
Stan Bridger was still nervous as he placed a jug of redeye on the main table of the shabbily furnished room and called to a man out in the kitchen to rustle up some grub,
“Got ornery a couple of days back,” he said. “So we didn’t give him any grub for forty-eight hours. That tamed
him down.”
Brunnermann chuckled. “He’ll really be a sick gent if he keeps on gitting cantankerous.”
Smoke Curtis sat staring at his hands.
He and his two deputies, the wounded Flowers and Yucca Lamb, had been herded over to a horsehair sofa at one corner of the room. There was no chance for a break. A couple of lounging gun-toughs watched them. Others passed
in and out, coming up from the bunkhouse, listening to Brunnermann boast about the escape and the gunfight with Sam Holiday’s pack.
Curtis’ big face betrayed no feeling, but fresh rage churned inside him. He understood. Stan Bridger had sold out his older cousin, Matt, and worked hand-in-glove with the wily Brunnermann. And upstairs, Matt Bridger, supposedly seriously ill, was a prisoner in his own ranchhouse.
Curtis felt more impotent than ever. It seemed now that Brunnermann held every last ace in the deck. This rancho hideout had eluded his search for almost two years. No posse would ever so much as suspect the Box B of honest old Bible-pounding Matt Bridger was actually an undercover lobo camp. Not even those marshals, including the renowned Hellfire Sells, said to be coming in, would find them here.
When Curtis glanced up, Vin Price, lounging against one end of the table, guns in his holsters, seemed to give him a guarded wink. He couldn’t be sure. But it didn’t make sense anyway.
Grub was brought in—warmed-up meat, greasy potatoes, and hot java that had a taste like burnt gunpowder. The prisoners were guarded from the back as they ate. Curtis knew that he was going to make a play, try for a weapon and get Brunnermann—though it would cost him his own life—sooner or later. His lid-hooded eyes kept swinging around.
Fortified by a second slug from the liquor jug, Stan Bridger started to argue again about the advisability of having brought the lawmen there. It was then that Price leaned over, as he exhaled a cloud of smoke, and whispered faintly to Curtis.
“Wait for a sign. The lightning’s going to jump out of the jug yet. So—” He broke off when the leering Brunnermann cut his eyes down to the sheriff as he answered the worried Stan Bridger.
“I got ideas, Stan. Ideas about how Wagon Wheel might put up a pretty piece of ransom for their popular sheriff and his deputies.”
“Ransom?” Bridger shook his brick-red face vehemently. “No good, Slip. If yuh let ’em go, we’d be finished.” Brunnermann expelled smoke from a cigar. “Who in blazes said anything about letting ’em go? I’m just talking of collecting the ransom. As for releasing ’em—well, accidents can always happen. Fatal accidents!” He guffawed. “Now let me go up and give my regards to old Matt.”
CHAPTER VI
A Marshal Unmasked
Short while after Brunnermann and Stan Bridger clumped up the stairs, Brunnermann’s taunting guffaw carried to those below. Then, a few minutes later, there were three widely-spaced shots from off in the distance of the range.
Price was out the door and onto the porch right on the heels of one of the gunmen. Smoke Curtis saw Price lift his battered sombrero off his head, raising it high in an awkward-seeming gesture. The weary, embittered sheriff attached no importance to the gesture at the moment.
Brunnermann came leaping down the stairs, raced outside. Men came from down at the bunkhouse.
“Just keep yore shirts on, you lawmen,” Stan Bridger warned the sheriff and the two deputies, swinging a cocked gun on them.
The men out on the porch could see nothing, not even gunpowder smoke. No rider appeared over the swell of the range. They waited for some time. One of them finally began to wonder if they had been shots after all, they had been so faint.
“Could’ve just been some line rider slapping some lead at them Holiday pelicans,” Price suggested.
“Shucks,” said Brunnermann, as he reentered and poured himself a fresh drink from the jug, “A posse could ride right plumb into the front yard. And we’d still have the drop on ’em because we got Smoke Curtis here with a gun in his back. Haw-haw!”
Smoke Curtis could contain himself no longer. “Brunnermann, you dirty little sidewinder, if the boot is ever on the other foot, yuh’ll have to do a heap of crawlin’.”
Brunnermann only guffawed again, tossed off the drink, and said he was going to catch some shuteye. He said he’d take the back room on the ground floor and gave orders about posting a guard.
“Put the John Laws upstairs. Handcuff ’em,” he told Stan Bridger, adding that he’d brought along manacles from the jail. “Even a Slip Brunnermann has to rest sometime.”
He went through a doorway at the other end of the room to the back end of the house.
Some of the gun-slicks went out the front door, headed for the bunkhouse. Back at the table, the forgotten Price sat building a quirly as if nothing else in the world interested him. Over in a chair, the wounded Black Tom slouched. His wound had been bandaged and he had gulped down a lot of the redeye. Now, he dozed.
Stan Bridger led the way up the stairs, a gun-slick bringing up the rear after the prisoners. Curtis sucked in a deep breath. Now, if ever, he would have to make his play, some way, somehow.
But they had a gun in the back of Flowers, last in line of the three captives. They got upstairs and turned down a hallway leading to the rear wing of the rancho. Then there was the faint thud.
Smoke Curtis wheeled. The gunman in the rear of the line was sinking. Standing over him, behind, was Price, gun barrel lifted for another blow if necessary. George Flowers, the deputy, ruined it. Feeling the falling gunman’s Colts run down his back, he flung himself sideward, colliding with the wiry Price who had leaped ahead to get at Stan Bridger.
Bridger looked around at the commotion, and Smoke Curtis threw himself straight at the man’s gun. It was nervy, The reckless audacity of it upset Bridger. Even as his eyes bugged, his thumb fumbled, failed when he sought to cock the trigger. Then the wild sheriff was on him, slamming him back against the wall.
Bridger’s gun was rammed upward by the impact of Smoke Curtis’ chest, Bridger struck at him then with the three pair of manacles he held in his left hand. Yucca Lamb came into the play at that moment, throwing a fist over Curtis’ shoulder to Bridger’s face. The latter rocked.
Then Curtis, with the veritable strength of a bull, seized Bridger’s left hand and snapped it back at him furiously. The three pair of handcuffs smashed into Stan Bridger’s face. Blood gushed from his mouth and nose. He went down, apparently knocked out. Actually, he wasn’t, but he was deathly scared.
* * * *
Curtis pounced on him, grabbing his gun, ripping a second gun from its holster, then tearing at the buckle of the man’s cartridge-packed gunbelt Price yelled encouragement to him. Curtis threw open a nearby door. He and Price rolled Stan Bridger inside, pulled the door closed softly, and turned the key that was in its lock. Price went back over the gunman he had dropped They wouldn’t have to worry about him for some time. His skull had been dented by the blow.
Price came up with the man’s two weapons and started to extend them to the two deputies. But Flowers, bleating something about they’d all get killed was running for the stairs at the bad of the hall, trying to save his neck Yucca Lamb seized the guns.
From below, Black Tom’s lifted voice came, “But I tell yuh I saw that horse-thief Price skulkin’ up the stairs! Something’s wrong, Slip!”
Almost at once there was a sharp piercing whistle that could be heard flown at the bunkhouse. The alarm was out.
Yucca said that if they could hold the front and back stairs, they could keep the outlaws at bay indefinitely, “No good,” snapped Price, a frigid note of authority in his tone. “If they’ve got us cooped up when the posse strikes, Brunnermann’ll still hold the high cards.”
“Posse? What posse?” Curtis wondered if he were dreaming.
“Posse of U. S. Marshals, Sheriff.”
“What?” Curtis grabbed little Price by the arm. “Are yuh locoed?”
“Blast it, no! They’ll be here any minute now. Come on.”
Price darted up the corridor toward the front of the house. He scurried around the comer into the main upstairs hall. Then he was diving for his life as shots rattled out like thunderous explosions in the confines of the house.
Big Smoke Curtis re
cklessly rushed after Price. Two-gunslicks had cat-footed it up the stairs, were near the top, crouched. A bullet put a hole in the sheriff’s shirt sleeve. But he never broke stride, triggering.
One of his slugs knifed the front man’s cheek, making him jerk up with the pain, his gun hammering ceilingward for the moment. Smoke Curtis charged flush into him like a maddened bull. The gent went crashing backward down the stairs, carrying the man behind with him.
Vin Price came off the hall floor, blood leaking from a cut in his scalp, but his legs were steady. With Yucca Lamb hard on their heels, Curtis and Price started down. The fallen pair of gun-slicks had retreated to the porch.
Curtis and Price, triggering, sent them scrambling clear of the doorway. Yucca bellowed as he pointed down to the end of the room.
That whistle of Brunnermann’s had brought gunmen racing from the bunkhouse and in the back door. From the kitchen, directly behind the main room, they were pouring their fire. Through the front windows more could be seen swinging around to close escape from the front. The trio on the stairs looked like trapped rats.
And then Price sprang over the stair railing as nimbly as a tree-cat and landed crouched. In another split second he had thrown himself behind the end of the heavy horsehide sofa in the corner. From there he threw down on the buzzard firing from the kitchen doorway.
Big Smoke Curtis roared on through the front door. A man topping the porch steps teetered up on his tiptoes, clawed at empty air for something to keep him out of his grave, then plunged backward, drilled through the neck. Another pelican fell back into the ranch-yard, lead in his side. Yucca came leaping down to take his stand beside his boss.
The gun-slicks fell away from the porch in the face of that withering fire. Roaring epithets, fighting like a madman now that at last he had a chance, the Wagon Wheel sheriff turned toward the kitchen. One man was down on all fours like a dog there with a piece of Vin Price’s lead in his brisket. Curtis’ left forearm was ripped open, sending the weapon in that hand flying away. But with his other gun he got the gent back in the kitchen who’d done it to him.
The Third Western Megapack Page 45
