Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

  “Nearly at the bottom,” said Hard Luck, after what seemed an age. “Risk a little sprint, now.”

  The horses leaped out at the loosening of the reins and crashed out onto the slopes in a shower of flying shale and loose dirt. “Good business—” said Hard Luck — and then his horse stumbled and went to its knees, throwing him heavily.

  Steve and the girl halted their mounts, sprang from the saddle. Hard Luck was up in an instant cursing.

  “My horse is lame — go on and leave me!”

  “No!” snarled Steve. “We can both ride on mine.”

  He whirled to his steed; up on the plateau crashed an aimless volley as if fired into the air. Steve’s horse snorted and reared — the Texan’s clutching hand missed the rein and the bronco wheeled and galloped away into the forest. Steve stood aghast, frozen at this disaster.

  “Go on!” yelled Hard Luck. “Blast you, git on with the gal and dust it outta here!”

  “Get on your horse!” Steve whirled to the girl. “Get on and go!”

  “I won’t!” she cried. “I won’t ride off and leave you two here to die! I’ll stay and die with you!”

  “Oh, my Lord!” said Steve, cursing feminine stubbornness and lack of logic. “Grab her horse, Hard Luck. I’ll put her on by main force and—”

  “Too late!” said Hard Luck with a bitter laugh. “There they come!”

  Far up at the upper end of the defile a horseman was silhouetted against the sky like a bronze statue. A moment he sat his horse motionless and in that moment Hard Luck threw the old buffalo gun to his shoulder. At the reverberating crash the Indian flung his arms wildly and toppled headlong, to tumble down the gorge with a loose flinging of his limbs. Hard Luck laughed as a wolf snarls and the riderless horse was jostled aside by flying steeds as the upper mouth of the defile filled with wild riders.

  “Git back to the trees,” yelled Hard Luck, leading the race from the cliff’s base, reloading as he ran. “Guess we kin make a last stand, anyway!”

  Steve, sighting over his pistol barrel as he crouched over the girl, gasped as he saw the Navajoes come plunging down the long gulch. They were racing down- slope with such speed that their horses reeled to their knees again and again, recovering balance in a flying cloud of shale and sand. Rocks dislodged by the flashing hoofs rattled down in a rain. The whole gorge was crowded with racing horsemen. Then —

  “I knowed it!” yelled Hard Luck, smiting his thigh with a clenched fist.

  High up the gulch a horse had stumbled, hurtling against a great boulder. The concussion had jarred the huge rock loose from its precarious base and now it came rumbling down the slope, sweeping horses and men before it. It struck other boulders and tore them loose; the gorge was full of frantic plunging steeds whose riders sought vainly to escape the avalanche they had started. Horses went down screaming as only dying horses can scream, a wild babble of yells arose, and then the whole earth seemed to rock.

  Jarred by the landslide, the overhanging walls reeled and shattered and came thundering down into the gorge, wiping out the insects which struggled there, blocking and closing the defile forever. Boulders and pieces of cliff weighing countless tons shelved off and came sliding down. The awed watchers among the trees rose silently, unspeaking. The air seemed full of flying stones, hurled out by the shattering fall of the great rocks. And one of these stones through some whim of chance came curving down through the trees and struck Hard Luck Harper just over the eye. He dropped like a log.

  Steve, still feeling stunned, as if his brain had been numbed by the crash and the roar of the falling cliffs, knelt beside him. Hard Luck’s eyes flickered open and he sat up.

  “Kids,” said he solemnly, “that was a terrible and awesome sight! I’ve seen a lot of hard things in my day and I ain’t no Indian lover, but it got me to see a whole tribe of fighting men git wiped out that way. But I knowed as shore as they started racing down that gulch, it’d happen.”

  He glanced down idly at the stone which had struck him, started, stooped and took it up in his hand. Steve had turned to the girl, who, the reaction having set in, was sobbing weakly, her face hidden in her hands. The Texan put his arms about her hesitantly.

  “Joan,” said he, “you ain’t never said nothin’ and I ain’t never said nothin’ but I reckon it hasn’t took words to show how I love you.”

  “Steve—” broke in Hard Luck excitedly.

  “Shut up!” roared Steve, glaring at him. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  Hard Luck shrugged his shoulders and approached the great heap of broken stone and earth, from which loose shale was still spilling in a wide stream down the slight incline at the foot of the cliffs.

  “Joan,” went Steve, “as I was sayin’ when that old buzzard interrupted, I love you, and — and — and if you feel just a little that way towards me, let me take care of you!”

  For answer she stretched out her arms to him.

  “Joan kid,” he murmured, drawing her cheek down on his bosom and stroking her hair with an awkward, gentle hand, “reckon I can’t offer you much. I’m just a wanderin’ cowhand—”

  “You ain’t!” an arrogant voice broke in. Steve looked up to see Hard Luck standing over them. The old man held the stone which had knocked him down, while with the other hand he twirled his long drooping mustache. A strange air was evident about him — he seemed struggling to maintain an urbane and casual manner, yet he was apparently about to burst with pride and self-importance.

  “You ain’t no wanderin’ cowboy,” he repeated. “You’ll never punch another cow as long as you live. Yore one fourth owner of the Sunset Lode Mine, the blamedest vein of ore ever discovered!”

  The two stared at him.

  “Gaze on this yer dornick!” said Hard Luck. “Note the sparkles in it and the general appearance which sets it plumb apart from the ordinary rock! And now look yonder!”

  He pointed dramatically at a portion of the cliff face which had been uncovered by the slide.

  “Quartz!” he exulted. “The widest, deepest quartz vein I ever see! Gold you can mighta near work out with yore fingers, by golly! I done figured it out — after I wandered away and got found by them buffalo hunters, a slide come and covered the lode up. That’s why I couldn’t never find it again. Now this slide comes along, forty year later, and uncovers it, slick as you please!

  “Very just and proper, too. Indians euchered me outa my mine the first time and now Indians has give it back to me. I guess I cancel the debt of that lifted ha’r.

  “Now listen to me and don’t talk back. One fourth of this mine belongs to me by right of discovery. One fourth goes to any relatives of Bill Hansen’s which might be living. For the other two fourths, I’m makin’ you two equal partners. How’s that?”

  Steve silently gripped the old man’s hand, too full for speech. Hard Luck took the young Texan’s arm and laid it about Joan’s shoulders.

  “Git to yore love makin’ and don’t interrupt a man what’s tryin’ to figure out how to spend a million!” said he loftily.

  “Joan, girl,” said Steve softly, “what are you cryin’ about? It’s easy to forget horrors when you’re young. You’re wealthy now, we’re goin’ to be married just as soon as we can — and the drums of Sunset Mountains will never beat again.”

  “I guess I’m just happy,” she answered, lifting her lips to his.

  “He first come in the money, and he spent it just as free!

  “He always drank good liquor wherever he might be!”

  So sang Hard Luck Harper from the depths of his satisfaction.

  BOOT-HILL PAYOFF

  First published in Western Aces, October 1935. Also published as “The Last Ride”

  CONTENTS

  1. THE LARAMIES RIDE

  2. OWL-HOOT GHOSTS

  3. TRIGGER DEBT

  4. SIDEWINDER RAMROD

  5. FIRST BLOOD

  6. “STRING HIM UP!”

  7. BOTTLED UP

  8. BOOT-HILL
TALK

  9. KILLER UNMASKED

  1. THE LARAMIES RIDE

  FIVE men were riding down the winding road that led to San Leon, and one was singing, in a toneless monotone:

  “Early in the mornin’ in the month of May,

  Brady came down on the mornin’ train.

  Brady came down on the Shinin’ Star.

  And he shot Mr. Duncan in behind the bar!”

  “Shut up! Shut up!” It was the youngest of the riders who ripped out like that. A lanky, tow-headed kid, with a touch of pallor under his tan, and a rebellious smolder in his hot eyes.

  The biggest man of the five grinned.

  “Bucky’s nervous,” he jeered genially. “You don’t want to be no derned bandit, do you, Bucky?”

  The youngest glowered at him.

  “That welt on yore jaw ought to answer that, Jim,” he growled.

  “You fit like a catamount,” agreed Big Jim placidly. “I thought we’d never git you on yore cayuse and started for San Leon, without knockin’ you in the head. ‘Bout the only way you show yo’re a Laramie, Bucky, is in the handlin’ of yore fists.”

  “T’ain’t no honor to be a Laramie,” flared Bucky. “You and Luke and Tom and Hank has dragged the name through slime. For the last three years you been worse’n a pack of starvin’ lobos — stealin’ cattle and horses; robbin’ folks — why, the country’s near ruint. And now yo’re headin’ to San Leon to put on the final touch — robbin’ the Cattlemen’s Bank, when you know dern well the help the ranchmen got from that bank’s been all that kept ’em on their feet. Old man Brown’s stretched hisself nigh to the bustin’ p’int to help folks.”

  He gulped and fought back tears that betrayed his extreme youth. His brothers grinned tolerantly. “It’s the last time,” he informed them bitterly. “You won’t git me into no raid again!”

  “It’s the last time for all of us,” said Big Jim, biting off a cud of tobacco. “We’re through after this job. We’ll live like honest men in Mexico.”

  “Serve you right if a posse caught us and hanged us all,” said Bucky viciously.

  “Not a chance.” Big Jim’s placidity was unruffled. “Nobody but us knows the trail that follows the secret waterholes acrost the desert. No posse’d dare to foller us. Once out of town and headed south for the border, the devil hisself couldn’t catch us.”

  “I wonder if anybody’ll ever stumble onto our secret hide-out up in the Los Diablos Mountains,” mused Hank.

  “I doubt it. Too well hid. Like the desert trail, nobody but us knows them mountain trails. It shore served us well. Think of all the steers and horses we’ve hid there, and drove through the mountains to Mexico! And the times we’ve laid up there laughin’ in our sleeves as the posse chased around a circle.”

  Bucky muttered something under his breath; he retained no fond memories of that hidden lair high up in the barren Diablos. Three years before, he had reluctantly followed his brothers into it from the little ranch in the foothills where Old Man Laramie and his wife had worn away their lives in futile work. The old life, when their parents lived and had held their wild sons in check, had been drab and hard, but had lacked the bitterness he had known when cooking and tending house for his brothers in that hidden den from which they had ravaged the countryside. Four good men gone bad — mighty bad.

  San Leon lay as if slumbering in the desert heat as the five brothers rode up to the doors of the Cattlemen’s Bank. None noted their coming; the Red Lode saloon, favorite rendezvous for the masculine element of San Leon, stood at the other end of the town, and out of sight around a slight bend in the street.

  No words were passed; each man knew his part beforehand. The three elder Laramies slid lithely out of their saddles, throwing their reins to Bucky and Luke, the second youngest. They strode into the bank with a soft jingle of spurs and creak of leather, closing the door behind them.

  Luke’s face was impassive as an image’s, as he dragged leisurely on a cigarette, though his eyes gleamed between slitted lids. But Bucky sweated and shivered, twisting nervously in his saddle. By some twist of destiny, one son had inherited all the honesty that was his parents’ to transmit. He had kept his hands clean. Now, in spite of himself, he was scarred with their brand.

  He started convulsively as a gun crashed inside the bank; like an echo came another reverberation.

  Luke’s Colt was in his hand, and he snatched one foot clear of the stirrup, then feet pounded toward the street and the door burst open to emit the three outlaws. They carried bulging canvas sacks, and Hank’s sleeve was crimson.

  “Ride like hell!” grunted Big Jim, forking his roan. “Old Brown throwed down on Hank. Old fool! I had to salivate him permanent.”

  And like hell it was they rode, straight down the street toward the desert, yelling and firing as they went. They thundered past houses from which startled individuals peered bewilderedly, past stores where leathery faced storekeepers were dragging forth blue-barreled scatter-guns. They swept through the futile rain of lead that poured from the excited and befuddled crowd in front of the Red Lode, and whirled on toward the desert that stretched south of San Leon.

  But not quite to the desert. For as they rounded the last bend in the twisting street and came abreast of the last house in the village, they were confronted by the gray-bearded figure of old “Pop” Anders, sheriff of San Leon County. The old man’s gnarled right hand rested on the ancient single-action Colt on his thigh, his left was lifted in a seemingly futile command to halt.

  Big Jim cursed and sawed back on the reins, and the big roan slid to a halt.

  “Git outa the way, Pop!” roared Big Jim. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

  The old warrior’s eyes blazed with righteous wrath.

  “Robbed the bank this time, eh?” he said in cold fury, his eyes on the canvas sacks. “Likely spilt blood, too. Good thing Frank Laramie died before he could know what skunks his boys turned out to be. You ain’t content to steal our stock till we’re nigh bankrupt; you got to rob our bank and take what little money we got left for a new start. Why, you damned human sidewinders!” the old man shrieked, his control snapping suddenly. “Ain’t there nothin’ that’s too low-down for you to do?”

  Behind them sounded the pound of running feet and a scattering banging of guns. The crowd from the Red Lode was closing in.

  “You’ve wasted our time long enough, old man!” roared Luke, jabbing in the spurs and sending his horse rearing and plunging toward the indomitable figure. “Git outa the way, or—”

  The old single-action jumped free in the gnarled hand. Two shots roared together, and Luke’s sombrero went skyrocketing from his head. But the old sheriff fell face forward in the dust with a bullet through his heart, and the Laramie gang swept on into the desert, feeding their dust to their hurriedly mounted and disheartened pursuers.

  Only young Buck Laramie looked back, to see the door of the last house fly open, and a pig-tailed girl run out to the still figure in the street. It was the sheriff’s daughter, Judy. She and Buck had gone to the same school in the old days before the Laramies hit the wolf-trail. Buck had always been her champion. Now she went down on her knees in the dust beside her father’s body, seeking frantically for a spark of life where there was none.

  A red film blazed before Buck Laramie’s eyes as he turned his livid face toward his brothers.

  “Hell,” Luke was fretting, “I didn’t aim to salivate him permanent. The old lobo woulda hung everyone of us if he could of — but just the same I didn’t aim to kill him.”

  Something snapped in Bucky’s brain.

  “You didn’t aim to kill him!” he shrieked. “No, but you did! Yo’re all a pack of low-down sidewinders just like he said! They ain’t nothin’ too dirty for you!” He brandished his clenched fists in the extremity of his passion. “You filthy scum!” he sobbed. “When I’m growed up I’m comin’ back here and make up for ever’ dollar you’ve stole, ever’ life you’ve took. I’ll do it if the
y hang me for tryin’, s’help me!”

  His brothers did not reply. They did not look at him. Big Jim hummed flatly and absently:

  “Some say he shot him with a thirty- eight,

  Some say he shot him with a forty-one;

  But I say he shot him with a forty-four.

  For I saw him as he lay on the barroom floor.”

  Bucky subsided, slumped in his saddle and rode dismally on. San Leon and the old life lay behind them all. Somewhere south of the hazy horizon the desert stretched into Mexico where lay their future destiny. And his destiny was inextricably interwoven with that of his brothers. He was an outlaw, too, now, and he must stay with the clan to the end of their last ride.

  Some guiding angel must have caused Buck Laramie to lean forward to pat the head of his tired sorrel, for at that instant a bullet ripped through his hat-brim, instead of his head.

  It came as a startling surprise, but his reaction was instant. He leaped from his horse and dove for the protection of a sand bank, a second bullet spurting dust at his heels. Then he was under cover, peering warily out, Colt in hand.

  The tip of a white sombrero showed above a rim of sand, two hundred yards in front of him. Laramie blazed away at it, though knowing as he pulled the trigger that the range was too long and the target too small for six-gun accuracy. Nevertheless, the hat-top vanished.

  “Takin’ no chances,” muttered Laramie. “Now who in hell is he?Here I am a good hour’s ride from San Leon, and folks pottin’ at me already. Looks bad for what I’m aimin’ to do. Reckon it’s somebody that knows me, after all these years?”

  He could not believe it possible that anyone would recognize the lanky, half-grown boy of six years ago in the bronzed, range-hardened man who was returning to San Leon to keep the vow he had made as his clan rode southward with two dead men and a looted bank behind them.