Clattering Hoofs

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1944 by William MacLeod Raine.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

  1. A Hostage for Pablo

  SANDRA SAT AT THE TABLE MAKING OUT A LIST OF GROCERIES to be bought for the ranch. Later in the day she and her brother Nelson would drive over to the cross-road store and get them.

  “The sugar is plumb out too, Miss Sandra, an’ in two-three days I’ll be scrapin’ the bottom of the flour barrel,” Jim Budd said. “Beats all what a lot of eatin’ is done on this here ranch.”

  “When the wagon goes tomorrow it can pick up the flour,” Sandra decided. “We can bring the other supplies. You haven’t forgotten anything?”

  “I disremember havin’ forgot a thing,” Jim replied, and flashed a set of shining teeth in a face black as the ace of spades. The huge cook found it easy to grin at his young mistress. He thought her the loveliest human under heaven, and he adored her. In his warped life few people had been kind to him. At the Circle J R ranch he had found a home.

  Into the kitchen burst a redheaded boy, eyes popping with excitement. “You know what, sis?” he cried. “They’ve just brought in Rod Spillman. He’s been shot.”

  Sandra stared at her brother, the grocery list banished from her mind. After a moment of shocked silence she asked a question. “Who shot him?”

  Nelson shook his head. “I dunno. They’re taking him into the bunkhouse. Wouldn’t let me see him. Told me to scat.”

  The girl ran out to the porch. She moved with the light grace of youth and perfect health. From the bunk-house a man walked toward the stable. Sandra intercepted him.

  “Buck, is it true about Rod?” she asked.

  The cowpuncher stopped. “Yes’m. They sure enough got him.”

  “You mean he’s . . . dead?”

  “That’s right. We found him near the mouth of French Gulch.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Rustlers. We dunno who for certain. They run off a bunch of our beef stuff. Looks like Rod must of bumped into them while they were making the gather.”

  John Ranger stepped from his office to the porch. He carried a rifle in his hand. “Hustle up the mounts, Buck,” he ordered. “We want to get started.”

  “You are taking out after the men who killed Rod?” his daughter asked after she had joined him.

  “Yes. The boys are notifying the neighbors. We’re meeting at Blunt’s.”

  “Buck says you don’t know who did it.”

  “We think it was Scarface and his gang. They were seen last night in the valley.”

  “You’ll be careful, Father.”

  Ranger was a large hard-muscled man who looked able to take care of himself. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Those scoundrels aren’t fighting. They are running.”

  “Is there anything I can do, Father?”

  “Not a thing, honey. It’s a bad business. They must have shot Rod so he couldn’t tell who they were.”

  Five minutes later the owner of the J R and three of his men cantered down the road, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.

  Though still under nineteen, Sandra had managed the house since the death of her mother two years before. Her slim body looked slight, but there was in her a toughness of fiber given by life on the frontier and the responsibilities it had thrust upon her. The death of Rod shocked her, yet she did not let it interfere with the work of the house. By the time she had changed the bed linen and swept the rooms Jim Budd had dinner ready.

  “When do we start for the store?” Nelson asked her as he finished a second helping of rice pudding.

  “As soon as you have hitched up Chance to the buggy,” she told him. “I promised to stop and see Elvira on my way back.”

  “Good. Mebbe we’ll hear at Blunt’s whether they have caught the rustlers.”

  They took the short cut through the brush, following a trail just wide enough for the buggy. Shoots of mesquite and cactus slapped at the wheels. The girl had chosen this road to escape the clouds of yellow dust that travel on the main highway would stir up.

  Chance was a short-coupled, round-bellied buckskin with no ambition to break records. He preferred to walk, but when Nelson tickled his flank with the whip he would reluctantly break into a slow trot.

  At Bitter Wells they met a horseman, Miguel Torres, a middle-aged Mexican who owned a ranch in the vicinity. He had been their neighbor ever since they could remember, and Nelson pulled up to exchange news of the pursuit of the rustlers.

  The road dipped to the flats, and for the next mile they moved along a jungle of cholla, prickly pear, and occasional huisaches. Cattle runs cut through here and there. Once they crossed a dry wash of burning sand over which heat shimmered.

  Four Mexicans rode out of the brush and drew up on the road in front of them, evidently to discuss the direction they wanted to follow. They wore the tight trousers, sombreros, and short decorated vests of vaqueros in their native land. One of them caught sight of the buggy and raised a shout.

  Sandra did not know the men, but at first she was not at all alarmed. She had been brought up in a land where there were many Mexicans, and she Knew them for a gentle friendly race. These riders were armed with rifles. It occurred to her they might be a detachment looking for the rustlers.

  They pounded toward the buggy at a gallop and dragged their mounts to a halt.

  “Oho!” one of them cried in Spanish. “We have flushed a plump little quail in the desert.”

  Both Sandra and her brother were frightened. These men were a villainous-looking lot, and their mocking laughter was not reassuring.

  “What do you want?” Nelson demanded. “John Ranger is our father. Please get out of the road and let us go on.”

  “So you are children of the great John Ranger,” a bearded ruffian said. “That is good. Pablo will like that. He will keep you for hostages.”

  It came to Sandra that he meant Pablo Lopez, the notorious bandit whose name was a terror to the border. He lived in Sonora, but several times his band had swept into Arizona to burn and pillage ranches and to drive cattle across the line.

  “If you will let us go my father will pay you anything you ask,” Sandra promised.

  “Si, señorita, he will pay, but we will not let you go.”

  Nelson let out a cry for help. Fear choked up in his throat. Pablo Lopez was a villain without conscience, and it was a pleasure to him to kill gringos. He recruited his band from the riff-raff of the border, and he preyed on his own race too.

  “Come, little quail,” the bearded ruffian jeered, still in Spanish. “Come to the loving arms of Pedro.”

  He reached forward, and his hands closed around the waist of the girl. Nelson struck at him with the whip. Another outlaw brought the barrel of a forty-five down on the boy’s head. Though Sandra struggled, she was dragged across the wheel of the buggy. Her fingers clawed at the dirty brown face of her captor.

  “Que diablo!” he cried, pinioning her wrists with the fingers of one hand. “This is no quail, but a hawk. Be still, chiquita, or Pedro will slap that pretty face.”

  She screamed, with no real hope that any friend might hear. Miles of desert lay between her and any who might come to the rescue.

  Sandra was held close to the thick body of the bearded outlaw, face toward him. Vainly she tried to wriggle out of his encircling arm, then with unexpected suddenness stopped fighting. Over the man’s shoulder she had seen a horseman at the top of the rise from which the buggy had just descended.

  For an instant the newcomer sat there, silhouetted against the horizon, a lean long-bodied fellow with a rifle in his hands. His horse jumped to a gallop, and he charged down the s
lope. Sandra had no time to guess who he was or why he was coming. She was too absorbed to breathe. It was afterward that she likened that headlong rush to the flight of an avenging angel.

  2. A Tough Hombre Trapped

  OUT OF A GASH IN THE HILLS TWO MEN RODE WARILY TO THE edge of the mesa and searched with their eyes the torn valley below. Seen from above, its floor was as wrinkled as a crumpled sheet of brown wrapping paper. The surface was scarred by lomas, washes, and arroyos running down from the bench back of it.

  A brazen sun beat down on baked terrain sown with cactus and greasewood. In this harsh desiccated region the struggle to live was continuous. Vegetation was tough, with clutching claws. Reptiles carried their defensive poison. The animals that at rare moments flitted through the brush were fierce and furtive.

  But no more savage than the men whose gaze squinted up and down the basin at their feet. The skin of the cholla was less tough than theirs. When cornered they could strike with the swift deadliness of the sidewinder. Across their saddles rifles lay ready for instant use. The butts of revolvers projected from the pockets attached to the shiny leather chaps they wore. Into every fold and wrinkle of their clothes the dust of long travel had filtered.

  “Filled with absentees, looks like,” one of them drawled.

  His companion added dryly, “I hope.”

  The first speaker, a long dark man with a scar across his left cheek from ear to chin, lifted a hand in signal. Cattle dribbled out of the cut through which they had just come, pushed forward by a heavy-set squat man bringing up the drag. The animals moved wearily. It was plain they had been driven far and hard. The bawling of the beasts for water was almost incessant.

  Anxiously the scarfaced man slanted a look at the westering sun. “Come dark we’ll be in the clear—if night ever gets here. Once we reach the pass they’ll never find us.”

  “Likely we had a long head start.” The squat man’s glance swept the valley slowly. In the tangled panorama below him he could see no sign of human life. “No use gettin’ goosey, I reckon. Loan me a chaw, Sim.”

  Sim was the oldest of the three and the smallest, with a face as seamed as a dried-up winter apple. He drew a plug of tobacco from his hip pocket and threw it across to the other and watched the sharp teeth at work. “You don’t have to eat the whole plug,” he remonstrated. “If I was you, Chunk, I’d buy me two bits worth of chewing some time and see how my own tobacco tasted.”

  They turned the leaders into a draw that dropped down to the valley and presently the herd was in motion again. A cloud of fine dust, stirred by the tramping feet, rose into the air and marked their progress. The cattle smelled water and began to hurry. Scarface tried to check them, fearing a stampede, but the cattle pounded past him on a run. They tore down to the creek, which was dry except for half a dozen large pools, and crowded into the water. Those in the rear fought to get forward, while the leaders held stubbornly to the water until they had drunk their fill. The herders had their hands full moving the watered stock out of the way to make place for the thirsty steers.

  They were getting the last of the cattle out of the bed of the creek when Chunk looked up and gave a shout of warning. Four armed men had just topped a knoll two hundred yards away and were coming up the valley toward them. The heavy-set man whirled his cowpony and jumped it to a gallop. Scarface took his dust not a dozen yards in the rear. It took Sim a moment to understand what was spurring his companions to flight. He was on the side of the herd nearest the approaching riders, and he lost more time circling the closely packed cattle.

  A voice called to him to halt, but Sim had urgent business elsewhere. He stooped low in the saddle, his quirt flogging the buckskin he rode. The crack of a Winchester sounded, then another. The body of the little man sank lower. He clutched at the horn of the saddle. His head slid along the shoulder of his mount toward the ground. As he plunged downward, the fingers of his hand relaxed their grip on the horn.

  Three of the pursuers went past him without stopping, the fourth pulled up and swung from the saddle. The body of the little man lay face down in the sand. He turned it over. Though the lips of the rustler were bloodless and his face grey, he was still alive. He recognized John Ranger, the man at his side.

  “Who got you into this mess, Sim?” the cattleman asked.

  The outlaw shook his head. His voice was low and faint. “You’ve killed me. Ain’t that enough?” he murmured.

  They were his last words. He shut his eyes. A moment later his body relaxed and seemed to sink into itself.

  Rustlers and cowmen had disappeared over a rise, but to Ranger had come the sound of shots, four or five of them, the last one fainter as the distance increased. He remounted and rode after his friends. The reason why the thieves had fled without a fight was clear to him. They were not so much afraid of a battle as of having their identity discovered. A rustler caught in the act had either to get out of the country or be killed. Since these fellows were not ready to leave they had to avoid recognition.

  Near the end of the valley Ranger pulled up, uncertain whether the riders had ridden to the right or the left of the great rock which rose like a giant flatiron to separate the two cañons running out of the flats to the hills beyond. A rifle boomed again, far above him to the left. The explosion told him which gulch to follow. Before he reached the scene of action he heard other shots.

  The cañon opened into a small park hemmed in by a rock wall, at the foot of which was a boulder field. In one swift glance Ranger’s eyes picked up his companions. Two of them were crouched behind cottonwoods and the third back of a fallen log, all watching the rock pile lying close to the cliff.

  “Got a coon treed, Pete?” Ranger asked.

  “Y’betcha. He’s skulking in the rocks.” The voice of the speaker was flat and venomous, his foxlike face sour and bitter. Peter McNulty was his name. He ran a small spread up by Double Fork. “Darned fool hasn’t anything but a six-gun. We’ll smoke him out soon.”

  The man behind another cottonwood had a suggestion. “Can’t get at him from here, John. How about you riding up the gully and potting him from the bluff? He’ll have to throw in his hand then.”

  “All right, Russ. The fellow you knocked off his horse down below has cashed in. He was old Sim Jones.”

  Russell Hart frowned. He was a quiet and responsible cattleman. It gave him no pleasure to know that he had killed a man, and particularly as inoffensive a man as Sim Jones. Wryly, by inference at least, he justified himself. “That’s what bad company does for a man,” he said. “If he hadn’t thrown in with Scarface he would have gone straight enough. Sim was trifling, but there was no harm in him.”

  Ranger swung his horse round and guided it into a sunken channel that had been cut by floods from the ridge above to the park. At the summit he dismounted and tied the pony, then moved forward cautiously to the edge of the precipice. The trapped man was kneeling back of a boulder, revolver in hand. Other rocks protected his flanks.

  The cattleman took careful aim and fired at the flat plane of one of the rocks. Startled at this attack from the air, the man below looked up. The face turned toward Ranger was bearded but young.

  “Throw up your hands and walk out of there,” ordered Ranger.

  The man with the revolver knew he was beaten. His forty-five would not carry accurately to any of his foes. Ranger was quite safe on the bluff, but from where he stood he could send bullets tearing into the body of the other.

  “What’s all the shooting about?” demanded the stranger. “Why should you fellows jump me when I’m riding peaceably about my business?”

  “Don’t talk. Drop that gun and get going.”

  “All right. Call off yore wolves and I’ll go out.”

  Ranger shouted to the others that the fellow in the rocks was surrendering. Hands up, the man walked out from the boulder field. Two rifles covered him as he moved forward. When he was eight or ten paces from the men carrying them he dropped his arms. He was a slim young fello
w, coffee brown, in cowboy boots, levis, and well-worn Stetson. His blue-grey eyes were hard and frosty. In his motions there was a catlike litheness. The muscles of his legs and shoulders rippled like those of a panther.

  “I’ll listen to yore apologies,” he drawled.

  Pete McNulty tittered, his small eyes gloating. “He’s gettin’ fixed to saw off a whopper on us. I’ll bet it’s good.”

  “What is this—a sheriff’s posse?” The prisoner snapped.

  “If any questions are necessary, we’ll ask them,” Hart answered harshly. He did not like the job they had agreed to do, and he was hardening his heart to it.

  The man in levis was a stranger to them, but that meant nothing. Drifters came and went. That Scarface had picked up some scalawag on the dodge to help on the raid was very likely.

  “I think we finish this now.” The man who had been behind the log shuffled around the end of it and joined the others. He moved ponderously, his short heavy legs supporting an enormous torso. Leathery folds hung loose on cheek and jaw. His deepset, peering little eyes looked shortsighted. Altogether, he resembled a rhinoceros. Though his name was Hans Uhlmann, his intimates called him Rhino. “Nice and quick, then get started with the cattle.”

  The cornered man tightened his stomach muscles. He braced himself to meet what might be coming, deep-set eyes fierce as those of a trapped wolf. For he knew Uhlmann of old, and that knowledge set a passionate hatred churning in his heart. He owed the man a deep and lasting grudge, one he had waited long years to satisfy. That the ranchman did not recognize him was understandable. The big man had seen him last a pink-cheeked boy of nineteen, smooth-faced, thin as a rail. Now he was bearded. His body had filled out. The bitter intervening years had etched harsh lines in his face, given it an edge of lean sternness. Even a casual observer could not have missed the steely hardness, the defiant challenge of one at war with the world.

  “You’ve made a mistake,” he said. “I’m not the man you want.”

  Uhlmann showed bad teeth in a cruel grin. “You’re the man we’ll hang. Right now. Do the job and get on our way.”