Maverick Showdown (9 page)

The following afternoon, before the inquest, Slade and the sheriff talked together in the office.

“Just how did you catch on to what that sidewinder was up to?” Carter asked apropos of the dead drygulcher.

“I just sort of played a hunch,” Slade explained. “I got suspicious of him while he was walking in front of us, for he made a couple of the little slips his brand always seems to make. I saw him turn his head slightly to glance back at us. After which he slowed his pace a little, and his hand sort of dropped toward his holster. I hadn’t the slightest idea what he might have in mind, although it wouldn’t have surprised me much if he’d spun around to make a try — which would have been all right with me.”

“Yes, I imagine it would,” Carter observed dryly. “Go on.”

“When he entered the Open Door, I still didn’t know what he could possibly be up to,” Slade resumed. “But, as I said, I was wondering about him and prepared for anything. So when he ran out, gun in hand, I was all set and knew exactly what I was going to do. The luck broke for me and everything turned out okay.”

The sheriff gave vent to a derisive snort and repeated his favorite exclamation, resignedly, “I don’t know how you do it! I don’t know how you do it!”

“Well, I’ve been with the Rangers quite a while and am still alive, am I not?” Slade pointed out. “With that outfit you either learn or you don’t live very long.”

“And I reckon you ain’t got anything more to learn,” said Carter.

“When a man gets to feeling that way about himself, he’s on the downgrade and looking for trouble,” Slade replied. “There’s always something new, always something to be learned. The important thing is to correlate past experiences with possible future developments.”

“I guess so, whatever the devil that means,” grunted the sheriff. “Well, here come Jerry and old Keith, with Griswold and his wind spiders taggin’ along behind.

“How’s everything?” he asked as Jerry and her uncle entered.

“I’m hungry,” Jerry replied plaintively. “I didn’t have time for breakfast.”

“What did I tell you — last night?” Slade pointed out.

“Can I help it if I like to — sleep, too?” Jerry retorted. “Lots happened since — last night.”

“Hmmm!” said the sheriff.

The arrival of Griswold and his hands put an end to a conversation that was threatening to become interesting.

Quite a few people dropped in to view the dead drygulcher, without results, and there were plenty present from whom to select a coroner’s jury when Doc McChesney was ready for business. The jury’s closing admonition was to plant the horned toad and forget him.

“I want to eat,” Jerry insisted.

“All right, all right,” Slade replied. “We’ll go see what Swivel-eye has for you.”

Swivel-eye had plenty and proceeded without delay to produce it.

“Nice to be hungry, that is when there’s plenty to eat,” Jerry said, calling for a final cup of coffee, in which Slade joined her.

“Now what?” she asked. “Going to take me to the Washout again tonight?”

“I suppose you won’t be happy if I don’t,” Slade replied. “But I’m beginning to think of you what Sheriff Carter said about me, that trouble just naturally follows you around.”

“I don’t mind nice trouble,” Jerry retorted blithely, with a reminiscent giggle.

“I think I’ll go over to the hotel and freshen up a bit,” she added.

“And I think you’d better knock off a little more sleep,” Slade advised. “Your eyes look heavy.”

“Heavy, heavy hangs over your head!” she quoted gaily, with another giggle, and trotted out.

Left to himself, Slade ordered more coffee, and settled down to some hard thinking,
El Halcon
style. He was experiencing an uneasy premonition that somewhere trouble was in the making. The outlaws had not had much luck of late and would very likely be out to recoup losses. Could he anticipate what and where their next move would be, he might greatly profit thereby. Racking his brains over the matter, he endeavored, in his
El Halcon
manner, to put himself in their place and react accordingly.

This was one of the reasons for Walt Slade’s outstanding success as a Texas Ranger. He could think as the outlaws thought and as they, correlate the thought with the possible deed.

Finally he gave it up for the time being, left the saloon and spent a good part of the evening wandering about the town, visiting with businessmen and others. He dropped in at the Open Door before returning to the Trail End, where Jerry would be waiting. Erskin Frayne was conspicuous by his absence.

“Nope, ain’t got back yet,” said the bartender. “Stayin’ away longer than usual this time. Between you and me, I’ve a notion he’s about fed up with this business and might like to get back to ranching, maybe. Ain’t his usual self of late. Grouchy, flies off the handle easy, and seems worried, although the business is sure doing all right. Yep, I got a feeling he’ll sell and pull out soon, if he can find the right sort of a buyer.”

Slade was rather inclined to think so, too. He made his way back to the Trail End, thinking deeply.

He and Jerry again visited the Washout that night, but not for too long, old Keith wishing to get an early start back to his spread the following morning.

The following morning, after he said goodbye to Jerry and old Keith and promised to visit their
casa
soon, found Slade still wrestling with the problem which confronted him, that of corralling the elusive outlaw bunch. And at almost that minute, the outlaws were very busy men indeed.

Shanghai Pierce, fabulously wealthy and legendary cattleman, was famous for, among a great many other things, the carrying of a large sum of money in his chuck wagon, in silver dollars. It was said of the wagon that its approach while still a mile distant, could be heard by the jingling of the coins. Old Shang bought cows wherever he could strike a bargain and maintained, rightly, that the jingling had a salutary effect on gents who had stock they wished to dispose of. Cash on the barrel head, in “hard” money,
was
attractive.

But when it came to packing money in his wagon, Pierce didn’t have much on Burke Lambert, another rancher and cattle buyer not so wealthy but far from poverty stricken, who operated in the Texas Panhandle and southern Oklahoma.

However, Lambert’s
dinero
didn’t jingle, it rustled, for Lambert preferred paper money. Like Pierce, he had gotten his start when he was young, many years before, by corralling mavericks — unbranded cows — along the Gulf Coast and had later moved to the Panhandle.

Like Pierce, Lambert took no chances with his money wagon. Always in attendance were four or five of his salty cowhands, watchful, alert, and armed to the teeth. The elderly driver, beside whom Lambert sat, was also heeled, and Lambert himself packed a hogleg in a shoulder holster beneath his shabby black coat.

Thirty-some miles southeast of Dalhart, the railroad town, the trail along which the wagon was rolling wound into a stretch of country broken by ravines and gulches, some dry, some with little creeks twisting toward the Canadian River, with occasional low cliffs overhanging the trail. Lambert hoped to make it to Amarillo by nightfall or shortly after, where he had business.

A hundred yards or so ahead of the wagon loomed one of the cliffs, its cracked and seamed overhang shadowing the trail.

Suddenly there was a dull boom, a rending and splintering. A huge mass of the overhang rushed down to strike the trail with a terrific crash.

The horses pranced and snorted, the cowboys yelped with astonishment and alarm as the equipage came to a halt.

“Now what in blazes caused that rock to bust loose?” one demanded.

“Maybe the vibration of the wagon on the trail caused it,” another said. “Them cliffs are always all cracked up by frost and thaws.”

“See if we can get around that mess,” Lambert called from the wagon. The cowhands rode forward, all eyes were fixed on the heap of stone.

From the brush that lined the trail burst a roar of gunfire, volley after thundering volley. Lambert fell dead at the first blast, as did two of the cowboys. The remaining two turned to fight back, but there was nothing to be seen to shoot at, only the fog of powder smoke drifting up from the brush. Another volley, and they, too, went down, riddled with bullets.

The wagon driver’s head was creased by a slug. Blood poured to visor his face and neck with scarlet. He fell in a crumpled heap against the dashboard and lay motionless. He wasn’t dead, not even unconscious; the bullet had just cut a furrow along his scalp. But he knew his only hope to survive was to play possum, which he proceeded to do, hardly daring to breathe.

From the brush rode three masked horsemen. With little more than a glance at the men they had murdered, they dismounted, swarmed into the wagon, and quickly looted it of its money content. Swinging to the ground, they secured their horses. One glanced up at the shattered cliff crest, over which a head was peering.

“Okay, let’s go!” he shouted in a deep and sonorous voice. The head vanished. The three rode southeast at a fast pace.

The wounded driver made sure they were not coming back. He scrambled from the wagon, easily caught one of the dead cowhands’ horses, and set out for Dalhart, urging his mount to greater speed. Finally he reached the railroad town and gabbled his story of what had happened. A posse set out for the scene of robbery and murder. The telegraph wires hummed with detailed messages sent in every direction.

One was sent to Sheriff Carter, on the chance the killers might head for the Canadian River Valley, in his county. He at once got in touch with Walt Slade.

“Poor old Lambert,” he remarked. “He was sort of a skinflint and drove a sharp bargain whenever he could but he hadn’t ought to been done in like that.”

Slade nodded agreement and didn’t comment.

“Well, it happened out of my county, and I reckon there’s nothing we can do about it,” Carter added.

Slade nodded again, but still didn’t speak, his black brows drawing together until the concentration furrow was deep between them.

“Figure it was our bunch of sidewinders?” the sheriff asked.

“Definitely,” Slade replied. “Has all the earmarks of one of their capers. So far as I can gather from the message, there was one man on top of the cliff, all set to blow the overhang with a dynamite charge when the wagon appeared, which he did. The other three were holed up waiting until the attention of all hands was focused on the rock fall. Poor devils never had a chance.”

He rolled a cigarette and sat gazing out the window. In his mind a plan was building up, an extremely hazardous plan he had to admit. But he was in a reckless mood and bitterly incensed by the bloody doings of the murderous devils. He’d take a chance on once and for all putting an end to their robbings and killings. He believed the plan might work. Yes, he’d take a chance.

He said nothing to the sheriff relative to what he intended to do. If he couldn’t handle it alone, it couldn’t be handled. A posse could not hope to assemble in the vicinity of the old plaza and escape detection. Whereas he believed that he himself could do so. Anyhow he was determined to take a chance and endeavor to put the plan in operation. He pinched out his cigarette and stood up.

“Going out for a little amble and to do a mite of thinking,” he announced.

The sheriff looked somewhat suspicious, but asked no questions, knowing well that the Ranger was in no mood to be catechized.

“Okay, but watch your step,” was all he said.

“I will,” Slade promised.

He sauntered away from the office, but once he was around the corner, he quickened his pace and headed for Shadow’s stable, where he cinched up with speed and rode out of town by way of Filmore Street.

“Feller,” he told the horse, “I’m gambling that those devils won’t try to make it to the valley during daylight but will hole up in the broken ground to the north until it’s dark. If I’m guessing right, we may be able to do a little business before the night is over. Odds of four to one against us, but we should have the advantage of position and surprise, both important.”

Estimating the distance he had to cover and the distance the outlaws had to cover, he believed he had time to make it. Glancing up at thinly overcast sky, through which moonlight was filtering, to remarked to Shadow:

“If that cloud bank will just behave as it should, I think we’ll be all set. Anyhow, we’re going to make a try at it and see what happens. June along, horse, we got things to do.”

Shadow responded and the miles flowed back. In good time they reached the descent into the valley, which they negotiated without mishap, and continued westward through the wan light.

At the last straggle of growth, some distance from the old plaza, Slade drew rein and for some time sat studying the deserted village. There was no sign of life apparent and he felt sure the outlaws had not yet put in an appearance. Soon, however, he would know if his hunch were a straight one or whether he had embarked on a loco wild goose chase. For up to the moment he had no guarantee that the owlhoots would return to the plaza They might very well have headed for Tascosa, or even Amarillo. Well, he would eventually learn, one way or the other. He continued to study he plaza for another moment or two, especially the environs of the cabin he felt pretty sure the outlaws were occupying.

In the course of his previous passing of the village, he had noted that close to the half-dug reservoir was a tall mound of dark earth. Against its gloomy façade he was confident he could not be seen by the outlaws, while he would be able to plainly see them as they turned into the path which led to the cabin in question. He dismounted, eased Shadow into the growth, and stole forward on foot, peering and listening, with increasing confidence that he had arrived at the plaza first. That is if the devils were really headed in this direction.

Without incident he reached the mound close to the edge of the reservoir, which was somewhat more than half full of rain water, and took up his post to watch and wait.

It proved to be a rather long and tiresome wait and he was beginning to uneasily wonder if his conclusions as to the outlaws’ destination might be completely off the beam.

And then his keen ears caught a sound, the soft pad of horses’ hoofs coming from the northwest, from where he knew was a way to enter the valley from the north. He loosened his guns in their sheaths and stood tense and ready.

Louder and louder grew the beat of hoofs. Another moment and the shapes of four horsemen loomed, clearly outlined in the still, dim moonlight which had brightened a bit in the past few minutes.

He waited until the horsemen had turned into the path that approached the cabin. His voice rang out, edged with steel:

“Halt! Get your hands up! You’re covered and if you make a move we’ll do for all of you! Up, I say, in the name of the State of Texas!”

A buzz of startled exclamations echoed his words. The outlaws jerked their mounts to a halt and stared in the direction of the sound. As Slade anticipated, they heard his voice clearly enough, but could not see from whence it came. They began to slowly raise their hands. Looked like he had won, without firing a shot, for the devils knew well that if a posse was holed up out of sight there in the shadows, to resist would be to commit suicide.

And then the contrary cloud bank took a hand. It abruptly shredded away from the face of the moon. A funnel of silvery light poured down, revealing to the owlhoots that but a single man faced them. They went for their guns. The air rocked and quivered to the boom of the reports as
El Halcon
, weaving, ducking, dodging, answered them shot for shot.

A man toppled from the saddle to lie motionless. Another lurched forward but kept his seat. Slade leaped back a step — and vanished from the outlaws’ sight!

Vanished, too, his hope of corralling the bunch as he hit the water of the half-full reservoir with a tremendous splash. He went under, broke surface, sputtering and gasping, still clinging to his guns. His feet touched bottom and he surged erect, the water reaching to but a little above his waist. To his ears came the beat of hoofs fading westward. He lunged forward, tried to climb the steep bank, slipped, and fell back into the water.

Again he regained his feet, muttering a Yaqui curse, for he could think of nothing in English appropriate to the occasion, and tackled the bank. Halfway up it, he slipped again, and once more slid back into the water.

A third attempt and a drenched, mud-bespattered, and thoroughly disgusted Ranger crawled from the reservoir and stood up, glaring about.

The dead outlaw’s tired horse stood beside his body with hanging head. The creature was thoroughly worn out and must have food and rest before the long drag to Amarillo. A glance at the dead owlhoot assured him he was not the man he most desired to see in that position, which he had anticipated.

Slade was convinced the three owlhoots, one wounded, would not return. He fervently hoped they would; a little action of the right sort would tend to soothe his injured feelings. He whistled a loud note and in a few minutes Shadow came trotting to him, giving the appearance of being amused by the whole ludicrous episode.

“Oh, you needn’t be so smug,” Slade told him. “You didn’t do anything to help. Stay where you are till I get the lowdown on things.”

In a mood reckless of possible consequences, he entered the cabin, the door of which was shut but not locked. He struck a match, spied a bracket lamp, and touched the flame to the wick. Hanging from a peg was a lantern. He secured and lighted it, left the cabin and explored behind the adobe.

As he expected, there was a commodious lean-to built against the rear wall of the shack. There were mangers and sacks of oats and other feed. He secured both horses, led them to the lean-to and removed the rigs, filled the mangers with feed and, leaving them to munch in comfort, returned to the cabin.

He did take the precaution of draping a blanket from one of the several bunks over the single window. Did anybody wish to enter by way of the door, let them; he’d be ready. He emptied his boots of water, wrung as much as possible from his soaked clothing and replaced the spent shells in his guns with fresh cartridges.

“At this rate, I’ll start growing fins,” he growled. “I’m spending more time in the water than out of it. Now let’s see.”

The single-room cabin showed evidence of comfortable tenancy. There were a table, chairs, bunks built along the walls, and a stone fireplace, with fuel ready to hand. As an added precaution, he wedged a chair under the door knob so that nobody could enter without making a heck of a racket. Then he kindled a good fire to dry out by.

There were provisions on shelves, so he quickly threw together a surrounding, which he washed down with cups of steaming coffee. Then he sat before the fire to smoke and review the debacle that thwarted his hope of corralling the outlaw bunch. With their hands in the air and their backs to him, he believed he could have kept the situation under control. But that loco backward step that dunked him in the reservoir had proved his undoing.

Oh, well, perhaps it was for the best. Even after downing one of the devils, the odds were three-to-one against him, and those slugs were coming uncomfortably close.

And after all, the blasted cloud bank was the real culprit, thinning out as it did at the most inopportune moment. And he had at least managed to do for one of the sidewinders, and given another something to remember him by. So why bother too much; things would eventually work out; they always did. He settled himself more comfortably, after replenishing the fire, and proceeded to dry out while the cayuses put away their helpin’ and rested.

It was well along toward morning when he cinched up and secured the outlaw’s body to the saddle of the horse he had ridden in life. He wasted hardly a glance on the fellow, an average-appearing specimen, for he was positive as to the identity of his man, and his followers, or whom they might have associated with, were of little consequence any more. All he had to do was drop a loop on that elusive hombre.

“Uh-huh, that’s all,” he told Shadow. “But it still poses something of a chore.”

As an afterthought, he explored the fellow’s saddle pouch, discovering quite a large sum of money, doubtless a portion of the loot from Lambert’s wagon. He didn’t bother to count it; the sheriff could take care of that.

With a final cautious look around, although he considered there was scant chance of anything to fear, he left the valley and headed for Amarillo, still in very much of a disgruntled mood. But as the sun rose in a clear sky and the air became warm and pleasant, his temper improved and he managed to chuckle over the whole bizarre affair.

When he finally reached the sheriff’s office, without misadventure, Carter didn’t chuckle; he swore.

“Another nice quiet ride, eh?” he snorted. “And see you brought a souvenir along, per usual. You’re the limit! Okay, let’s hear about it.”

The sheriff did chuckle a little after receiving all the details.

“Would have been worth a long night’s ride to see you land in that puddle,” he said. “The great
El Halcon
joinin’ the fish gang! Well, it may have been for the best. Got a notion your pet devil who goes along with you gave you a little shove to keep you from eatin’ lead. Let’s see, now.”

He counted the money in the saddle pouch and clucked in his throat with satisfaction.

“Quite a passel of
dinero
here,” he said. “Reckon they divided it four ways. And here’s some more from his pockets. Uh-huh, quite a nice haul. You didn’t do so bad. And doing for this wind spider was okay, too. You’re sure thinnin’ ’em out. Got any notion yet as to who’s the he-wolf of the pack?”

“I have,” Slade replied.

“Who?” the sheriff asked.

“Erskin Frayne, the Open Door owner,” Slade replied quietly. The sheriff stared.

• • •

“Erskin Frayne!” he repeated. “Say, you haven’t been eatin’ loco weed, have you? Do you really mean it?”

“I do,” Slade answered. “Erskin Frayne is the leader of the outlaw bunch, only he hasn’t much of a bunch left; only a couple, one with a punctured hide, I’d say.”

“Will you please tell me how you figure it?” Carter begged.

Slade prefaced his explanation with a résumé of Erskin Frayne’s ruminations anent the geological peculiarities of the Canadian River Valley.

“And right there is where Frayne made his big slip,” he concluded.

“How?” the sheriff asked.

“As I remarked to myself at the time, it was a case of the guilty ‘fleeing when no man pursueth,’” Slade answered. “What he spouted was sheer nonsense, but it displayed a technical knowledge of such matters that was unusual, to put it mildly. The knowledge one would expect from an engineer or scientist, certainly not from a saloonkeeper or cowman.”

“And why did he do it?”

“Because he was worried about the map of the Tascosa Trail, which he deduced we must have found when we searched the body of his follower,” Slade replied. “He was endeavoring to learn if I was able to read the map aright, which the frustration of the attempted robbery of the Tascosa stage appeared to indicate. In my opinion, he believed if I did have such knowledge, I would be inclined to challenge his statements comparing the valley to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. I didn’t, and I think I fooled him, although I’m not positive. Further developments appeared to indicate that I did.”

“And he was scairt that if you did have such knowledge, the map might tie him up with the robbery try,” the sheriff shrewdly guessed.

“Exactly,” Slade agreed. “He would know that I would be endeavoring to learn who drew the map and by a process of elimination might pin it on him. If he’d kept his mouth shut, it is probable I would not have. At the time, I was merely a mite curious about him, but as I said, by talking too much he gave the whole thing away. I was already puzzled a little over his knowledge of the Tucumcari Desert and its peculiarities, hardly to be expected from an Arizonian who gave the impression he had never before been in this section. I was pretty well convinced that he had been in the section, but preferred not to admit it. Chances are he was here looking over possible prospects, considered them good and decided to settle here and ply his trade, which is
not
the saloon business, an excellent cover-up, by the way, that puts him in a position to learn things not given out for general consumption, such as the shipment by wagon of the money from Tascosa to the Amarillo bank, with the stage going ahead of the wagon as a decoy.”

“Is there anything you don’t notice?” grunted the sheriff. Slade neither affirmed nor denied.

“And then little things to which I hadn’t given much thought began tying up,” he resumed. “Frayne was always absent from town when something off-color was pulled, but very much in evidence when an attempt was made to rub me out of the picture. And his method of operating, unusual, to say the least — evincing unexpected ingenuity and imagination, like establishing his men in the valley as honest farmers, and turning the body of the murdered valley dweller into a detonation bomb; and, yesterday, blowing down a cliff overhang to distract the attention of Lambert’s wagon guards. Things that would never occur to a brush-popping owlhoot, whose methods would be direct. Set me combing the town for somebody who would be likely to possess such attributes, with Frayne as the most likely suspect.

“So there you have it, all purest conjecture on my part, although I’m personally convinced I am right. Not a thing against
amigo
Frayne that would stand up in court. I have never gotten a look at his face in the course of the commission of an unlawful act, and it seems nobody else has, either. So it looks like we’ll have to catch him dead to rights.”

The sheriff indulged in another of his favorite remarks:

“Just a matter of time, just a matter of time. But it looks like, with nearly all his bunch cleaned out, he’s not in much of a position to pull something.”

“Three desperate men can do plenty,” Slade differed. “Some of the worst almost always worked alone. John Wesley Hardin did, for example, with more than twenty murdered men to his discredit. Sam Bass was another, and I could name more. Of course a leader like Frayne can always get replacements, especially in such a section as this, if he is of a mind to. But somehow I feel he won’t. I expect the bunch he brought here with him were associates of long standing, upon whom he felt he could depend. So he may hesitate to bring in others of whom he is not sure. There’s always the chance he may decide to pull out, but with his kind there is a matter of pride involved. He would feel he was being run out, which wouldn’t set well with him. Our most important chore right now is to try and anticipate what he is planning. To do so may prevent some more killings. The mass slaughter of Lambert and his men shows what he’s capable of.”

“A snake-blooded devil for fair,” growled Carter.

“Yes, the intelligent, educated, and cultured are ofttimes the worst,” Slade agreed. “Hardin was a school teacher, Doc Holliday a dentist and a college man, John Ringo outstanding and a scholar. Well, I’m going to care for my critters and then go to bed; was a rather busy night. Be seeing you later.”