*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76804 ***



                            WANTED--?

                       By EUGENE CUNNINGHAM

   Author of “Beginners’ Luck,” “The Hermit of Tigerhead Butte,” etc.

	A bullet six inches from his head warned Ware’s Kid that
	he was “warmer” in his search for the killer of Eph Carson,
	but even then he did not suspect how soon he was to reach
	the surprising end of the long trail.


Ware’s Kid jogged into Dallas, coming from Austin pursuant to special
orders of the adjutant general, which covered the proposed capture or
burial of one Dell Spreen, who was charged with murder and robbery down
El Paso way.

Horsemen passed him; farmers in wagons with their families about them.
All gave the smallish figure on the black stallion a more than usually
curious glance. He was dressed like a Mexican dandy--a huge black
sombrero, heavy with silver bullion, shading a lean brown face and
sun-narrowed gray-green eyes; a waist-length jumper of soft tanned
goatskin, fringed from shoulder to elbow and with a bouquet of scarlet
roses embroidered upon the back; _pantalones_ of blue, with rows of
twinkling silver buttons on each side of the crimson insert in the outer
seam. Some of those who passed him would have instantly recognized his
name. For he had wiped out Black Alec Rawles’s gang two years before and
so had marked his entry into the Rangers. The tale was a classic over a
wide land.

But the crowd passed on unwittingly. For his white-handled Colt hung
awkwardly high upon his belt and the canny readiness of sleek, brown
Winchester stock to his hand was not readily apparent. Too, he was
obviously no more than eighteen or nineteen years old.

On the main street Ware’s Kid pulled up, this time to stare broodingly
up the shallow canyon of brick and wooden buildings, almost as if he
expected to see Dell Spreen--a small, deadly figure of smooth, fierce
brown face and murderous black eyes--step from a doorway.

A drowsy idler upon a saloon porch, leaning comfortably against a post
with feet in the dust of the street, promised information. Ware’s Kid
spurred over and at sound of the stallion’s feet the lank one opened his
eyes lazily.

“Sher’ff’s office?” inquired Ware’s Kid politely.

“Git to hell out o’ here an’ find out, if you-all’s so cur’us!” snarled
the loafer.

“Sher’ff’s office?” repeated Ware’s Kid.

Finding icy greenish eyes boring into his face, eyes lit by an uncanny
electric sparkling, the loafer sat suddenly stiff-backed.

“’Scuse _me_!” he cried shakily. “But I--I shore thought you-all was a
greaser! Yo’ clothes an’ yo’--yo’----”

Ware’s Kid ignored the profuse flow of apologies. Having received his
directions, he rode on. The lounger mopped damp brow with a sleeve and
peered after the tall black and its small rider.

“Gawd! He’s a mean n’, I bet you!” he said. “Gent what packs a
six-shooter, but reaches fer his carbeen when he’s riled--I bet you he’s
a wolf!”

Ware’s Kid swung down before the sheriff’s office and hitched the
stallion to a splintered post. With carbine cuddled in his arm, he
crossed to stand in the doorway of the office. His roving eyes made out,
in the duskiest corner, a small figure squatting against the wall.

Ware’s Kid went inside. The squatting one was a boy of fifteen,
barefooted, in faded overalls, gingham shirt, and ragged hat upon towy
hair. His round eyes were of the palest blue and he had neither brows
nor lashes, so that his gaze seemed unwinking, like a snake’s.

“Sher’ff?” grunted Ware’s Kid.

The boy jerked his head toward the street door and shrugged silently.
Ware’s Kid, after a long stare, lounged over to another corner and
himself squatted upon his heels.

Presently he forgot the boy in the opposite corner. Slowly he produced
Durham and brown papers and methodically built a cigarette. This he laid
upon the floor before him and rolled another, then a third, fourth,
fifth, sixth. They laid in a neat row. He picked up one from the end of
the row and lit it.

He wondered if he were really to find Dell Spreen here in Dallas. He had
not been in Carwell with Sergeant Ames, on the day three months past,
when Simeon Rutter and two O-Bar riders had spurred into the tiny,
sleepy village, with the word of the murder and robbery of Eph Carson,
Rutter’s partner.

But the sour-faced ranger sergeant had told him of the crime and of his
investigations at El Castillo, the long, low rock wall from behind which
Eph Carson had been shot.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Piecing together the testimony of Rutter and the punchers and adding the
result of his own observation, Ames had made a fairly complete story.
Carson had been on his way back to the O-Bar with about seven thousand
dollars of his and Rutter’s money. During his absence, up Crow Point
way, this gunman Spreen had ridden up to the O-Bar and asked for Carson.
Told that he was absent, Spreen had said grimly that he would wait.

But shortly after breakfast on the day of the murder, while the ranch
house was deserted except for two Mex’ cooks, Spreen had disappeared.
None had since seen him. Spreen knew that Carson was to return with a
large sum of money. The whole ranch had known it.

Evidently, said Ames, Spreen had ridden up the Crow Point trail to
ambush him where it ran along the rock wall in the desert--El Castillo.
He had not waited long--there were but two cigarette stubs in the
trampled sand. Eph Carson had come squarely into range of the steadied
rifle. Then--two shots and the wizened little cowman had side-slipped
from the saddle to sprawl face downward, dead. Having robbed the body,
Spreen had vanished as if the ground had swallowed him.

Ware’s Kid went over the details of his own investigation. He had
located the niche in the wall which had held the murderer’s .44 rifle.
He had re-created the murder; had interviewed Rutter and the O-Bar boys.

The dark, bitter-tongued rancher had told how he had ridden with the
punchers up the trail toward Crow Point, when Carson’s failure to return
had alarmed him. Told how they had found Carson sprawled upon the sand,
found his horse a quarter-mile away with bridle reins caught in the
_ocotillos_.

Two weeks after the murder a peremptory summons had come to Ware’s Kid
from headquarters in Austin. He had found the adjutant general
determined to stamp out the wave of crime then sweeping the border
country. He wanted this Spreen killed or taken. Preferably the latter,
that he might be hanged upon the scene of his crime.

“You wiped out Black Alec’s gang,” the adjutant general had said to
Ware’s Kid. “So I’m giving you this commission: get Dell Spreen! I don’t
care where you have to go to get him, either!”

Ware’s Kid, who was now smoking the fifth cigarette from his layout, was
aroused from his thoughts by footsteps. A stocky man clumped inside the
office and sat down at the battered desk.

“Mawnin’,” nodded the stocky man. The rigidity of his angular face was
broken up by curiosity, as with, alert brown eyes roved over the Mexican
finery. “Somethin’?”

“Do’ know,” shrugged Ware’s Kid.

He noted that the man wore a deputy sheriff’s badge upon his open vest.
He was, perhaps, twenty-nine or thirty, though dark mustache and tiny
goatee made him seem older. He was dusty as from long riding. Now he
reached down stiffly and took off his spurs.

“Do’ know,” repeated Ware’s Kid. “Sher’ff?”

“Sher’ff’s up to Austin, a-powwowin’ with the gov’nor. Art
Willeke--Art’s chief dep’ty--he’s ramblin’ ’round the ellum-bottoms,
Denton way, huntin’ Sam Bass.”

Mention of the notorious outlaw, who was just then keeping Rangers and
peace officers frantic, solved a part of Ware’s Kid’s puzzle. He had
been wondering whether or not to take the local officers into his
confidence; tell them frankly whom he sought.

He decided to forego any help these easterners could give in locating
Spreen--an East Texas man and, perhaps, one known to them--to gain the
greater advantage of working without danger of warning being passed to
Spreen by some friend.

“Kind o’ interested in Bass,” he told the deputy, thoughtfully. “Ranger.
Headquarters Troop. Name’s Ware.”

“Ware?” cried the deputy, staring hard and somewhat unbelievingly.
“Heerd about you-all! Glad to meet you!”

He shook hands and sat down again, still eyeing Ware’s Kid doubtfully.
Then the boy in the corner came silently to the desk. The deputy nodded
to him, hesitated and turned to Ware’s Kid.

“Mind if I talk to him, private?” he asked apologetically.

Ware’s Kid went outside to lean against the wall. He could hear the
boy’s excited whispering; an occasional explosive grunt from the deputy.
Then he was called inside. The boy was gone.

The deputy sat scowling down at the desk, tap-tapping the curving black
butt of the long-barreled Colt at his hip. He glanced up at Ware’s Kid
with the odd, appraising stare he had given the small figure at first
mention of his name.

“My name’s Bos’ Johnson,” he remarked abruptly. “You-all make yo’se’f to
home, here. I’ll be back, right soon.”

He was gone fifteen or twenty minutes and when he came in again, his
face wore that expression of grim rigidity which Ware’s Kid had marked
upon him when first he had come into the office.

“A’right,” he grunted. “Le’s git yo’ hawse to the stable. Then I’ll buy
you-all a drink.”

They saw to the stallion’s stabling, then crossed the street to a low,
brick saloon. There were not many in it--a cowboy or two, a knot of
farmers standing together far down the bar. But, drinking alone, was a
huge man with sullen, red face and close-set black eyes. He turned at
the pair’s entrance, staring.

“Whisky,” said Bos’ Johnson, tonelessly. Ware’s Kid nodded agreement.

                 *       *       *       *       *

The big man watched, tugging at long mustaches and snorting loudly as if
at his private thoughts. He watched belligerently while the bartender
poured the drinks for Ware’s Kid and Bos’ Johnson.

“Bartender!” he bellowed suddenly and crashed a huge fist upon the
polished bar.

“Yes, sir!” replied the bartender. His pasty face was gray-hued. “Yes,
sir!”

“You-all know who I am, bartender? I ask you-all--don’ you-all know what
I am, huh?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Branch. Course I do. Everybody knows Bull Branch! So’
do!”

Bull Branch continued to glare menacingly at him.

“Bartender!” he growled. “Since when is Mexicans ’lowed to come
a-shovin’ in yere a-drinkin’ with white men? You-all git down there an’
take that-’ere drink away from that Mex’! Then you-all chase him out’n
here ’fore I git mad.”

Slowly the bartender inched toward Ware’s Kid--who had not yet seemed
even to glance in Bull Branch’s direction. When he was still six feet
away, the Ranger turned his head a trifle--and regarded the bartender.
The unhappy man stopped instantly, shrinking back before the uncanny
electric sparkling in the gray-green eyes. Slowly, then, Ware’s Kid
wheeled to face Bull Branch.

“Where _I_ come from--” thus the Ranger in a soft drawl--“ever’ gent
kills his own snakes.”

“What?” roared Bull Branch, lowering big head on bull neck and glaring
ferociously. “_Whut?_”

“Pop yo’ whip, fella!” Ware’s Kid invited him, still in the bored drawl.

Bull Branch gaped amazedly. Deliberately, he pushed back his coat flaps
and put huge hands upon his hips. The pearl-gripped butts of two Colts
showed, almost under his fingers. Then he bore slowly down upon the
Ranger, who stood sideway to the bar with left elbow resting on its
edge. Bos’ Johnson moved unobtrusively away from the bar and out of
possible line of fire. But Bull Branch made no move to draw his guns:
merely came on ponderously.

What followed was blurred like the action of a rattler’s head as it
strikes. The left hand of Ware’s Kid moved--so rapidly that none there
actually saw it move. It caught up the whisky glass from the bar and
flipped the stinging liquor squarely into Bull Branch’s face.

As the huge figure reeled, hands going to tortured eyes, Ware’s Kid shot
forward. He twitched Branch’s Colts from their holsters and hurled them
into a corner. He rained blows upon Bull Branch’s face --leaping clear
off the floor to reach that height.

It was cat-and-mastiff. Blindly, Bull Branch tried to push him off, but
those hard fists, landing with force terrifically out of proportion to
the small body behind them, cut his face to ribbons, closed his eyes to
puffy-lidded slits, drove sickeningly into his mid-section. He staggered
about the barroom, grunting, whining, helpless. At last some instinct
seemed to show him the door. He broke for it at a staggering run and
Ware’s Kid, with a Comanche yell, leaped upon his back and spurred him
through it, catching hold of the lintel and swinging down to the floor
as Bull Branch lurched through and fell sprawling upon the veranda floor
outside.

When he came back, the bartender was half-crouched against the back-bar,
with eyes bulging. Bos’ Johnson and the other patrons were clinging to
the bar, some whooping feebly, others too weak to do more than shed
happy tears. Bos’ Johnson waggled a hand at the bartender.

“Set ’em up, bartender!” he gasped. “This ’n’s on the house. Ware! Mebbe
they won’t neveh hi’st no monument to you-all here, but Bull
Branch--he’ll re-membeh you-all plenty!”

                 *       *       *       *       *

Back in the sheriff’s office, Johnson turned suddenly serious again. He
sat staring at the wall, his harsh face rigid as if set in bronze. “I
got you-all into that trouble with Bull Branch,” Johnson said suddenly.
“Done it a-purpose.”

Ware’s Kid merely waited, brown face, gray-green eyes, revealing nothing
of his thoughts.

“Wondered if you-all really was Ware an’, if you was, how much o’ the
talk was so. Because--I shore do need some help!”

“Fer what?”

“To go out with me tonight an’ stand up to Sam Bass’s gang!”

Ware’s Kid studied the grimly earnest face. From the beginning he had
sensed something unusual about him. He thought that Johnson was usually
a happy-go-lucky cowpuncher and a man efficient with either hands or
weapons. He was used to judging men quickly and he began to like this
stocky deputy.

“A’ right!” he grunted curtly.

“You-all willin’?” cried Johnson. “Then here’s the layout. They’re goin’
to stick up the east-bound T & P ag’in at Eagle Ford. Figger folks won’t
be expectin’ lightnin’ to hit twict in the same place. Me ’n’ you, we’ll
be in the weeds ’long the track.”

“How-come just us two?”

“I could raise a posse,” Johnson admitted. “But--how’m I goin’ to know
the fellas I line up ain’t in with Bass? No! I’m goin’ to line my sights
on Simp Dunbar an’ before I let some dam’ spy carry word, I’ll go it by
myse’f!”

“Simp Dunbar? Who’s he?”

“He’s the skunk that killed my cousin, Billy Tucker! Two weeks ago, oveh
in Tarrant. Man! I’d give a black land farm to git me Simp Dunbar oveh
my front sight. An’ I shore will! ’T was like this. Bass’s outfit loped
up to a saloon on the aidge o’ Fort Worth, where Billy, he was havin’ a
drink. The’ was some kind o’ wranglin’, Billy bein’ the kind as won’t
back down fer no man livin’. Simp Dunbar--I’ve knowed him all my life
fer a useless cus an’ Billy knowed him, too--he shot from off to one
side. Billy an’ me, we helled around togetheh when we was kids. Punched
cows togetheh, out Menard-way. I--I thought a heap o’ Billy----”

Ware’s Kid nodded silently. Here was a man he understood. Understood his
vindictiveness, for it was in his own fierce Texan blood; understood his
willingness to take a hundred-to-one chance to face his enemy. More and
more, he liked Bos’ Johnson.

“A’ right. We’ll hunt ’em up,” he grunted. “How-come yuh know they’re
goin’ to be at Eagle Ford?”

“My spy told me. Had him a-watchin’ fer ’em last two weeks. That boy.”

Ware’s Kid stared silently at Johnson.

“What’s name that other little station--east o’ here?” he asked.

“Mesquite?”

“Didn’t even know there was one,” shrugged Ware’s Kid, with a ghost of a
grin. “Johnson, we’ll be at Mesquite, not Eagle Ford, tonight. Boy’s
lyin’. In with Bass, likely. Feelin’ I got, an’ mostly my feelin’s is
right.”

Johnson was won over to acceptance of the altered plan, if but
half-willingly. He admitted that he knew nothing much of the boy, who
had appeared in the office a month before offering to spy upon the Bass
gang.

“In with Bass!” repeated the Ranger. “Hell! He could’ve brought yuh lots
o’ news, ’fore this.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

They waited until nearly dark, then ate at a Chinese restaurant. It was
pitch-dark when they went swiftly to the stable where Johnson’s horse,
with the big stallion, had been fed an hour before. They saddled,
talking a little for the benefit of any ears that might be stretched
toward them, of the western road; that toward Eagle Ford.

For a couple of miles they rode swiftly eastward, then turned south on
the road to Mesquite. They were close to the railroad always, riding
through woodland. Johnson led, because of his knowledge of the country.
Soon he checked his mount and jerked the Winchester from its scabbard.
Ware’s Kid already cuddled his carbine in the crook of his arm. They
rode on again, slower, now.

Suddenly, not fifty yards ahead, a man scratched a match. The Ranger
jerked his carbine up. Gently he kneed the stallion around, feeling,
rather than seeing, that Johnson was doing likewise. There was no alarm
while they moved back a hundred yards and slipped off their animals.

“Let’s hitch the hawses an’ sneak up!” whispered Johnson.

They returned to the point from which they had seen the flare of that
match, the stocky deputy making no more sound than a shadow--than the
Ranger himself. Then they halted, squatting on their heels, to listen.
There was the sound of men moving, of horses, the hum of low-voiced,
jerky conversation.

“Late again!” a boyish voice complained. “Hell! You’d think we were
passengers, Sam, way the dam’ railroad’s treating us!”

“Don’t ye fret, Bub,” a harsh voice answered the youngster. “She’ll be
a-ramblin’ along right soon. Ingineer, he’ll see that log an’ he’ll jerk
her back onto her tail right suddent!”

“Ever’body lined up?” inquired a pleasant voice--Bass’s, Ware’s Kid
surmised. “Yuh-all know where yuh work?”

As the voices answered in affirmative grunts, the Ranger began moving
soundlessly to circle them to get nearer to the point where the train
would stop. Johnson followed until they were squatting in a little open
perhaps fifty feet from the track, sheltered by a fallen tree.

“You-all was shore right!” breathed Johnson. “Wouldn’t be nowheres else
in the world!”

Minutes ticked off, then there was the sound of the train, far away. The
rails before them began to hum. The train was upon robbers and officers
with a roar. Came a frantic squealing of brakes and the scream of the
whistle.

The train had barely halted when there was a rattle of shots along the
track. It was so dark that there was no clue to the robbers’ positions
save the orange flames that stab-stabbed the night. Ware’s Kid was
conscious that Johnson was gone from beside him. He wasted no time
thinking of that, but ran crouched over up to the track, where he could
fire at the robbers’ shot-flashes. From here he went into action with
coldly precise fire from the carbine.

“Who’s that dam’ jughead?” someone roared. Evidently, thought Ware’s
Kid, he was believed to be some misguided member of the gang, firing
into his own people.

From between the cars came shots to answer the gang, now. It was
pandemonium, there in the pitchy night, with the heavy roar of Colts and
the sharp, whiplike reports of rifles. A man could but guess, by the
relative positions of the flashes, at whom he shot.

The Ranger hardly expected to do much execution--his position made that
a matter of chance. But he was worrying the Bass men.

Suddenly a high, clear voice rang out, crying a name over and over
again, penetrating even the staccato din of the firing. “Simp Dunbar!
Where you-all? Simp Dunbar----”

A voice answered, but there was no diminution in the firing. Ware’s Kid
crawled down the track, having reloaded his carbine. With his first shot
a man cried out shrilly. He pumped the lever and--his carbine jammed. He
spat a bitter curse. He knew instantly what had happened--he had slipped
a .45 pistol cartridge into a .44 carbine.

A huge shape hurled itself at him. Mechanically, he threw up his carbine
and the oncoming man ran into it. Then Ware’s Kid, tugging at the butt
of his seldom-used Colt, leaped aside. A roar sounded, almost in his
ear. Then a hand caught his shoulder. Instinctively he stepped close to
his assailant, turned like a flash when a pistol brushed him; dropped
his Colt and caught the fellow’s gunhand with both of his and hung on
grimly.

“Somethin’s wrong, boys! Let’s git out o’ yere!” a cool, half-laughing
voice was shouting, down the track--not the voice which had called Simp
Dunbar’s name.

The fellow with whom Ware’s Kid grappled was swinging terrific blows at
his lighter opponent. But the Ranger’s head was against his chest; the
big fellow’s fists but grazed their mark. But he was tiring with his
bulldog grip on the other’s gunhand. Suddenly he released his hold and
tried to leap backward. A heel caught on a bunch of grass and he
stumbled. A flash and roar from in front of him; a stinging pain across
his head. He crashed flat.

                 *       *       *       *       *

He came to, conscious of a dull headache and, next, of a dim light over
his head. After a moment of blinking, he perceived that he was sitting
in a chair of a railway coach. Next he realized that the train was
moving.

“How d’ you-all feel, now?” inquired an anxious voice.

Painfully he turned his head and saw Bos’ Johnson’s worried face
opposite him.

“Right puny!” he grunted truthfully.

Johnson grinned widely, relief in his brown eyes.

“What happened?” demanded Ware’s Kid.

“Bullet creased you-all. You-all been pickin’ daisies might’ nigh a
hour.”

“The hell! Where we goin’? Gang git away?”

“Goin’ into Dallas. Yeh, gang high-tailed it--all but Simp Dunbar,” said
Johnson. “Reckon they’ll most all be a-lickin’ some sore spots, though.
Me ’n’ you-all did right smart o’ shootin’! I hollered fer Simp an’ like
a dam’ jughead, he spoke right up. I snuck up onto him an’ told him who
I was.”

He lifted his arm and in the loose flannel of his shirt beneath it,
showed a great hole with charred edges.

“Might’ nigh got me, first crack! But I worked buttonholes up an’ down
his front ’fore he could shoot ag’in!”

“How-come yuh found me?”

“By lookin’ around,” shrugged Johnson affectionately. “You dam’ red-eyed
li’l runt! You-all think I’d hike out an’ leave you-all out there,
some’r’s, fer the gang, mebbe, to find? I come runnin’ up about the time
you-all tumbled; see that hairpin right on top me--an’ me with an empty
gun! I yelled like a Comanche an’ damned if he neveh broke an’ run.”

Ware’s Kid eyed him steadily. He knew that only Johnson’s arrival had
kept his assailant from putting another bullet into him as he lay
unconscious.

He leaned back wearily in the seat. Johnson stretched his bowed legs
comfortably and took off his Stetson.

“Wisht I had a chaw,” he grumbled.

“Got the makin’s.” Ware’s Kid fumbled in his jumper pocket.

“Don’t use her thet-a-way. I neveh could learn to smoke, some way.”

He threw his head back and closed his eyes. And the Ranger, watching
him, turned suddenly cold all over. For upon the brown, sinewy neck that
had been always hidden heretofore by the silken neckerchief, shone a
long white scar that stretched evenly three quarters of the way around
it.

A stocky, dark-faced, dark-eyed man, with a white scar circling evenly
around his neck--so Simeon Rutter and the O-Bar hands had described Dell
Spreen. True, they had seen him clean-shaven, and, believing him guilty
of murder, they remembered his features and eyes as murderous. But there
was no doubt about it--Dell Spreen sat there across from him with closed
eyes. And to Dell Spreen he owed his life that night!

“Dell Spreen!” he called in a low voice.

Bos’ Johnson moved like a cat, to half-draw his Colt. Then he saw the
derringer that covered him with twin barrels. For an instant he
hesitated, then shoved the Colt back into its holster and slumped.

“So you-all come afteh _me_,” he said. “I been lookin’ fer somebody to
show up. That’s why I got me a job as dep’ty. Figgered whoever come’d
spill his tale in the office an’, seein’ me wearin’ a badge, wouldn’t
suspicion me. Specially since I neveh used my own name in the O-Bar
country. But you-all shore fooled me.”

“Hate like hell to do it!” Ware’s Kid wriggled miserably. “But I’m a
Ranger. Do anything I can to help yuh, Johnson. Much as I’d do fer my
own blood kin. But I got to take yuh back.”

“I ain’t blamin’ you-all. But--might’s well shoot me right now as to put
me up ’fore a jury in that country. Ever’thing’s ag’inst me--specially
bein’ a strangeh. That’s why I high-tailed it, soon’s I heerd he’d been
found.

“I ain’t denyin’ I went to the O-Bar fig-gerin’ I’d mebbe have to kill
Carson. I was goin’ to git back the money he stole off’n my brotheh an’
sisteh. Goin’ to git it back or try the case before Jedge Colt. But if
I’d killed him, it’d been from the front. He’d have been give a chanct
to fill his hand.”

“Yuh--yuh mean yuh never killed him?” cried Ware’s Kid.

Then the old surge of hope died. Of course Johnson would say that.

“D’ you-all figger me that-a-way? Knowin’ no more about me than you do?”
Johnson asked.

Slowly, the Ranger shook his head.

“Looky yere!” argued the deputy. “Eph’ Carson an’ my brotheh. Sam, they
was ranchin’ it oveh on the Brazos. Carson’s a tough _hombre_, remember.
He’s gamblin’ a lot. Well, he sells ever’ last head o’ stuff on the
place while Sam’s down in Fort Worth. Time Sam gits back with my
kid-sisteh that’s got a share in the ranch, Carson’s done gambled away
the money. The’s a row, o’ course. Sam, he’s got more guts than
gun-sense. Carson nigh kills him.

“Time I come into it, Carson’s rattled his hocks. Two years afteh, I’m
ridin’ down in the El Paso country. Hear about Eph’ Carson o’ the O-Bar.
I go high-tailin’ it oveh an’ hang around four-five days, but Carson
don’t come. Then I start out fer Crow Point a-huntin’ him.

“Then, hell bent, comes the Mex’ cooks’ helper-boy. I kept a cowboy from
beatin’ him to death, one day. Says Carson’s killed an’ robbed an’
ever’body says I must’ve killed him! Well, whut do I do? Try to tell
them red-eyed O-Bar boys as how I was intendin’ to kill Eph’ Carson,
mebbe, but neveh got no chanct? Like hell! I figger the job I come to do
is done. I leave that-’ere country in a mile-high cloud o’ dust.”

Ware’s Kid slumped lower in the seat, going over and over his mental
picture of the scene of the crime.

Bos’ Johnson rose to cup his hands against the window glass and peer out
into the night. Missing no slightest movement of his prisoner, the
Ranger studied again the wide, powerful shoulders, the handy legs of the
man who has ridden almost since birth. Johnson turned slowly.

“Dallas! Be in soon,” he said. “Then--I ain’t blamin’ you-all none,
Ware. But just--well sort o’ between us. I wisht I could make you
believe I never done it. I sort o’ took to you-all from the beginnin’
an----”

“’T ain’t a bit o’ use,” interrupted Ware’s Kid.

A tiny smile was born far back in the gray-green eyes; seemed to spread
over the habitually blank brown face and come finally to rest upon the
thin-lipped mouth.

“’T ain’t a bit o’ use,” he repeated. “’Cause--I know yuh never done
it!”

Ostentatiously he returned the derringer to his jumper pocket.

“’S all right, Bos’. Yuh got to go down to Austin with me. Got to
exhibit yuh some to the adj’tant gin’ral, to make him _sabe_. But
that’ll be all. Listen: I went snoopin’ around some myself, down at
Carwell. Found where the fella that killed Eph’ Carson had waited. Point
one: there was two brown cigarette stubs on the ground. Yuh-all say yuh
don’t smoke, an’ the’s no stain on yo’ fingers.

“I found where this fella’s stood with his rifle in a sort o’ notch. His
foot-prints was still pretty plain. Well, yo’ feet, Bos’ point in, like
a pigeon’s. This fella’s showed in the soft dirt under the rock
overhang, a-pointin’ out!

“But point three’s the big ’n’: I stand five foot seven, an’ that notch
he rested his Winchester in was level with my eyes. Short as yuh-all
are, it’d be mighty near over yo’ head! Now, he never stood on nothin’,
’cause the’ ain’t nothin’ the’ to stand on. An’ he never fired from no
saddle. ’Cause I found where his hawse’d been tied back in the brush.”

“Man, but you-all shore wiped some cold sweat off’n me!” cried Bos’
Johnson. “I knowed I neveh done it, but provin’ it, the way you-all just
done, neveh would’ve come to me. I reckon.”

“Took a bigger man than ary one of us. That’s what we’re goin’ to show
the adj’tant gin’ral. Then I’m goin’ to ask him to let me go back to
Carwell to find the fella that really done the killin’. He’ll let me go.
An’----”

“If he does,” cried Bos’ Johnson very earnestly, “man! The’s shore some
six-footehs down in that Carwell country as’ll be up in the air two ways
to onct!”

                 *       *       *       *       *

Up out of the glaring yellow sand, the long, low, narrow barrier of
black rock jutted abruptly. “El Castillo”--the Castle, the Mexicans had
named it, long ago. The name such names fitted as well as such names
usually do. Actually it more resembled a stone fence fifty yards long,
which, in height, varied from three to ten feet and, in thickness, from
a foot to four, even five, feet. The top was jagged--sharp saw teeth of
slick, inky rock. A sinister pile, even in the white sunlight of a
desert forenoon.

Ware’s Kid squatted on spurred heels at the Castle’s western end, where
the trail forked to run on either side of the wall. Not much of a trail,
this--the deep, loose, perpetually-drifting sand soon effaced
impressions; but generations of travel had made a lane between walls of
greasewood and cat-claw and cactus.

It was near the Ranger’s position, on this dimly-marked track, that Eph
Carson had died--shot from the saddle without a chance to return the
murderer’s fire.

Having left Dell Spreen in the care of the adjutant general in Austin
and returned swiftly to Carwell, Ware’s Kid had come without being
observed to the scene of the murder. Now that he knew Spreen had not
committed the killing, he must decide who did.

“Satisfied the adj’tant gin’ral Spreen neveh done it,” reflected the
Ranger. “But I got to figure out who did. Spreen’s too little. Good-size
hombre plugged Eph Carson.”

He got up and the great, black stallion, which had stood behind him as
he squatted, now followed like a dog to the spot where Eph Carson’s
murderer had lain in wait. Ware’s Kid knew the place well.

“Fella leaned up agin’st the rock, right here,” he re-enacted the scene
mentally. “Lined his sights on Carson. Carson was comin’ up t’ other
side from over Crow Point way. Fella drilled him plumb center. Went out
an’ took seven thousand out o’ Carson’s saddle bags. Stood right here.
Standin’ on the ground. No hawss-tracks closer’n that cat-claw yonder.
Good-size’ fella. Had to be, to rest his rifle in that crotch.”

Mechanically he studied the rock wall and the sand that swept away from
its foot. Something bright in the sand, in the very spot where they had
found the murderer’s tracks. He stooped. But it was only a glassy bit of
rock. He held it, staring absently, his mind upon the mystery. From the
little sand dunes behind him, to northward, came the flat, vicious
report of a rifle. A bullet slapped the rock wall almost in his face. It
had passed within six inches of his head. Instantly, another followed.

Ware’s Kid moved like a rattler striking. He moved automatically, but
with a precision, an economy, of movement that could not have been
bettered by rehearsals times without number. He was sheltered from the
bullets within two steps, standing behind his stallion’s bulk. His hand
slapped the saddle horn; he was in the saddle without touching stirrups
and lying flat upon the black’s neck. The great rowels dug the
stallion’s flanks; he surged forward magnificently; within two strides
he was galloping. The Ranger, chased by bullets that buzzed spitefully
about his ears, swung the black around the end of the Castle.

Half-way down the length of the stone wall he slid the stallion to a
halt. Here was a place where he could peer across the top between two
teeth of rock. His great sombrero hung down his back by the chinstrap;
from the scabbard beneath the left fender had leaped a sleek Winchester
carbine. He cuddled the carbine in the crook of his arm as, with
green-gray eyes squinting coldly, he studied the sand dunes behind which
his antagonist lay hidden.

A thin smoke-cloud was drifting upward above the dunes. Ware’s Kid
rested the carbine in the crotch of the wall-top. He sighted carefully
and drove three .44’s to dust along the crest of the dunes, some fifteen
inches apart. Instantly the other rifleman replied with a rolling
quartette of bullets that bunched most efficiently beneath the Ranger’s
carbine-muzzle.

He watched narrowly without replying in kind. At last he shrugged and
whirled the stallion, to ride off south and east toward the O-Bar
ranch-house.

He could have stalked the sand dunes from which the unknown bushwhacker
had fired. There was cover of a sort up to the very base of the dunes.
But the ambusher’s fire had been entirely too craftsmanlike, too nearly
deadly, to make the prospect of scaling the low slope before him seem
anything but the brief preliminary to a funeral. Ware’s Kid preferred to
ride off with a whole skin and calculate upon another meeting under
conditions more equal. They said of him, in the Rangers, that for a
youngster no more than nineteen he had a mighty level head.

A half-mile, perhaps, he galloped without turning. Then, reaching for
the field glasses, he checked the stallion. Far behind him, a horseman
streaked it eastward. The Ranger studied rider and brown horse through
the glasses.

“Mebbe he’s tall,” he grunted at last. “But--mebbe he’s just a-forkin’ a
little pony.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

For ten miles he kept the stallion at a mile-eating running walk. He had
never been at the O-Bar house, but he knew its location from hearsay,
and so, when the black began climbing a steady incline, studded by
boulders and covered with taller-than-ordinary mesquite, he nodded to
himself. This was the way, all right.

The stallion made the incline’s top and paused for a moment, expelling
its breath in a great snort. At the sound, the flaxen-haired girl on the
lookout rock turned sharply. She and Ware’s Kid stared, one at another,
her great, dark eyes meeting his narrowed gaze levelly.

“Howdy!” he drawled, after a--to him--long and uncomfortable silence. He
was always ill at ease with women. They usually wanted a man to make
some sort of damned fool of himself to suit a feminine whim.

“Good morning,” she replied, still examining him calmly.

“Trail to the O-Bar?” he grunted awkwardly, after another silence.

“Yes. The house is a mile away. But there’s nobody there except the cook
and his helper. Do you want to see my father, Sim Rutter?”

Ware’s Kid stared. He recalled nothing about a daughter on the O-Bar.
And that Simeon Rutter, huge, gaunt, black-haired, black-eyed,
black-bearded, grim and taciturn, should have such a daughter as this
slim, fair-skinned creature seemed somehow unbelievable. She seemed to
read his thoughts.

“I’ve been away at school--Las Cruces--convent, you know,” she
enlightened. “But I’m not going back--I hope.”

“Stay here, huh?”

“I hope not! This is just as bad. Oh, I hate this bare, desolate
country! Don’t you?”

“Don’t know,” shrugged Ware’s Kid. He had never thought about the
matter, one way or the other. “Don’t know--as I do.”

“I want to go back East! To New York--Philadelphia--Boston--oh, all the
places I’ve read about. Europe, too. I’m trying to get my father to sell
the ranch and go traveling with me. All over the world. I’ve been trying
to persuade him for two years. But I think he’ll do it now--maybe. His
partner was killed, you know. He’s all broken up over that. He doesn’t
say much, but it was an awful blow just the same. I think he’ll sell
out.”

“Got to be goin’,” grunted Ware’s Kid. All this talk of travel was over
his head. Nor had it anything to do with his particular business--the
capture of Eph Carson’s murderer.

“I’ll ride with you. Will you get my horse? He’s tied to a cat-claw over
yonder.”

The Ranger got the pony and brought it back. He sat his stallion,
holding her animal’s reins. She waited for an instant, but he was blind
to her expectation that he would help her into the saddle. So she swung
up unaided and jerked the reins from his hand.

As they rode almost stirrup-to-stirrup toward the ranch-house, Ware’s
Kid studied her covertly from beneath half-lowered sombrero brim. It
dawned upon him suddenly that not yet had he seen her smile. The large,
blue eyes were somber, always; she seemed to brood upon something. They
rode in silence until, a half-mile or so ahead, the clutter of buildings
which constituted the O-Bar holding showed against the desert shrubbery.

“I hate it!” she burst out. “Oh, how I hate it!”

Then they rode on silently again, the creak of saddle-leather, the
scuffing of the animals’ hoofs, the only sound, until they dismounted in
the ranch yard.

There was but one horse in the cottonwood-log corral, a black gelding as
large as the mount of Ware’s Kid. The girl glanced at it, then toward
the house.

“My father’s home,” she said tonelessly.

“Come in.”

They went around the house and, upon the rough veranda that shaded its
front, found Simeon Rutter with feet cocked upon the rail, big, shaggy
head upon his chest. He looked up at the sound of their footsteps and
sun-narrowed black eyes softened amazingly as he saw his daughter.

“Hello, Baby!” he rumbled. “Wonderin’ where yuh was.” Then, to Ware’s
Kid, “Howdy, Kid. What’re yuh doin’ down here ag’in? Thought they sent
yuh up to Austin, or some’r’s.”

“Did. But sent me back. I got Dell Spreen.”

“Yuh did! That’s shore good hearin’, Kid!” He came swiftly to his feet,
with great hands hard-clenched.

The girl had gone indoors and bitterly, yet with a certain grim
repression, Simeon Rutter cursed Dell Spreen.

“Where’s Spreen, now?” he demanded, breaking off suddenly. “Carwell? El
Paso?”

“Austin. Lookin’ up more evidence.”

Simeon Rutter cursed the law’s dawdling ways; its coddling of an
assassin. Ware’s Kid but half-listened. He was thinking of the efficient
rifleman of the morning, who had bushwhacked him from the sand dunes.

“How many big men in this country?” he asked abruptly. “_Big_ men?”

Rutter stopped short to stare at him. Then he considered the question,
eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

“Don’t know. Me, o’ course. An’ Curly Gonzales over Crow Point way.
Lamson--that crazy puncher on the D-5--an’ Slim Nichols on the Flyin’ A.
All I think of. Why?”

The Ranger hesitated. Knowing Rutter’s bitterness toward Dell Spreen, he
wondered if the dour ranchman could be made to believe his own theory:
that Spreen had not, could not have, committed the murder. Wondered,
too, if Rutter would be silent about the theory.

“Spreen says he never killed Carson,” he said slowly.

“Yeh. An’ what?”

“An’ if he did--well, I don’t know how he done it!”

“What’re yuh drivin’ at? Yuh got the name o’ bein’ level-headed, Kid,
but--what’re yuh drivin’ at?”

“How could a little fella--littler’n me--shoot Carson, restin’ his gun
in a crotch near as high as he could reach?”

Scowling, Simeon Rutter considered this problem.

“That _was_ a high crotch--one that we found his tracks under,” he
admitted. “But, hell! He was sittin’ on a hawss, or else standin’ on
somethin’. Not good enough, Kid! By God, not half good enough to make me
believe Dell Spreen never shot old Eph Carson from hidin’. O’ course he
denies it! ’Spect him to own right up?”

“Yeh. Course, he’d say he never. But I been thinkin’. Wasn’t no
hawss-tracks under the crotch. Nothin’ to stand on. Nothin’ we could
see, anyhow. So’ wondered who’d be tall enough to shoot out o’ that
crotch, standin’ on the sand. An’ too----”

He hesitated for an instant before he decided to tell of the morning.

“An’, too, somebody bushwhacked me, out at the Castle, today!”

“Bushwhacked yuh! What for? Who’d be a-bushwhackin’ yuh?”

“Don’t know. Fella on a dun. Good shot, too. Purty good, that is.”

“Here!” cried Rutter suddenly. “Too much funny business about this. I
want to see that place ag’in. Git yo’ hawss, Kid. Let’s take a _pasear_
out to the Castle an’ look around.”

He went swiftly down to the corral and got the lariat from his saddle.
The black gelding retreated to a corner, snorting, whirling. Rutter sent
the loop spinning over its head and hauled the animal to him by sheer
brute force.

“So dam’ many hawsses none gits rid enough!” he rumbled irritably.
“Wilder’n antelope, all of ’em.”

He saddled swiftly and swung up. Ware’s Kid was already mounted. They
turned past the front veranda and Rutter waved to his daughter, who had
come outside again. He seemed another person when near her. The grim
shell of him cracked and a tenderness odd in a man so apparently
harsh-grained showed for a moment.

“Goin’ out to El Castillo!” he shouted at the girl. “Back when I git
back, Baby.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

They rode silently for miles. Rutter was one after the Ranger’s own
heart, taciturn, efficient in his business. Staring at his companion’s
broad back, Ware’s Kid nodded approval. He thought of what the girl had
said--of her father’s repressed sorrow over his partner’s death. He
could understand Rutter’s vengefulness toward Dell Spreen, but he hoped,
before the day’s end, to show the O-Bar owner his error, to prove that
Spreen could not have murdered Eph Carson.

“If yuh’re right about this height business,” Rutter growled suddenly,
“I don’t know what we’re goin’ to do about it. Too long ago, now. Not
that I’m admittin’ yuh’re right! But just in case yuh are, how can we
find out where these fellas--Curly Gonzales an’ Lamson an’ Nichols--was
that day? Fella don’t always recollect just what he was doin’ three
months ago. By George!”

He whirled sideway in the saddle.

“That mornin’, me an’ August Koenig--one o’ my hands--was ridin’ nawth
o’ the house nine-ten mile. An’ we met Lamson headin’ for Elizario!
Recollect, now. August an’ Lamson come near mixin’ it, ’count August he
was askin’ about some widder that lives in Elizario an’ Lamson flew off
the handle! By George!”

“What kind o’ fella’s Lamson?” inquired Ware’s Kid.

“Oh, same’s most. Gits kind o’ crazy spells. Been kicked on the head a
long time ago by a bronc’ an’ once in a while he flies up. But he’s a
good puncher an’ I don’t know why anybody’ll think he’d shoot Eph
Carson. Lamson’s seen trouble--seen it fair an’ square, through the
smoke. No-o, I wouldn’t put him down for that kind o’ killer.”

“Yuh found Carson right after noon, didn’t yuh?”

“Yeh. I got fidgety, him not comin’ in the day I figgered. So when me
an’ August got back to the house, an’ Eph hadn’t come in yet, I took
August an’ Yavapai Wiggins an’ we rode out. Found Eph ’long about two
o’clock, lyin’ in the trail. Seven thousand, about, he was packin’. All
gone.”

“Mostly yo’s, they say.”

“’Bout four thousand,” Rutter nodded gloomily. “But ’t wasn’t the money
riled me so. Old Eph, he never knowed what hit him. Never had a chanct.
Nary chanct to git his six-shooter out. Like I told yuh then, right
after it happened. I figgered Dell Spreen ’cause he’d hung around the
ranch three days, waitin’ for Eph. Wouldn’t tell nobody what he wanted.
Just looked mean. An’ packed his cantinas an’ hightailed it that very
mawnin’. I gethered yuh never found the money on him?”

“Fo’ dollars, ’bout,” shrugged Ware’s Kid.

They came to the Castle and reined in the animals on the spot where the
murderer of Eph Carson had waited. Silently, Simeon Rutter stared at the
crotch in the rock wall in which the assassin had rested his
rifle-barrel. Slowly, as unwilling even now to concede weight to the
theory the Ranger had advanced tentatively, he nodded.

“The’ wasn’t no hawss-tracks closer’n that cat-claw yonder,” he
admitted.

He swung down and pulled his Winchester from its scabbard, then moved
over to the crotch in the wall. Even for one of his height it was a
strain to level the barrel with butt at shoulder. He nodded again and
set the rifle down. From a shirt pocket he brought Durham and papers and
shook tobacco onto the brown leaf, somber black eyes roving.

Ware’s Kid slipped from the saddle and came swiftly over to where Rutter
stood. He stopped and dug into the sand at the rancher’s feet, then
straightened.

“What’s it?” asked Rutter.

It was a large, pearl-handled pocketknife, tarnished from much carrying,
with four good blades and one broken blade stump. Rutter licked his
cigarette, jambed it into his mouth and took the knife from the Ranger’s
hand, staring thoughtfully.

“See it before?” asked Ware’s Kid. Rutter shook his head.

“Umm--no, reckon not. Not many like that carried in this country. But
somebody ought to know it. We’ll ride into Carwell pretty soon. See. But
right now I want to ride Eph Carson’s back-trail. Got a idee. Mebbe she
won’t pan out.”

They could only guess that Eph Carson had come along the regular trail
and follow through the dim lane between the greasewood and cacti. They
rode silently, with eyes roving from trail to skyline and back again.
The afternoon wore on; evening came. To westward, up-thrusting hulls,
jagged, fantastic, drew nearer.

“Huecos!” grunted Rutter, and Ware’s Kid nodded. He knew this ancient
watering place of the desert people red and brown and white. A good many
times, with a Ranger detachment from Ysleta, hunting Apache sign, he had
camped there.

“Guess we better hole up there t’night,” Rutter grunted, staring across
the flat to the beginning of that welter of arroyo-cut hillocks.
“Mawnin’ we can head back to Carwell an’ see ’bout that frogsticker. Or,
we can look over some more trail.”

“Yo’ idee?” queried Ware’s Kid. “Yuh said yuh had one.”

“Tell yuh about it come mawnin’,” said Rutter. Far back in the grim
black eyes lurked a shadowy amusement. “Ain’t quite ready to back her up
clean to the tailgate. Got anything to eat?”

“Dried beef, _tortillas_, coffee, can o’ plums.”

“Dried beef an’ _tortillas_ is a meal,” grinned Rutter. “Le’s head for
the Tanks an’ camp.”

“Better hole up in the old Butterfield station,” counseled Ware’s Kid.
“Healthier’n sleepin’ ’longside the main _tinaja_ (Tank). Apaches don’t
stick no closer to the reservation than ever, I reckon.”

“Not so close, by God!” swore Rutter. “Yuh’re right, Kid. Them dam’
feather dusters stops here or at Crow Springs or the Comudas, reg’lar,
comin’ from Mescalero to Chihuahua. Stage station she is. We’ll make
it.”

They nodded mutual agreement and spurred the horses on through the dark.
At the deserted stage station--a rude dwelling made by walling in the
mouth of a natural cavern--they swung down. The Ranger sniffed like a
hunting dog.

“Some seep water up the canyon a piece,” he muttered. “Good enough for
the hawsses. But I’ll take the canteen an’ git some real water at the
Tank, for us.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

He unsaddled the black stallion and swiftly Rutter followed his example.
Rutter got out the food and coffee pot from the Ranger’s saddle bags
while the latter, bearing a canteen, started up the canyon to the main
“tank.”

Ware’s Kid moved silently, for all his high-heeled boots. The canyon
floor was of hard-packed earth, but studded with loose stones and he
placed his feet carefully. One never knew who might be using the Tanks.
From time immemorial it had been one of the favorite watering places of
this region. Wild animals and wild men, red and brown and white, came
there furtively.

He passed close along the left-hand wall, decorated with Indian
pictographs and the names of pioneers, and so came to the low cavern in
which was the spring-fed well, or “tank.” More cautiously than ever he
moved now. The rock apron before the cavern was pitted with
_metate_-holes, where prehistoric tribes had ground their corn; rude
mortars still used by the Apaches who camped there. It was tricky
footing and trickier still inside, where one approached the well-lip
over a stone floor worn slick as glass by countless feet.

Inside the cavern mouth he squatted for a moment and listened. He heard
nothing from without or within and slid his feet carefully forward,
balancing himself with left hand upon a rounded slab that divided the
cavern in two sections.

So he was awkwardly balanced when a sinewy arm shot around his throat
from behind and a _hough_ sounded in his ear.

A smallish, rather insignificant-seeming figure was Ware’s Kid. But “all
whalebone and whang-leather,” as the Rangers who had wrestled with him
remarked amazedly; a hundred and ten pounds of wiry, dashingly quick,
steel-strong body.

Now he moved automatically, fairly shouting, “Indians!” Sideways he
whirled, and so the Apache’s knife went wide in its downward drive. Back
shot the Ranger’s head, to smash into the Indian’s face. It broke his
strangling hold and Ware’s Kid, turning half in air, his feet were
sliding so, shot a vicious fist into the Apache’s midriff, then had the
buck by the throat and was gripping him about the body with legs closing
like scissor-blades and fending off flailing arms with elbows spread.

The Apache was powerful, but before he had much opportunity to struggle
Ware’s Kid had banged his back-head against the rock. He managed a long,
loud, gasping groan. Feebly his knifehand rose. The Ranger loosed the
throat for an instant and fumbled for the weapon. It sliced his palm.
Then he seized it and buried it in the Indian’s body.

When the Apache was limp--wise men made very sure that Apaches were
really dead--the Ranger stood up shakily and groped for the entrance. A
stone slid down into the canyon and he hurled himself forward out of the
cavern. As he gained the middle of the canyon, running like a
quarter-horse, there was thud after thud of feet dropping from the rocks
to the hard ground.

He ran on his toes, hoping that he could make camp sufficiently ahead of
these fleet Indians to warn Rutter; hoping, too, that Rutter had the
horses together, had not taken them out onto the flat to graze. He ran
as he never had run in his life.

At last he sensed the camp just ahead. And from it came a rifle-shot,
then another. The bullets sang past him perilously close.

“It’s--Ware’s Kid!” he gasped. “Injuns--comin’!”

“Thought yuh was one of ’em!” grunted Rutter, with no particular alarm
evident in his heavy voice. “How close?”

“Right behind! No time to saddle! Fork ’em bareback!”

He paused only to snatch his precious carbine from its scabbard on the
saddle, then scooped up the bight of the lariat with which the stallion
was picketed. He vaulted upon the stallion’s back. Muffled sound in the
darkness nearby told that Rutter was following his example.

Up the canyon the darkness was suddenly punctuated in a half-dozen
places by orange flames. Bullets thudded into the ground, into rock
walls, around the white men. The firing was a continuous roll, its
rumbling multiplied by the canyon walls. As usual the Apaches had rifles
as good as any in that country, better than those of the Army. Rutter
swore venomously.

Ware’s Kid had slashed the lariat with his belt knife. Rutter,
apparently, had done the same. For when the black stallion surged ahead,
toward the safety of the open land, Rutter was close behind. They
galloped furiously for perhaps half an hour. The moon came out and
flooded the desert with a white light that reminded the Ranger of Billy
Conant’s New Fashion Saloon in El Paso when the electric lights were
turned on.

Being lighter and, perhaps, the better rider, Ware’s Kid led. He had
lost a hundred-dollar saddle, but he was phlegmatic about that. It was
all in the game. They were lucky--he especially--to be riding away with
their hair. A sudden groan from Rutter aroused him from his thoughts and
he looked backward under his arm in time to see the big man slide
sideways off his gelding and roll over upon his side.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Mechanically Ware’s Kid whirled the stallion and glared half-a-dozen
ways at once in search of the assassin. But the broad expanse of
greasewood and cacti lay quiet in the incandescent moonlight. So he rode
back to Rutter and slid to the sand.

“Got me!” Rutter gasped. “Back yonder. Thought I--could make it--back to
the ranch--see--my girl--but----”

“Let’s see,” grunted Ware’s Kid practically.

He explored the blood-caked shirt-front and lifted a shoulder-point in a
little gesture of fatalistic resignation. There was a .44 hole in
Rutter’s chest. How he had ridden this far was the marvel! The Ranger
squatted there broodingly, watching mechanically along the back-trail,
in case the Indians appeared.

“Want me to--sign a paper?”

At the painful whisper, Ware’s Kid looked down curiously into Rutter’s
grim-lined face.

“Shore,” he nodded, after a moment, thinking to humor a delirious man.
“If it’ll ease yuh.”

“Knowed yuh--had the deadwood on me--when yuh--found my knife! But I
--wasn’t goin’ to--let yuh see Carwell ag’in--ever! Yuh tried to--make
out yuh never--suspicioned. But I knowed! I’d’ve got yuh--’fore mawnin’.
Dam’ near got yuh--yeste’day mawnin’--at the Castle. Seen yuh--pokin’
round--pick up somethin’--skeered me an’--I whanged away. Hadn’t
missed--wouldn’t be here. ’Twas on the--cards--I reckon.”

He stopped wearily, breathing in labored wheezes. Ware’s Kid squatted
beside him, staring down with expressionless face. Suddenly Rutter’s
wheezes became louder, quicker. After a moment the Ranger understood
that it was horrible laughter.

“Reckon my gal--will do her travelin’--now. Always after me--to sell
out. I done for Eph Carson--’count o’ that. None o’ that--money was
mine. All his’n. I wanted it. I----”

His voice trailed off into incoherent mumbling. Ware’s Kid bethought
himself suddenly of what Rutter had said about signing a paper. He
fumbled in his jumper pocket and found a letter of the adjutant general,
the letter which had summoned him to Austin three months ago and so had
brought him, indirectly, to sit here tonight. A stub of pencil was
there, too.

“A’ right!” he snapped. “Sign the paper!”

He supported the murderer’s head and shoulders and crooked his knee so
that Rutter could lay the paper upon it. It was slow, painful work, but
at last he held the curt scrawl up in the moonlight and painfully
spelled it out:

	Dell spreen never killed eph Carson I done it and robbed
	him--Simeon Rutter.

Presently Rutter died--without pain, apparently. Ware’s Kid rolled a
cigarette and lit it, staring blankly straight ahead.

“He shore fooled me!” he grunted admiringly. “He shore did! An’ like to
killed me twict! At the Castle an’ tonight. He never took me for no
Injun. He was aimin’ to down me. Just fools’ luck I’m here, alive an’
kickin’, an’ with this-here paper.”

He got up, thinking to ride for Carwell and tell his story: show the
confession. Suddenly he thought of the girl, the wistful-eyed, sad-faced
girl at the O-Bar ranch-house. He squatted again and made another
cigarette.

Slowly but surely, he mulled the business over. It came to him finally
that there were really but two persons to be considered--Dell Spreen,
sitting around the adjutant general’s office up at Austin, and that girl
of Rutter’s. Absolute vindication of Spreen was easy; the means lay in
his hand, here. But that would mean a blow at a girl who had had no part
in her father’s cold-blooded deed. He pondered the problem. At last, he
nodded.

He would ride back to Carwell, but the paper would remain in his jumper
pocket. He would tell of Rutter’s death; lead a posse after the Apaches.
He would also show the townsfolk the spot from which Eph Carson had been
shot and explain the impossibility of Dell Spreen--a man shorter, even,
than himself--committing the murder. This might not clear up the mystery
to everyone’s satisfaction, but Dell Spreen had no intention of coming
back to this part of the country anyway. When the adjutant general saw
the confession it would clear Spreen officially.

Then the girl would not be branded--openly, at least--as the daughter of
a brutal, callous murderer. She would have no ordeal to face while the
O-Bar was being sold. She would carry away no bitter memories to mark
her in after-years.

Something like this Ware’s Kid thought out. He got up again and snapped
his fingers to the black stallion, caught the trailing lariat and again
threw a hackamore around the black’s nose, then vaulted upon it with
carbine across his arm.

“Reckon she’s poor law--this way,” he reflected. “But she’s shore as
hell good Rangerin’!”


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the May 1927 issue of
_Frontier Stories_ magazine.]




*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76804 ***