Kid Wolf of Texas Page 17

  Some of the men carried Winchesters, but for the most part they were armed with six-guns. Now that they were actually on the way, the men seemed eager for the battle. Perhaps Kid Wolf's cool and determined leadership had something to do with it.

  Young Robbins reached over and clasped the Texan's hand.

  "I'll never forget this, Mr. Kid Wolf," he said, tears in his eyes.

  "If it wasn't for you——"

  "Call me 'Kid,'" said the Texan, flashing him a smile. "We'll save yo' fathah and the men in the stage if we can. Anyway, we'll make it hot fo' those Apaches."

  After a few minutes of fast going, they could hear the faint crackling of gunfire ahead of them, carried on the torrid wind. Robbins brightened, for this meant that some survivors still remained on their feet. Kid Wolf, experienced in Indian warfare, understood the situation at once, and ordered his men to scatter and come in on the Indians from all sides.

  "Robbins," he said, "I want yo' with me. Yo' two," he went on, singling out a couple of the posse, "ride in from the east. The rest of yo' come in from the west and south. Make every shot count, fo' if we don't scattah the Apaches at the first chahge, we will be at a big disadvantage!"

  It was a desperate situation, with the odds nearly five to one against them. Reaching the pass, they could look down on the battle from the cover of the mesquites. From the overturned stage, thin jets of fire streaked steadily, and a pall of white smoke hung over it like a cloud. From the brush, other gun flashes answered the fire. Occasionally a writhing brown body could be seen, crawling from point to point. The thicket seemed to be alive with them.

  Kid Wolf listened for a moment to the faint popping of the guns. Then he raised his hand in a signal.

  "Let's go!" he sang out.

  A second later, Blizzard was pounding down the pass like a snowstorm before the wind.

  The leader of this band of murderous Apaches was a youthful warrior named Bear Claw, the son of the tribal chief. Peering at the coach from his post behind a clump of paloverde, his cruel face was lighted by a grin of satisfaction. From time to time he gave a hoarse order, and at his bidding, his braves would creep up or fall back as the occasion demanded.

  Bear Claw was in high good humor, for he saw that the ambushed victims in the stage could not hope to hold out much longer. Only three remained alive in the coach, and some of these were wounded. The white men's fire was becoming less accurate.

  The young leader of the Apaches was horrible to look at. He was naked save for a breechcloth and boot moccasins and his face was daubed with ocher and vermilion. Across his lean chest, too, was a smear of paint just under the necklace of bear claws that gave him his name. He was armed with a .50-caliber Sharps single-shot rifle and with the only revolver in the tribe—an old-fashioned cap-and-ball six-shooter, taken from some murdered prospector.

  Bear Claw was about to raise his left hand—a signal for the final rush that would wipe out the white men in the overturned coach—when a terrific volley burst out like rattling thunder from all sides. Bullets raked the brush in a deadly hail. An Indian a few paces from Bear Claw jumped up with a weird yell and fell back again, pierced through the body.

  The young chief saw whirlwinds of dust swooping down on the scene from every direction. In those whirlwinds, he knew, were horses. Bear Claw had courage only when the odds were with him. How many men were in the attacking force, he did not know. But there were too many to suit him, and he took no chances. He gave the order for retreat, and the startled Apaches made a rush for their ponies, hidden in an arroyo. Bear Claw scrambled after them, with lead kicking up dust all about him.

  But it did not take Bear Claw long to see that his band outnumbered the white posse, more than four to one. Throwing himself on his horse, he decided to set his renegade warriors an example. Giving the Apache war whoop, he kicked his heels in his pony's flanks and led the charge. Picking out the foremost of the posse—a bronzed rider on a snow-white horse—he went at him with leveled revolver.

  What happened then unnerved the Apaches at Bear Claw's back. The man Bear Claw had charged was Kid Wolf! The Texan did not return the Indian's blaze of revolver fire. He merely ducked low in his saddle and swung his big white horse into Bear Claw's pony! At the same time, he swung out his left hand sharply. It caught Bear Claw's jaw with a terrific jolt. The weight of both speeding horses was behind the impact. Something snapped. Bear Claw went off his pony's back like a bag of meal and landed on the sand, his head at a queer angle. His neck was broken!

  Then Kid Wolf's guns began to talk. Fire burst from the level of both his hips as he put spurs to Blizzard and charged with head low directly into the amazed Apaches. The others, too, followed the Texan's example, but it was Kid Wolf who turned the trick. It was the deciding card, and without their chief, the redskins were panic-stricken. The only thing they thought of now was escape. The little hoofs of their ponies began to drum madly. But instead of rushing in the direction of the whites, they drummed away from them. Kid Wolf ordered his men not to follow. Nor would he allow any more firing.

  "No slaughter, men," he said. "Save yo' bullets till yo' need them.

  Let's take a look at the stage."

  Wheeling their mounts, the posse, who had lost not a man in the encounter, raced back to the overturned coach. The vehicle, riddled with bullets and arrows, resembled a butcher's shop. On the ground near it was the body of the driver, while the guard, hit in a dozen places, lay half in and half out of the coach, dead.

  Young Robbins had left four men alive when he made his escape toward Lost Springs. There now remained only two. And one of these, it could be seen, was dying.

  "Dad!" Robbins cried. "Are yuh hurt?"

  "Got a bullet in the shoulder and one in the knee," replied his father, crawling out with difficulty. "Good thing yuh got here when yuh did! See to Claymore. He's hit bad. I'm all right."

  Kid Wolf drew out the still breathing form of the other survivor. He was quick to note that the man was beyond any human aid. The frontiersman, his six-gun still emitting a curl of blue smoke, was placed in the shade of the coach, and water was given to him.

  "I'm all shot to pieces, boys," he gasped. "I'm goin' fast—but I'm glad the Apaches won't have me to—chop up afterward. Take my word for it—there's some white man—behind this. There's twenty thousand dollars in the express box——"

  His words trailed off, and with a moan, he breathed his last. Kid Wolf gently drew a blanket over his face and then turned to the others.

  "I think he's right," he mused, as he took off his wide-brimmed hat.

  "When Indians murdah, theah's usually a white man's brains behind them."

  Garvey, when Kid Wolf had left with his quickly gathered posse, went to the bar and took several drinks of his own liquor. It was a fiery red whisky distilled from wheat, and of the type known to the Indians as "fire water." It did not put Garvey in any better humor. Wiping his lips, he left his saloon and crossed the road to a tiny one-room adobe.

  A young Indian was sleeping in the shade, and Garvey awakened him with a few well-directed kicks. The Indian's eyes widened with fear at the sight of the white man's rage-distorted face, and when he had heard his orders, delivered in the hoarse Apache tongue, he raced for his pony, tethered in the bushes near him, and drummed away.

  "Tell 'em to meet me in the saloon pronto!" Garvey shouted after him.

  The saloon keeper passed an impatient half hour. A quartet of Mexicans entered his place demanding liquor, but Garvey waved them away. Something important was evidently on foot.

  Soon the dull clip-clop of horses' hoofs was heard, and he went to the door to see five riders approaching Lost Springs from the north. He waved his hand to them before they had left the cover of the cottonwoods.

  The group of sunburned, booted men who hastily entered Garvey's Place were individuals of the Lost Springs ruler's own stamp. All were gunmen, and some wore two revolvers. Most of them were wanted by the law for dark deeds done elsewhere. Sherif
fs from the Texas Panhandle would have recognized two of them as Al and Andy Arnold—brother murderers. Another was a killer chased out of Dodge City, Kansas—a slender, quick-fingered youth known as "Pick" Stephenson. Henry Shank—a gunman from Lincoln, New Mexico—strode in their lead.

  The fifth member of the quintet was the most terrible of them all. He was a half-breed Apache, dressed partly in the Indian way and partly like a white. He wore a battered felt hat with a feather in the crown. He wore no shirt, but over his naked chest was buttoned a dirty vest, around which two cap-and-ball Colt revolvers swung.

  His stride, muffled by his beaded moccasins, was as noiseless as a cat's. This man—Garvey's go-between—was Charley Hood. He grinned continually, but his smile was like the snarl of a snapping dog.

  "What's up, Garvey?" Shank demanded. "We was just ready to start out fer a cattle clean-up."

  "Plenty's up," snarled Garvey. "Help yoreselves to liquor while I tell yuh. First o' all, do any of yuh know Kid Wolf?"

  It was evident that most of them had heard of him. None had seen him, however, and Garvey went on to tell what had happened.

  "How many men did he take with him?" Stephenson wanted to know.

  "About a dozen."

  "Bear Claw will wipe him out, then," grinned Al Arnold.

  "Somehow I don't think so," said Garvey. "And if that stage deal fails us——"

  "A twenty-thousand-dollar job!" Shank barked angrily. "And we get half!"

  "We get all," chuckled Garvey. "The Apaches will give their share to me for fire water. That's why this must go through. If Bear Claw and his braves slip up, we'll have to finish it. As for Kid Wolf——"

  Garvey's expression changed to one of malignant fury, and he made the significant gesture of cutting a throat.

  "I hear that this Kid Wolf makes it his business to right wrongs,"

  Shank sneered. "Thinks he's a law of himself. Justice, he calls it."

  "Well, one thing!" roared Garvey, thumping the bar. "There ain't no law west o' the Pecos! And he's west o' the Pecos now! The only law here is this kind," and he tapped his .44.

  "What's happened to yore gun?" one of them asked.

  Garvey's face suddenly went dark red.

  "I dropped it this mornin' and busted the handle," he lied. "If it had been in workin' order, I'd have got this Kid Wolf the minute he opened his mouth."

  "Well, if the Apaches don't get him, we will," Stephenson declared. "By the way, Garvey, there's another deal on foot. What do yuh think o' this?" And he laid a chunk of ore on the bar under the saloon keeper's nose.

  "Solid silver!" Garvey gasped. "Where's it from?"

  "From the valley of the San Simon. It's from land owned—owned, mind yuh—by an hombre named Robbins. Gov'ment grant."

  "We'll figger a way to get it," returned Garvey, then his eyes narrowed. "What name did yuh say?"

  "Robbins. Bill Robbins."

  Garvey grinned. "Why, he was on the stage! It was his kid that came here and made his play fer help. Looks like things is comin' our way, after all."

  The conference was interrupted by the sound of galloping hoofs. An

  Indian pounded up in front of the saloon in a cloud of yellow dust.

  The pony was lathered and breathing hard.

  "It's a scout!" Garvey cried. "Let him in, and we'll see what he has to say."

  The Indian runner's words, gasped in halting, broken English, brought consternation to Garvey and his treacherous gunmen:

  "No get money box. Have keel two-three, maybe more, of white men in stage wagon. Then riders come. White chief on white devil horse, he break Bear Claw's neck. Bear Claw die. We ride away as fast as could do. White men fix stage wagon. Hunt for horse to drive it to Lost Springs."

  Garvey clenched his huge fists.

  "Get me another gun!" he rasped. "We'll have this out with Kid Wolf right now!"

  Charley Hood spoke for the first time, and his bestial face with distorted with rage.

  "Bear Claw son of Great Chief Yellow Skull! Yellow Skull get Keed Wolf if he have to follow him across world! And when he get him——"

  Charley Hood, the half-breed, laughed insanely.

  "I never thought of that," said Garvey. "Maybe we'd be doin' Mr. Wolf from Texas a favor by puttin' lead through him. Bear Claw was Yellow Skull's favorite. The old chief is an expert at torture. I'd like to be on hand to see it. But I've got an idea. Shank, have José dig a grave on Boot Hill—make it two of 'em. We've got to get that express money."

  "And the silver," chuckled the desperado, as he took a farewell drink at the bar.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  TWO OPEN GRAVES

  It was some time before the overturned stagecoach could be righted. It took longer to provide a team for it. When the bodies of the unfortunate white men had been loaded into the vehicle and the ponies lined out it was late in the afternoon.

  Kid Wolf had examined the contents of the express box and found that it contained a small fortune in money. He decided to take charge of it and see that it reached proper hands. Twenty miles west of Lost Springs, he learned, were an express-company station and agent. The Texan planned to guard the money at Lost Springs overnight and then take it on to the express post, located at Mexican Tanks.

  The two Robbinses, both father and son, were overcome with gratitude toward the man who had saved them. They at once agreed to stay with Kid Wolf.

  The posse members that the Texan had drafted at revolver point were not so willing. Although most of them were honest men, they feared Garvey's gang and the consequences of their act. All of them suspected that Garvey had a hand in the plot to rob the stagecoach. Most of them made excuses and rode away in different directions.

  "We beat the Apaches," explained one, "so I reckon I'll go back to the ranch. Adios, and good luck!"

  Kid Wolf smiled. He knew that the men were leaving him for other reasons. Perhaps a man with less courage would have avoided Lost Springs, or even abandoned the money. The young Texan, however, was not to be swerved from what he believed to be the right.

  "Look out for Garvey, Kid," begged Dave Robbins. "He hates yuh for what yuh done."

  "I've heard of him," the elder Robbins added. "If helpin' us has got you into trouble, I'm sorry. He's a man without a heart."

  "Then some day," Kid Wolf said softly, "he's liable to find a bullet in the spot wheah his heart ought to be. I don't regret comin' to yo' aid, not fo' a minute. And I guess Blizzahd and I are ready to see this thing through to the end."

  Kid Wolf was riding on his white horse alongside the rumbling stage. The only member of the drafted posse who had stayed was driving the vehicle, and beside him on the box rode the two Robbinses, father and son.

  The road to Lost Springs was not the direct route the Indian messenger had taken. It led around steep side hills and high-banked washes in which nothing grew but tough, stunted clumps of thirsty paloverde. Near the tiny settlement, the trail climbed a long slope to swing around a cactus-cluttered mound which served as Lost Springs' Boot Hill. The stage trail cut the barren little graveyard in two, and on both sides of it were headboards, some rotting with age, and others quite new, marking the last resting places of men who had died with smoke in their eyes.

  It was nearly sundown when Kid Wolf and the party with the bullet-riddled coach reached this point. They found a group of hard-eyed men waiting for them. With Garvey were his five gunmen, mounted, armed to the teeth, and blocking the road! Kid Wolf caught the driver's eyes and nodded for him to go on. The stage rumbled up to the spot where Garvey waited.

  "Stop!" the Lost Springs ruler snarled. "I reckon we want some words with yuh!"

  "Is it words yo' want," drawled the Texan, drawing up his snowy mount, "or bullets?"

  "That depends on you!" Garvey snapped. "We mean business. Hand over that express money."

  "And the next thing?" the Texan asked softly.

  "Next thing, we got business with that man!" Garvey pointed to Dave

&nbs
p; Robbins' father.

  "With me?" Robbins demanded in astonishment.

  "The same. We want yuh to sign this paper, turnin' over yore claim in the San Simon to me. Now both of yuh have heard!"

  "But why should yuh want my claim in San Simon?"

  "Yuh might as well know," Garvey sneered in reply, "there's silver on it. And I want it. Hand over that express box now and sign the paper. If yuh don't——"

  "And if we don't?" Kid Wolf asked mildly. His eyebrows had risen the merest trifle.

  "Here's the answer!" Garvey rasped. He pointed at two mounds of freshly disturbed earth a few feet from the road. "Read what's written over 'em, and take yore choice."

  Kid Wolf saw that two headboards had been erected near the shallow graves. One of them had the following significant epitaph written on it in neatly printed Spanish:

  Aqui llacen restos de Kid Wolf.

  This in English was translated: "Here lies in the grave, at rest, Kid

  Wolf."

  The other headboard was the same, except that the name "Bill Robbins" had been inserted.

  "Those graves will be filled," sneered Garvey, "unless yuh both come through. Now what's yore answer?"

  "Garvey," spoke up Kid Wolf, "I've known of othah white men who hired the Apaches to do their dirty work. They all came to a bad end. And so, if yo' want my answah—take it!"

  Garvey's gang found themselves staring into the muzzles of two .45s!

  The draw had been magical, so swiftly had the Texan's hands snapped down at his hips. Al Arnold, alone of the six riders, saw the movement in time even to think about drawing his own weapon. And perhaps it would have been better if he had not seen, for his own gun pull was slow and clumsy in comparison with Kid Wolf's. His right hand had moved but a few inches when the Texan's left-hand Colt spat a wicked tongue of flame.

  Before the thunder of the explosion could be heard, the leaden slug tore its way through Arnold's wrist. Before the puff of black powder smoke had drifted away, Arnold's gun was thudding to the ground. The others dared not draw, as Kid Wolf's other six-gun still swept them. They knew that the Texan could not fail to get one or more of them, and they hesitated. Garvey himself remained motionless, frozen in the saddle. His lips trembled with rage.