Kid Wolf of Texas Page 18

  "I'm not a killah," Kid Wolf drawled. "I nevah take life unless it's forced on me. If I did, I'd soon make Lost Springs a bettah place to live in. Now turn yo' backs with yo' hands in the air—and ride! The next time I shoot, it's goin' to be on sight! Vamose! Pronto!"

  Muttering angrily under their breath, Garvey and his gunmen obeyed the order. Yet Kid Wolf knew that the trouble had not been averted, but merely postponed. He was not through with the Lost Springs bandit gang.

  The driver of the coach—the only member of the posse who had remained loyal in the face of peril—was a man of courage. Johnson was his name, and he offered his adobe house as a place of refuge for the night.

  "I'm thinkin' yuh'll be needin' it," he told the Texan. "We can stand 'em off there, for a while, anyway. Garvey will have a hundred Mexes and Injuns with him before mornin'."

  Kid Wolf accepted, and the coach was deserted. They buried the bodies of the men they had brought in the stage, not in the Lost Springs graveyard, but in an arroyo near it. Then they removed the valuable express box and took it with them to the Johnson adobe.

  The house was a two-room affair, not more than a quarter of a mile from the Springs, and still closer to Boot Hill. On the side next to the water hole, the grass and tulles grew nearly waist-high. On the other three sides, barren ground swept out as far as eye could reach.

  Kid Wolf placed the express box in the one living room of the hut. As a great deal might depend upon having horses ready, Blizzard, along with two pinto ponies, was quartered in the other apartment. This redone, and with one of the four men standing watch at all times, they prepared a hasty meal.

  "One thing we lack that we got to have," stated Johnson. "It's water. I'll take a bucket and go to the spring. I know the path through the tulles."

  They watched him proceed warily toward the water hole. The landscape was peaceful. Not a moving thing could be seen. In a few moments, Johnson was swallowed up in the high grass. He reappeared again, carrying a brimming bucket. They could see the setting sun sparkling on the water as he swung along. Then suddenly a shot rang out sharply—the unmistakable crack of a Sharps .50-caliber rifle! Without a cry, Johnson sank into the tulles, the bucket clattering beside him. He had been shot in the back!

  A cry of horror burst from the lips of the watchers in the adobe. It was all that Kid Wolf could do to hold back the excitable younger Robbins, who wanted to avenge their friend's death immediately.

  "No use fo' us to show ouahselves until we know how the cahds are stacked," the Texan said grimly. "Nevah mind, Dave. They'll pay fo' it!"

  It was hard to tell just how many of their enemies might be lurking in the tulles or beyond them. They were soon to find that there were far too many. Gunfire began to blaze out in sharp, reëchoing volleys. Bullets clipped the adobe shack, sending up spurts of gray dust.

  "Don't show yo'selves," Kid Wolf warned.

  His keen eyes lined out the sights of his own twin Colts, and he fired twice, and then twice again. As far as the others could see, there was nothing in view to shoot at; but agitated threshings about in the tulles showed them that at least some of his bullets had found human lodging places.

  Garvey had evidently succeeded in adding men to his gang, for more than a dozen gun flashes burst out at once. The attackers soon learned, however, that it wasn't healthy to attempt to rush the adobe. Surrounding it was impossible, and for a while they contented themselves with sending lead humming through the small window on the exposed side of the hut.

  "We're in fo' a siege," Kid Wolf told the elder Robbins.

  "Maybe we'd better give in to 'em," said the other.

  Kid Wolf smiled and shook his head.

  "That wouldn't save us. They'd butchah us, anyway. Nevah yuh worry.

  Before they get us, they'll find that The Wolf, from Texas, has teeth!"

  "Then we'll play out the hand," agreed Robbins.

  "To the last cahd," Kid Wolf drawled. "I have two hands heah that can turn up twelve lead aces fo' a show-down. And I have anothah ace—a steel one, that's always in the deck."

  The Texan saw as well as the others how desperate the situation had become. He knew that death would be the probable outcome for all of them.

  Kid Wolf, however, was not a type of man who gave up. If they must go out, he decided, they would go out fighting.

  The sun climbed the sky and disappeared over the distant blue range to the west, leaving the desert behind bathed in warm reds and soft purples. Then the shadows deepened, and night fell.

  With it came a full moon, riding high out of the southeast—a pumpkin-colored, gigantic Arizona moon that changed to shining silver. Its light illuminated the scene and turned the landscape nearly as bright as day. This was a fact in favor of the three men cornered in the adobe. The attackers dared not show themselves in a rush. All night long their guns cracked, and they continued to do so when the east was beginning to lighten with the dawn.

  Another day, and it proved to be one of torment. There was no water. Before the hour of noon, the three besieged men were suffering from intense thirst. The little adobe was like an oven. The sun burned down pitilessly, distorting the air with waves of heat, and drawing mocking mirages in the sky. Bullets still hummed and buzzed about them. Every hissing slug seemed to whistle the mournful tune of "Death—death—death!" Late in the afternoon, the elder Robbins could endure the torture no longer.

  "I'm goin' after water!" he cried.

  Neither his son nor Kid Wolf could reason with him. He would not listen. He reasoned that although it was death to venture to the spring, it was also death to remain. He was nearly crazed with thirst.

  "Let me go, then," said the Texan.

  "No!" gasped Robbins. "Yuh stay with Dave. I'm old, anyway. Promise yuh'll stick with him, no matter what happens to me!"

  "I promise," said The Kid, and the two men shook hands.

  Getting to the water hole and back again was a forlorn hope, but Robbins was past reasoning. Lurching through the door, he ran outside the hut and toward the tulles. Young Robbins cried after his father, and then covered his eyes.

  There was a sudden crackling of revolver fire. Spurts of bluish smoke blossomed out from the high grass—half a score of them! Bill Robbins staggered on his feet, reeled on a few steps, and then fell. His body had been riddled.

  Kid Wolf's touch was tender as he took the orphaned youth's hand in his own. But his voice, when he spoke, was like his eyes—hard as steel:

  "Garvey will join him, Dave, or we will! And if we do, let's hope we'll meet it as bravely. I have a plan. If we escape, we must do it to-night. Can yo' stick it out till then?"

  Young Robbins nodded. The death of his father had been a great shock to him, but he did not flinch. In that desperate hour, Kid Wolf knew that he no longer had a boy at his side, but a man!

  How the day wore its way through to a close was ever afterward a mystery to them. Their throats were parched, and their eyes bloodshot. To make matters worse, their horses, too, were suffering. Blizzard nickered softly from time to time, but quieted when Kid Wolf called to him through the wall.

  Night brought some relief. Again the moon rose upon the tragic scene,

  and it grew cooler. Before the twilight had quite faded, Kid Wolf and

  Dave Robbins saw something that made them boil inwardly—the burial of

  Bill Robbins on Boot Hill!

  Out of revolver range, a group of the bandits was filling up the grave. Garvey had made half of his threat good. And he was biding his time to complete his boast. The Texan's grave still waited!

  A thin bank of clouds rolled up to obscure somewhat the light of the moon. This was what Kid Wolf had been waiting for. It was their only chance.

  "I'm goin' to try and get through on foot," he whispered. "Befo' I go, I'll unloose Blizzahd. He's trained to follow, and he'll find me latah, if I make it. I don't dare ride him, because he's white and too good a tahget in the moon. I'll have to crawl toward Boot Hill. It's the only
way out. In half an houah, yo' follow. Savvy?"

  Dave nodded. Then The Kid added a few terse directions:

  "I'll show yo' the way and meet yo' on the hill. Be as quiet and careful as an Indian, and take yo' time. If anything should happen to me, strike fo' yo' place on the San Simon. The reason I'm goin' first is so that yo' can escape in the excitement if they spot me. Heah's luck! I'll turn my hoss loose now."

  They shook hands. Then, like a lithe moving shadow, the Texan crept out into the night.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  PURSUIT

  Fire flames darted occasionally from the high tulles, licking the darkness like the tongues of venomous serpents. Rifles cracked, and bullets, fired at random, buzzed across the sand flats. Kid Wolf had an uncomfortable few minutes ahead of him.

  Whenever the moon peeped out of its flying blanket of cloud, he was forced to lie flat and motionless on the ground. Lead often spattered uncomfortably close, but foot by foot he made his way toward Boot Hill.

  This rise in ground, he believed, would be free from his enemies. After once reaching this, Dave Robbins and he would be on the road to safety. Blizzard, well trained, would follow him if he managed to elude the bullets of the Garvey gang.

  The Texan was on Boot Hill now, and for the first time in many minutes, he breathed freely. The firing behind had become faint, and it was hardly likely that any watchers remained on the hill.

  But Kid Wolf received a thrill of horror and surprise. The moon drifted free of its cloud curtain for a moment. He was standing not a dozen feet from the two freshly made graves. One, with Bill Robbins' headboard over it, was covered with a mound of earth.

  Standing near the other, with a cocked revolver in his hand, was the half-breed, Charley Hood! His cruel lips were parted in a terrible smile as he slowly raised the weapon to a level with his eyes!

  While Kid Wolf had been creeping toward Boot Hill, Dave Robbins was in the adobe hut, counting the dragging minutes. The suspense, now that the time for action was at hand, was nerve-racking. Would the Texan make it? Robbins strained his ears for the triumphant yells that would announce The Kid's death or capture.

  As the seconds grew to minutes, he began to breathe easier. When it seemed to him that a half hour had passed, he prepared to follow. The moon, however, was now too bright, and he had to wait fully a quarter of an hour more before the light faded to shadow again. When the moment arrived, he squirmed through the doorway and across the sands on his hands and knees.

  Dave Robbins was frontier bred, and although his progress was slower than the Texan's had been, he crept along as silently as one of the redskins themselves. Not a mesquite twig snapped under his body; not a pebble rattled. It seemed to take him hours to reach the hill which Kid Wolf had pointed out to him. As he did so, the moonlight again became so bright that it made the landscape nearly as white as day. For a time, he lay flat against the ground; then he wriggled on.

  Where was he? Would he find his friend, the Texan? He waited a while, and then whistled, soft and low. There was no answer. He looked around him, trying to decide where he was and what to do. His eyes fell upon the two recently dug graves. Headboards stood at each of them. Both were covered. Near the mounds lay a spade. The earth clinging to it was moist.

  With his heart in his throat, Dave Robbins again looked at the grave markers. One read: "Bill Robbins." It was the grave of his father! The other mound was marked "Kid Wolf"!

  For a few minutes, Dave Robbins stood numbed. Something terrible had happened; just what, he did not know. It seemed the end. Could his friend, the gallant Texan, have met death? It didn't seem possible, and yet the evidence was before his eyes. Anger against Garvey and his hired killers suddenly overcame him. A hot wave seemed to sweep over him. He turned about and faced, not the distant San Simon, but in the direction of his enemies.

  "I'll get some of 'em before I go, Kid!" he cried.

  As if in answer, something came to his ears that brought a cry of joy to the youth. It was a stanza of a familiar song, sung in the soft, musical accents of the South:

  "Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie-ee!"

  Turning about, Dave Robbins saw Kid Wolf's face in the moonlight! The shock of it left the youth weak for a moment. The two wrung hands, and Robbins blurted:

  "I thought yuh were dead! What happened? Why this covered grave?"

  "A half-breed lookout," the Texan explained in a whisper. "Ugly, but slow with a gun. He had the drop, so instead of reachin' fo' mah Colts, I pretended to raise mah hands. Then I gave him this—mah hole cahd, the thirteenth ace."

  And Kid Wolf showed him the heavy bowie knife so carefully hidden in its sheath sewn to the inside of his shirt collar.

  "With this through his throat, he fell right in the grave they'd dug fo' me. Then I saw the shovel, and I couldn't resist throwin' some dirt ovah him. Well, that's that. I hated to take his life, but I had to do it to save mine. The thing to do now is to get out of this."

  "How do yuh expect yore hoss to get to us?" breathed Robbins.

  "Listen." The Texan smiled. "He knows this call."

  He waited for a lull in the rifle-popping below, and then he gave the coyote yell—a mournful cry that seemed to echo and reëcho. The sound was so perfect an imitation that Robbins could scarcely believe his ears. And it even fooled the Indians. It did not, however, deceive the sagacious horse that waited patiently in the adobe. The Kid clutched his young companion's arm. Straining their eyes, they saw a white something moving up an arroyo.

  "That Blizzahd hoss is smahter than I am," chuckled the Texan. "He knows who his enemies are, and he knows how to keep out of their sight. Watch him climb that dry wash."

  They held their breath until Blizzard, moving so noiselessly that his hoofs seemed as cushioned as a cougar's, reached the top of the hill. Then Kid Wolf led him over it and down again into a gully a little distance to the west of it. Ahead of them now was safety, if they could make it. The Texan mounted and swung up Robbins behind the saddle.

  "Too bad we had to leave that twenty thousand, Kid," said Robbins.

  The Kid's white teeth flashed in a smile.

  "Really, Dave," he drawled, "do yo' think I'd let Garvey get away with that? That express box was just a blind. Don't yo' know what I did while the rest of yo' were tippin' back the stagecoach? No? Well, I transferred the twenty thousand to Blizzahd's saddlebags, so the money"—he tapped the bulges on each side of the big saddle—"is right heah!"

  Kid Wolf, ever since he had taken charge of the express money, had realized his responsibility and trust. He would protect it with his life. If he could reach Mexican Tanks with it, the money would be safe, for a small post of soldiers and government scouts guarded the place.

  They had not gone a half mile, however, when a sound of distant shouting broke out behind them.

  "That means they've discovahed ouah absence," said the Texan, grimly.

  "We'll have ouah hands full befo' long!"

  Robbins, and the Texan as well, had been through the country before, and knew the lay of the land. The former had learned the location of a water hole west of them in the hills, and they decided to head for that, as they were suffering from intense thirst. Blizzard, too, had not taken water for thirty-six hours.

  The Apache is one of the best trailers in the world. They were under a terrible handicap, and both realized it. With the great white horse, strong as it was, carrying double, they could not hope to out-distance pursuit.

  "Yuh'd better leave me, Kid," Robbins begged.

  "Befo' I'd leave yo'," returned the Texan, "I'd leave me!"

  Dawn began to glow pink and orange behind them, and gradually the dim, star-studded vault overhead became gray with the new day. Shortly afterward, they reached the water hole. It was nearly dry, but enough moisture remained to refresh both horse and riders.

  Then they went on again. Kid Wolf could, tell by Blizzard's actions that they were being followed. Before long he himself saw signs. Little dust clouds began
to show behind them, scattered over a line miles long.

  "Garvey and his Apaches!" the Texan jerked out. "And they're gainin' fast."

  "Can we beat 'em to Mexican Tanks?"

  "No," The Kid drawled, "but we can fight!"

  They soon saw the hopelessness of it all. The horizon behind them swarmed with moving dots—dots that grew larger and more distinct with every fleeting minute. Garvey had obtained reënforcements, without doubt, for there seemed to be no end to the pursuing Apaches.

  Blizzard ran like the thoroughbred he was. But even his iron muscles could not stand the strain for long. The ponies behind were fresh, and the snow-white charger was tremendously handicapped with the added weight which had been placed upon it.

  Puffs of white smoke blossomed out behind them. A bullet, spent and far short, dropped away to their left, sending up a geyser of sand.

  "I guess we'll fight now," Kid Wolf said, drawing his six-guns.

  The grim-faced fighter from Texas knew the ways of the Apaches and was prepared for what followed. It was not his first encounter with renegade red men of the Southwest. He was also aware of what awaited them if they were taken captive. Death with lead would be far more merciful.

  The line of Apache warriors spread out even farther. Blizzard was speeding over a flat table-land now, flanked by two ridges of iron-gray hills. A file of Indians separated from the main body and raced along the left-hand ridge. Another file of copper-brown, half-naked savages drummed along to the right.

  Rifle fire crackled and flashed. Bullets now began to buzz and whine like infuriated insects. Arrows, falling far short, whistled an angry tune. The Kid held his fire and bade Dave Robbins follow his example. It was no time to waste lead.