McClure's Magazine/Volume 49/Number 1/The Red Ride

by by B. M. Bower and Buck Connor

 

The Red Ride

Another of the Gripping Texas
Ranger Yarns

by B. M. Bower
and
Buck Connor

“Can't we please see Fred? He’s hurt, and we—we brought him some chicken broth”

BILL GILLES swung off the evening train from the West just as it was slowing for its one-minute stop at Cobra: hitched himself into his clothes with that inimitable, squirming movement of the body common to those who wear their trousers without suspenders, and hurried across a vacant lot to the post office.

Anybody been after the mail?" he asked with his face framed in the small delivery window How's everything, Williams?

Phi postmaster peered at Luck over his spectacles and pulled his chin-whiskers with one hand. “Come around inside,” he said deliberately, “and I'll let yuh look through them congressional records for yourself. I ain't got time to go over 'em to find out about that bill.” One eyelid went down in a wink before he left the window to slide back the bolt on the door through which Cobra citizens never passed.

When Bill was inside and the door locked behind him, Williams led the way to another door. Beyond that was a small, bare room with a cot bed in it, a chair or two and a table. Several discarded garments proclaimed this the private sleeping apartment of Al Williams, Postmaster

“Number Four don't carry no mail,” he said, “so I kin tell you what all has been happening. Charlie Horne and the Kid, they jest about cleaned out Dallam's ranch today—arrested the hull hay crew and winged Fred Dallam in the shoulder. They collected I dunno how many guns, that was headed across the line inside that baled hay Dallam's been havin' sech a good market fur over there. I reckon maybe you'll find the boys down at the jail: I heard say they was tryin' to sweat a little information outa the greezers. They'll tell yuah all about how they done the trick—I ain't got time, and I ain't sure I got it straight as to details anyhow.

“An' them men you wired to have arrested on the Ojito case, they was caught, all right—I guess you know that, though. I suspicioned 'em all along, from the letters that was goin' back and forth between them and Sim Carson. I knowed Sim was crooked.” He opened the door and peered out to see whether anyone was waiting at the delivery window. “—Say, I got to go and sell five cents worth uh stamps,” he grinned. “But I want to give ye a little mite of a hint, Mr. Gillis. You and the boys better sleep in the jail tonight—and you better see to it you got plenty ammunition right handy. I don't know as there's any jail-breakin' being planned—but if I was you I wouldn't take no chances till I got them fellers on the train and headed fur Del Rio. No, and I wouldn't let up then, by jiminy! I'd chain 'em to the car-seats and padlock 'em there, and I wouldn't take a long breath till I seen 'em locked in cells at Del Rio. I don't know nothin', but I kinda suspicion something; they're sure a snaky bunch around here—and I ought t' know; I've lived here goin' on ten years.”

He went out, and presently Bill followed him. “All right—much obliged,” he said as Williams let him out of the office.

“Found what yuh wanted, eh?” Williams gave him a whimsical glance over his spectacles and went to tearing off five two-cent stamps for a man at the window. For such was the town of Cobra that when two men talked together in private it was best to satisfy at once the curiosity of any chance observers as to what they had been talking about.

Bill went straight down to the jail, carrying his grip and his cased carbine with him, and presently he was listening to the tale his comrades had to tell of how they had by pure chance come upon the solution of the gun-running mystery that had interfered with their sleep for so long. In a little room opening off the jailer's office, Fred Dallam lifted his head from the pillow of his cot to curse the rangers through the open door.

“If I didn't have a shot-up shoulder I'd fix the three of you right now,” he threatened. “And if you try to mix my old man into this, I'll get yuh if it takes the rest of my life. That's a lie—his running off his own cattle across the line and claiming they was stole just for a stall. The old man's straight—and I don't give a damn how you look at it—I'm straight, too. I bought them guns and paid for 'em; they was mine just as much as my shirt is mine. And I had a right to sell 'em where I could get the most money—and you, nor the State of Texas nor the United States of America, ain't got the right to butt in and tell me how and where I shall sell my property. This is a free country.”

“You better handcuff that hombre to his bed,” Bill advised the jailer dispassionately. “His good hand; here—I'll do it, and then I'll know it's done right.”

“Aw, I wouldn't go and do that,” the jailer protested weakly. “Fred's all right. Him and me has been pretty good friends, and he's got a bullet in his shoulder. He wouldn't go and try anything—would you, Fred? You wouldn't go and get me in wrong. I got to hold you here till you're square with the law, and you wouldn't——”

“Of course he won't!” Bill Gillis straightened up and inspected the wrist which he had locked to the bed rail with steel handcuffs. He looked down into the blazing brown eyes of the wounded man and chuckled. “He's going to lie right there and go to sleep. He ain't helping to keep his fever down, cussin' around like that.”

“You think you've got the world by the tail and a down-hill pull, don't yuh?” Fred sneered up at him. “Well, that's all right—far as it goes. But the game ain't played out yet, by a long shot! Laugh, you damn fool—you'll be layin' under a pile of doby bricks ten feet high by mornin'—you and them hell-hounds that turned this deal. And the fellow that shot me up'll holler for somebody to kill him and put him outa his misery. And as for that love-sick calf of a kid that——”

Bill looked at him with calm speculation, and went out and shut the door. “Better have the doctor give him something to put him to sleep,” he said to the jailer. “He's working himself up into a fever, and we won't be able to ship him outa here in the morning if he don't keep quiet.”

“He spilled something there, didn't he?' Charlie Horne suggested. “About you under a pile of doby bricks and me——”

“He spilled what he hopes 'll happen. Say, I haven't had any supper yet. I'll go get some and come back; and you boys better stay right here. Burton, you can fix us up with blankets, can't you? We'll sleep in the corridor tonight.”

“Well, I wish you would,” Burton assured him relievedly. “I'll feel a whole lot better; them six greasers have all got friends in town, and them four hay-haulers, they've got friends, and Fred—why, he's got an awful lot of influence here.”

“I noticed that a few minutes ago,” Bill made dry comment, and went out. When he returned, an hour later, he carried a heavy, square package which he unwrapped immediately. Without any remarks whatever he placed eight boxes of rifle cartridges on the table which served as the jailer's desk, and from his pocket he drew three boxes of forty-fives. He caught the Kid's round eyes fixed upon him questioningly and smiled.

“You never can tell, Kid,” he answered the look.

“D'you s'pose they'll try to mob the jail?” The Kid's voice was vibrant with a boy's eagerness for excitement. “I'd just like to see 'em try that once!”

“I wouldn't,” Bill said shortly, and left Van to guess at his exact meaning.

In the weeks he had spent at Cobra, Bill Gillis had come to have a very comprehensive knowledge of who's-who in the place. Studying the people there had been a part of his business. He got the cell keys now from Burton and went, with Charlie and Van at his heels, to take a look at the six Mexicans whom Charlie had arrested at the hay-baler in Dallam's adobe corral. The four white men who had hauled the hay across the border were locked up separately, across the narrow corridor from where the Mexicans were huddled together.

Bill did not go into the cell after all. Through the grating of the door he could see them all, and he saw that they were strangers, every one of them. They eyed him blackly, with sidelong glances at one another. They did not curse, as Fred Dallam had done. They were silent with the silence of sullen hate.

Bill looked them over and turned away. “Them hombres came from across the river, and I'll bet on it,” he said. “Fred was too foxy to use men that was acquainted over here—afraid they might drop a word, I guess.”

He glanced in at the four white men and walked down to the end of the corridor, where a high, grated window showed how the first stars were beginning to wink down from the sky that was like luminous, purple velvet. He turned to the right where a narrow hallway extended to the corner, turned there and led back past the cell where the hay-haulers were imprisoned, and ended at a narrow door which opened into the room where Fred Dallam lay. He retraced his steps to the center corridor and followed another narrow passage which extended between the other cell and the outside wall, to a door opening into the office. He went through there and examined the front door and the barred windows, making sure of certain heights and angles. Afterwards he sprawled himself in an old wooden armchair and began to roll a cigarette.

“I kinda like the way this jail is planned,” he observed lazily to Burton. “We could hold off quite a mob here. What's the roof made of? Anything that'll burn easy? I never noticed it much.”

“Corrugated iron over a layer of doby,” Burton informed him. “I planned this here place myself. We had a jail-break a few years ago here, and the darned jail was just about tore up by the roots. So I and the sheriff, we planned out this one. Uh course, if enough men got to hammerin' away at 'er, I suppose maybe they could shake 'er up some. But she's as solid as we could make 'er for the money, I guess——”

A nervous knocking at the door brought them all to tense. listening. Burton looked at Bill inquiringly—a little anxiously, too. Bill waited until the knocking was repeated.

“Go ahead and open it—not too far till you see who's there,” he ordered. And he himself rose and stood behind Burton with his six-shooter in his hand. Also—though Bill scowled at them—Charlie and the Kid came and stood shoulder to shoulder with Bill, ready to back him in whatever crisis might arise.

So, Burton, with a glance over his shoulder at the three, unlocked the door and pulled it cautiously open, his body poised ready to throw all his weight against it if the knocking proved a ruse.

“Oh, Mr. Burton, can't we please see Fred—Mr. Dallam?”

VAN turned a round-eyed glance upon Charlie Horne and backed into the shadow. For this was the voice of Margy Wheeler, for whom the Kid had a foolish fondness; Margy Wheeler who had tried her attractive best to lure the Kid away from the trail of the gun runners. He did not want to see Margy Wheeler, or hear her voice—and he did not want, either, to pay her the compliment of running away.

Burton looked questioningly at Bill Gillis, and Bill nodded consent. “Who's with her?” he asked without moving from his position.

“Just Auntie Dallam—Fred's mother,” the voice of Margy made hasty reply. “We want to see Fred—he's hurt, and we we brought him some chicken broth and——”

“Let them in,” said Bill quietly. But he kept his place, Charlie and Van beside him, until the door closed again and was bolted top and bottom.

“I guess, Bill, it wouldn't do any hurt to search Margy Wheeler!” The Kid leaned close, so that the women, hurrying into the room where Fred lay, could not hear him. “She's awful tricky—she tried her darndest to git me off to Mineral Spring today with her, so I wouldn't git onto what Fred was doing. Charlie heard Fred Dallam tell her to keep me away from the ranch—and she sure tried! You just oughta heard the way she lied! I wouldn't put it past her to try some darned trick—give Fred a gun, or something like that. You want to watch out.”

Bill, who had done very little except watch out since he left the train, smiled indulgently. “Fred can't move his right hand on account of that broken shoulder,” he said. “And his left is shackled to the bed; so I don't know what good a gun would do him—do you?”

“Well, I wouldn't trust that girl outa my sight!” The Kid grumbled; and with the wisdom of nineteen years, and the bitterness of a recent blow to his vanity, he added: “I wouldn't trust any woman!”

In the other room Fred's mother, having discovered the handcuffs on his wrist, was wailing and calling Fred her baby boy, and begging him to try the broth which she had brought hot from the stove of a friend in office. Her voice, age-sharpened and heavy with tears, weighed heavily upon the spirits of the men in the office. In a minute Margy Wheeler came out to them, her eyelids red and her mouth trembling.

“I think this is perfectly awful!” she began sharply. “I should think you'd be ashamed to put handcuffs on a man that's been shot. If you had any humanity you'd let us move Fred to the hotel or some place where he can be taken care of. What h-harm can he do?” She began to cry and to search her pockets for a handkerchief. “H-he didn't do anything so awful—you t-treat him as if he was a murderer! All he d-did was buy guns and then sell them again. People buy c-cattle and sell them—and it's all right. But if they buy g-guns and sell them you t-treat them as if they had done some awful c-crime. You shot Fred without giving him any ch-chance to explain—and now you've him f-fastened to his bed so he c-can't eat his s-soup!”

The Kid gave a strangled whoop, clapped both hands over his mouth and who-who-whoed a big, boyish laugh that resounded throughout the jail. Margy's voice had cracked on the word soup—and it doesn't take much to tickle a boy.

Margy stopped crying and turned on him fiercely. “You think you're smart, Van Dillon but I don't.” She switched her skirts angrily and returned to where Mrs. Dallam was feeding Fred his broth and comforting him with mother-sympathy between mouthfuls. Margy slammed the door shut, and there was not a man in the office who felt any impulse to open it. They were safe enough, since the only door in the building that led to the outside was the door opening from the office. The murmur of indignant indignant feminine voices came intermittently through the board partition and formed the only sound in the place, except the alarm clock that ticked indefatigably upon the jailer's table.

As they plunged up the bank into Mexico, they saw four riders burst from the willow fringe

Bill drew his carbine across his knees and removed the case. The magazine was loaded full, as he made sure by pressing down the spring. He worked the lever tentatively, found it in good condition and laid the gun upon the table.

The evening was growing late, and the Kid began to yawn prodigiously. the day had been a full one—full of nervous tension as well as physical activities. Burton gave him blankets and the Kid immediately settled himself as comfortably as he could on the floor, with his rifle ready to his hand and his troubles speedily forgotten in sleep.

The two women presently left, and Bill and Charlie Horne followed the example set by Van—Charlie making a bed under the window at the far end of the corridor where he could hear any disturbance that might come from that quarter. Bill preferred to camp in the office with Burton and the Kid. So with every precaution taken against any attempt to rescue the prisoners, they settled themselves to sleep.

It seemed to Bill that he had no more than lost himself in slumber when a heavy object thudded against the jail door with such force that the timbers creaked. Before the second blow fell he had sent a rifle bullet splitting through the heavy panel in the middle. And before the yell that greeted the shot had subsided, the Kid had jumped up and fired another. Charlie came rushing down the corridor, conferred briefly with Bill and went scuttling back to watch the window which, though barred, might be invaded if the rescuers had the wit and the opportunity to attack it with a blow-torch.

At the door the battering went on, punctuated by shots. Bill, finding that the bullets from the outside ranged low, set a chair on the table, climbed up and stood upon the chair and tried to guess at the position of the men and the timber they were using for a ram. He must have guessed right once in a while, for there were lulls in the battering, and voices raised in a confusion of speech and in curses. And to help the clamor along, Fred Dallam, literally bed-fast, shouted encouragement to those outside, and maledictions upon his enemies within. And in the cells the Mexicans screamed advice and shrieked threats.

Those who fought said nothing, except now and then when Bill yelled to the Kid to be careful about exposing himself. Charlie Horne, at the far end of the corridor, considered himself lucky when he was sure he had shot the man who appeared foolhardily with hammer and cold chisel at the barred window. With the two-feet-thick adobe wall to shield him, he busied himself by listening for sounds: that would betray the position of the besiegers, and then crooking his elbow and firing his six-shooter in that direction.

None of them wasted a shot if he could help it. It is unthinking excitement that shoots at random for the mere comfort of setting bullets flying. Those at the door were under a cool, constant fire from Bill's rifle.... And there was so much noise within and without that they could not locate him by the report of his gun. Bullets ranging downward do not give much information as to their exact source; therefore, while the table beneath him was splintered here and there with bullets, and although one, flying higher, clipped through between Bill's feet; he stood unhurt and unconcerned and emptied his magazine three times before the door was finally abandoned.

“I guess they're kinda discouraged, Bill,” the Kid cried gleefully when the clamor without receded from the jail, and the clamor within stilled to listen and wonder. “But say, Bill, there's fires all over town! I can see some of 'em from the window here.”

“Don't go peeking out the window, Kid. You don't know how many are watching for just such a move. And you needn't think they've given it up—they're just changing their plans a little.”

“By gosh, it's time they changed their plans!” the Kid retorted, still jubilant.

“Say, Bill, a lot of the town's on fire. What do you reckon that means? And there's more shooting and yelling going on up around the post-office block than there had been down here. What do you make of it?”

Bill went down the corridor to the window, stood on his toes and peered out—a thing he would never have let Van Dillon do. He could see, farther up in the town, high wavering towers of flame where dry board shacks were burning with brief fury. Shouts, shots—the high-keyed shrieking of women—all mingled together in an uproar one would not think possible to that little, sleepy, squalid town. Bill looked and listened, and settled back on his heels.

“There's only one thing it can mean,” he said. “It's a general raid on the town—and it came from across the line, if you want my opinion. You must have let one get away to carry the news over about the arrest and the holding up of the guns, Charlie. I can't figure it any other way. And once they got here they couldn't resist looting the town.”

“They didn't any greaser get away from me, Bill—not unless one was stached somewhere else on the ranch. I got all the baling crew—I'll swear to that. And there was only four men hauling to the line, and them four the Kid got. But that ain't saying these hombres ain't got a friend or two in town that could take the news over the line.”

“However they got the news, this is a raid from over the river. Look out, boy!”

A bullet spatted against the cell wall over Charlie's head, coming through the window. Bill and Charlie both replied to it, by the sound of the shot, judging as best they could where to aim. Bill waited a minute, watching as much of the havoc in town as he could see without exposing himself at the window. Then Van and Burton began shooting out in the office, and he went back to help defend the main point of attack. The glass from the windows, splintered on the floor, crunched under his boots as he walked.

There was no further battering of the door, but a desultory firing was kept up, aimed at the windows in the hope of hitting someone by chance. But the lights of the burning buildings revealed the besiegers to those within the darkened jail, and the toll the rangers took was greater than bargained for, evidently. For in a little while the snipers withdrew and went off to help loot the stores and dwellings of those who were Americans or accused of favoring too warmly the land of their adoption.

Within the jail the three rangers itched to be out there in the thick of the fighting; but Burton had no stomach for it, and besides, their first duty was to hold their prisoners. They waited—an hour, it may have been, though it was more likely to have been less.

Charlie Horne, fidgeting up and down the corridor, came at last to Bill and begged to let out so that he could see what was going on, and whether their horses were all right. They had been stabled in an old adobe shed near the jail, he said, so they would be handy. And he thought they ought to make sure of their safety as soon as possible. He had brought Bill's horse in to town, he said, because he had half expected that Bill would be in on the evening train—having heard from the postmaster that Bill had completed the case which had called him away.

Bill did not want Charlie to walk out into a probable trap, and said so. Bill argued that the extreme quiet of that neighborhood was probably a trick to get them outside where they could be shot down from ambush. In the middle of the argument someone came beating at the door, and the shrill, excited vice of a woman pleaded to be let in. The four looked at one another questioningly. It might be a trick to get the door opened. It might be, and yet there was in the voice a convincing note of anguish.

“Let me in! Oh, my God, let me in to my boy! They—they've taken Margy—oh, let me in!”

Trick or no trick, they could not let her plead there unanswered. It was the voice of Mrs. Dallam, and Bill himself drew back the bolts and opened the door, pulling her inside by the arm. It was a surprise to him that he had not been greeted by a volley of shots.

Mrs. Dallam brushed them aside unseeingly and made straight for the room where Fred lay. “They've taken Margy!” she shrilled when she had the door open. “They've gone off with her—oh, Fred, can't you stop them?”

“Me stop them!” Fred jerked his shackled wrist desperately. “Talk to them men out there. Who took Margy? Where did they take her to?”

“Oh, I don't know!” His mother slumped down beside the cot, crying and wiping her eyes on her bonnet strings. “We was going home and we'd got 'most to the fork in the road, and a lot of men on horseback met us and circled all around us and made us stop. And they pulled Margy out of the buggy and lifted her on a horse—and they took Nellie right out of the shafts, Fred, and led her off, harness and all! They left me in the buggy and rode off—some going back with Margy, and most of 'em coming on to town. And I've been hiding out there ever since, on the edge of town, watching for a chance to tell you. Oh, my God, such savagery! Seems like it's the last days of destruction, as the Bible prophesies! Horror upon horror—I had to step over three dead men to get to the door! And that poor girl in the hands——”

The Kid cast a round-eyed, imploring glance at Bill, and Bill reached for his rifle. “What direction did they take with the girl, Mrs. Dallam?”

The sharpness of his tone pulled the old woman away from her half-hysterical lamenting. She lifted her lined face, swollen now with weeping, and looked at him dully.

“They went south—the road south of the Peak,” she said. “Maybe to the border—they were all Mexicans—oh, Fred, why did you ever mix in with them? Give them an inch and they take a mile——”

Bill did not listen further. He looked at Van standing in the corridor doorway, and for answer the Kid began to refill the magazine of his rifle.

“I guess we've beat 'em off from the jail,” Bill said to Burton as he passed him. “But if there's any more trouble, keep the door locked, and don't open it unless you know who it is. Make him speak. Keep that woman here for a while.”

He went out with Charlie and Van treading close on his heels. Before the jail five dead Mexicans sprawled as they had fallen, but the three rangers gave them no more than a hasty glance as they passed. The sky still glowed with the light of fires now dying down from their first fierce blaze, but they heard no shooting. Out on the edge of town, toward the south, came the lessening hoof-beats of many galloping horses. The raiders were leaving Cobra as they came, under cover of darkness. By dawn they would be across the river, and then who could prove their crime against them?

Charlie led the way to the adobe the horses had been left for the night. By a freak of chance they were there, overlooked or ignored by the raiders. The three saddled hurriedly and led out the horses quietly, still on their guard against a surprise attack. But nothing moved near them. Farther up in the town they heard a woman scream swift, incoherent sentences blurred by the distance. It sounded like a prayer or a curse upon those who had brought her so much horror and grief, but they did not ride that way.

BILL left the main road and went across to the depot, where a light burned dimly. The three rode up to the window, and Bill called to the operator whose shadow bulked large on the wall within.

“Come out and take a message,” he commanded. “From Ranger Gillis to Captain Oakes at Ysleta. Say that an American girl has been kidnapped and carried south by Mexican bandits, and that Rangers Gillis, Van Dillon and Horne are starting in pursuit. Say we intend to keep going till we rescue the girl.”

Before he had finished, the operator—a pale, pessimistic young man who, being afflicted with a chronic indigestion, thought ill of the world and all the inhabitants thereof—had raised the window and was leaning out with his arms folded upon the window-sill.

“They cut the wires,” he said sourly, “just where they run into the office. I can't get Captain Oakes nor anybody till I get the connection established. I'm tinkering at it now, but before they thought about doing it, I'd sent out a general alarm all up and down the line. I said the whole Mexican army had invaded the town—and it looked like they had, at that. El Paso got it and Del Rio and San Antone and Austin—and the Ranger captain was asking about you fellows and if you were here, when four greasers piled in and cut the wires for me. They stayed out on the platform till just about ten minutes ago, when the whole bunch pulled out of town.”

“Well, as soon as you get the line working, you tell the Captain we're on the trail. Say they didn't get our prisoners—we held them off from the jail. Better get help for Burton—he's over there alone.”

He wheeled and galloped away, Charlie and the Kid riding close on either side. and presently they were breathing the tail-end of the dust cloud kicked up by the raiders in their flight to the river.

That was a ride! To the border they rode on the heels of the bandits, and dawn found them at the river bank. The guard there had been bound and gagged throughout the night, and the telephone wire cut lest he should free himself somehow and send forth a warning. They stopped long enough to release him and to listen to anything he might be able to tell them. But the guard could tell them nothing except that a woman had screamed for help when a party passed the little station. That was sometime during the night—just when, the guard could not say. Lying bound and gagged in the dark, as he had lain, one loses count of hours. They ministered to him hastily and went on.

As they splashed into the shallow ford they were seen from the farther shore. A bullet spatted into the water twenty feet ahead, throwing up a tiny geyser where it sank. But they did not stop. Another and another fell like hailstones, and through the widening circle of ripples that they made the three rode on across. Straight at the snipers Bill led the way, for that was the surest way to put them to flight. As they plunged up the bank into Mexico, four riders burst from the willow fringe and fled before them. Two of the four began suddenly to wabble in the saddle. One pitched headlong, the other lasted for a few rods farther before he lost his hold and fell.

The three rangers passed them, riding hard in pursuit of the two. Far ahead was the dust-cloud of the main band toward which the two were lashing their half-starved ponies, too scared to try another shot. They never reached the dust-cloud. Bill and Charlie were too well trained in the art of shooting true from a running horse to let that happen, and although the Kid was younger in the service he had practised faithfully and was not to be overlooked in a running fight—or any other kind of fight, for that matter.

“I'll bet they took her to that ranch where they've been hauling the guns,” Charlie hazarded.

“Probably did. Anyway, this bunch is headed that way, and they must be going to join the rest. We're overhauling 'em, too.”

LITTLE by little they neared the gray haze that had been rolling along the trail ahead. Their horses were fresh, for one reason, and they pushed them along as fast as they could without winding them. The company ahead threw back no rear guard—they were on Mexican soil and they felt safe. If they looked back and glimpsed the three riders coming up from behind, they probably mistook them for those who had been left at the river bank to discourage pursuit across the ford. It would never occur to them that three Americans would ride into Mexico in pursuit of thirty.

“Fill your magazines, boys,” Bill said, when bobbing heads began to show above the dust. “We can't make anything by hanging back, and the harder we rush 'em the easier they'll get rattled and run. From now on we've got to be ridin', shootin' fools that won't stop for anything.”

“You're right,” little Charlie Horne chuckled. “Sane and safe ain't in our dictionary no more. How yuh comin', Kid?”

“Me? I've forgot how to spell anything but the word shoot!” Van made bold reply, throwing a cartridge up into the chamber so that there would be room for one more in the magazine. “Say, I scraped all them loose shells off the table into my pocket when we left the jail. So if you fellers run low I can stake you to some.”

“My belt's full,” said Charlie. “Say, how close do you reckon we'll get before them burro-headed hombres read our brand?”

“Dunno—the closer the better. If we can get right up on 'em before they see who we are, they'll stampede all the easier.”

Hat-crowns bobbing in the cloud became heads and shoulders. Dimly they could see the horses loping heavily, as tired animals will. One figure swung about and looked back—and three rifles were ready to send him death for the glance. But, half-blinded by the choking dust, he could not see them clearly and he merely waved them on. His friends, the snipers, he must have thought them. They pricked their horses to a little faster pace, and when the fellow looked back in he could see the color of their faces, the mounts they rode, the star that gleamed when the wind caught Bill's coat front and flipped it back.

He gave a shout: “Texanos!” and fired backward wildly before he lunged ahead.

Instant confusion caught the galloping group. Heads turned, hoarse voices shouted. Bullets came whimpering past the three. But the crowd did not make a stand, for all that.

“Now let 'em have it, and keep going!” Bill cried and fired twice. He emptied one saddle and set another rider drooping forward, hands clenched upon the big, awkward pommel of his Mexican saddle. Charlie and Van, firing at almost the same instant, could not tell which of them had hit the man who pitched from his horse.

The bandits spurred forward, shooting back as they rode. But with their excitement and the confusion all around them, they did not hit anything but Mexican soil. The three who came whooping up in the dust-cloud that rolled after and around them, had to combat only the aversion of their horses to bullets zipping over their heads. They were cool, because the fight was of their seeking. They hit. They hit so often that they left a straggling line of dead or nearly dead to point the the trail for those who might come after.

The Mexicans fled before them, making only occasional half-hearted attempts to fight them off. Perhaps they believed that the dust hid others and that these three who rode and shot with such terrific precision were merely the advance. And whatever their belief might be, there was that innate fear of the Texas Rangers to keep them going.

“They're heading for that ranch where they had the guns, sure as you live,” Charlie panted when they neared a group of low, conical hills that stood out grotesquely on the barren plain.

“That's where they aim to make a stand,” hazarded Bill, groping with one hand for more cartridges from his belt. “And that's where we're going to have our work cut out for us, too,” he added grimly, shoving shell after shell into the magazine. “Be careful of your ammunition, boys—don't waste a single shot. We're going to need all we've got when we get up against a doby-wall fight.”

“If my glasses told the truth the other day, we won't need to get up against a doby wall,” Charlie declared. “Way I saw the place, that little peak you see straight ahead stands just west of the corrals and buildings. My idea, Bill, would be to circle around and climb that hill. If I ain't badly mistaken, we could shoot right down into them.”

“We'll try it—but wait till we chase the bunch into cover. We don't want them climbing up one side while we climb the other—sabe? Haze 'em through the gate, and then swing off.”

They did that. The band lashed their ponies faster as they neared the safety of the ranch and their fellows. Half a dozen ponies galloped with empty saddles, which emphasized the haste of the others. At the gate of the adobe wall that partly surrounded the ranch buildings there was a jam. Something like twenty men were trying to ride abreast where only two might pass through at one time.

The rangers slackened their speed and fired pitilessly into the jumble—every shot a reminder of the homes that had been wrecked in Cobra, the lives that had been taken wantonly. Red-handed from murder and looting and the burning of homes, these had fled like the cravens they were; fled from three men who stood for law and justice. And to these three they paid the law's penalty for the horror they had wrought, and for the kidnapping of Margy Wheeler.

“My God, I wish I had as many arms as a devil fish, and guns for all of 'em!” Charlie Horne gritted, handling his hot rifle gingerly.

“Yes!” the Kid made answer. “When you think of Margy——”

“Don't think—shoot!” Bill took careful aim at the hindmost rider and sent him through the gate in a heap. “Now, make for the hill.”

They gained the top, leaving their winded horses on the side away from the buildings and climbing the steepest part of the peak afoot. They crawled to the very edge where it slanted steeply down to the ranch, and looked over. Down below them the corral where Charlie had seen the burro train loaded with guns buzzed now like a disturbed beehive. Fifty men, the rangers estimated offhand, ran here and there. Voices rose in argument and expostulation. Two men were being carried into the flat-roofed adobe building farthest from the hill, and one of them screamed when a bearer stumbled.

“How much ammunition you boys got left?” Bill asked abruptly, after he had studied the scene below them. “We've got to hold the fort till help comes. If we turn tail now, they'll be on our heels like a pack of coyotes after a sick cow. How much you got, Kid?”

The Kid ran investigative fingers along the thimbles of his belt, moving his lips while he counted. “I've got 'most all my forty-fives left, and about thirty for my carbine.”

“And I've been going slow and shooting when I thought I could hit,” Charlie stated complacently, “so now I'm near forty ahead uh the game.”

“Well, here's a box that ain't been tapped.” Bill took it from his pocket and set it on a flat rock beside him. “All right. You and the Kid pick them fellers off the roof, where they've stached themselves to snipe us if we get close enough. See that one laying facing down the trail? You take him, Kid. And Charlie, there's two for you, over on the far side. I'm going to see nobody gets out the gate to come up here. And I needn't tell you,” he added meaningly, “there's not much ammunition left in my saddle-pockets, so be darned sure you don't miss!”

Brutal it might seem on the face of it. But it was war of a kind, and war is always brutal. The Kid did not miss; neither did Charlie. A yell went up from the scurrying crowd in the corral, and dark faces were turned toward the hilltop. Consternation sharpened the voices that rose in a jumble of threats, commands and unheeded advice. The boldest mounted and made for the gate these Bill claimed for his own. Bullets spatted against the hillside near the three, but they had chosen their position for just that move, and their gray hat-crowns, visible to keen eyes from below, gave no indication whatever as to the exact whereabouts of the owners. They had been careful on that point, and had placed their hats with deliberate intent to deceive. Their bare heads they kept out of sight behind little, piled-up barricades with peepholes between the rocks.

After a brief spell of hurrying distractedly here and there and firing wildly at the hilltop—Bill's hat tilted sharply backward from the impact of a bullet—the corral emptied magically of horses and men. The buildings must have been pretty well packed when they all got under cover. The firing became an occasional shot whenever there seemed a target to aim at.

“Saves ammunition,” Bill remarked laconically after an hour or two of this intermittent shooting. “They can't get out unless they burrow under the hill. We've got 'em——”

“And what are we goin' to do with 'em?” Charlie grinned.

“We've got 'em till dark,” Bill finished calmly. “After that—you never can tell.”

“And prayer-meetin' ain't out till the preacher goes home,” Charlie added whimsically, quoting Bill's pet saying. “It's a long while till dark.”

“Lend me your glasses a minute, Bill,” the Kid asked after another period of watching and firing whenever anything moved below. “I seen something——” He adjusted the lenses hastily to his eyes and focussed them on the squat house with its blue-painted, four-paned windows overlooking the corral and therefore facing the hill. His hands trembled a little while he looked. “It is,” he ejaculated suddenly. “I thought it was her—and she's there, Bill! You look. She's standing kinda back from that window, looking up this way. It's Margy, all right!”

Bill looked, and then Charlie took the glasses. Charlie, being last, did not tell the Kid that he had seen an evil-faced Mexican grasp the girl and fling her away from the window with such force that she fell. “She's left the window,” he said and returned the glasses to Bill with a glance of warning. “She'll be all right till we can get her outa there.” he added with more certainty in his tone than there was in his heart.

“She'll beat it, if they give her any chance in the world,” the Kid tried to hearten himself. “She's got faults—but she's got brains, too, and nerve.”

THE sun drew higher and higher, till the heat among the rocks was stifling. Margy Wheeler was seen no more at the window. There was no water to be had, and no food. Hunger and thirst began to harry those three up on the peak who were holding more than ten times their number penned in the ranch buildings. Once the monotony was broken by another attempt on the part of a few bolder spirits to dash out of the corral and into the open, that they might come up on the rangers from the rear. They did not get outside the gate. Not all of them got inside the building again. Two crawled in, keeping close to the adobe wall. Two more lay where they had fallen. The rangers shot straight. They could not afford to let the enemy climb that hill.

The sun stood straight overhead, and the three lay there among the rocks with bloodshot eyes staring along their rifle barrels, while their backs smarted under the blistering heat. They might have crept down to their horses and, keeping the hill between the ranch and themselves, reached the river unscathed. But the idea never occurred to one of them; a white girl was down there, penned in that adobe hut with the flat roof.

The situation was in their own hands until dark. After dark—who could tell? The alarm had been sent all up and down the line, to El Paso, to Del Rio, to San Antone so the operator said. Captain Oakes had gotten word and had asked for news of his three men who should be in the thick of the fight. Captain Oakes knew—and so they were not altogether hopeless as they lay there among the rocks and counted their cartridges more anxiously than they would ever count dollars, however poor they might be; and wriggled their sun-blistered shoulders; and licked their cracked lips; and let no Mexican poke his head into their sight and withdraw it unharmed.

“If they caught that ten-thirty train from El Paso,” Bill remarked once when the sun had slid so far over to the west that it was shining, now from behind them, and the corral below them lay half in shadow, “if they caught that they ought to strike Cobra about two. But don't count on it. We've got to take it for granted we're playing this out alone.”

“Don't hurt a feller to have hopes,” the Kid grunted, squirming over to where a bit of shade offered him slight comfort. “I'm down to five shells besides what's in the magazine, Bill.”

“Well, you ain't needing any right now,” Bill retorted gruffly. “Must be asleep down there.”

“Waiting for dark,” Charlie guessed imperturbably. “But we can hear 'em climbing, unless they come barefooted. That is, if the darned wind don't come up.”

The Kid' s face turned wistfully toward the north. “Del Rio might of done something,” he grumbled. “What's the matter with their sheriff down there?”

Bill looked at him with softened eyes, “We're in Mexico, Kid. Only a Ranger would have the gall to cross the river without orders.” True or not, Bill believed it so completely that he had dismissed Del Rio from his mind the moment they three had splashed through the ford.

“They're crawlin' outa their holes,” Charlie announced, and fired down at a venturesome foe that started to skirt the corral fence on the inside. “We've got to show 'em we're on the job. And—say, listen! How'd it be to work our horses around on the west side the hill, and then when the bunch leaves the ranch after dark, why we hot-foot it down and come up to the buildings from the other direction? Maybe we could get the girl and beat it before they got next to our play. How about it, Bill?”

“We can try it,” Bill agreed, after minute of thinking the plan over. “It's a cinch we can't stay here more than a couple of hours longer. You go down and move the horses, Kid. Take them to the foot of the hill, and leave them as close to the ranch as you can and keep 'em outa sight. We'll stay here as long as we can see the gates.”

The Kid started to obey, but within five minutes he came scrambling back. “There's a bunch riding up from over that way, Bill,” he said, flinging his hand out toward the northwest. “Quite a lot, from the dust they're kickin' up. If you come over this way you can see.” The Kid's eyes were very big and very round, and his voice had a slight tremor in it.

Bill went to take a look. He came back sober faced, pushing the glasses into their case

“Can't make 'em out,” he said. “Too much dust. It's a bunch of riders, and they ain't on any trail. Our best bet is to stay where we are. You go down, Kid, and lead the horses in behind that hump of rocks to the right of where they are now, so they'll be outa sight of that bunch coming up.

When he had gone, Bill turned his glasses anxiously upon the trail which stretched back to the boundary line. “It's funny nobody's showing up,” he confided to Charlie, while he scanned the country to the river and beyond. “Not a sign of help, boy.”

Charlie, squinting along his rifle barrel, bent his forefinger upon the trigger and made no answer. A man had foolishly shown himself at the corner of the house down there thinking that the shadows would hide him.

Bill crawled back to where he could see the approaching body of men. He did not like the look of that ball of dust which the west wind rolled steadily ahead of the riders who made it and hid them from his sight. From the direction of Obayas they came: another party of the bandits who had raided Cobra, he guessed them to be; a party that had taken to the hills, perhaps, and crossing at Obayas, were now coming into the rendezvous at the ranch.

The Kid, having hidden their horses, came climbing back, his dragging feet betraying the utter weariness his tongue would have stoutly denied. “Something's due to pop pretty quick, now,” he observed stoically. “The question before the house is: us or them?” And he added plaintively, “Gee, I wish I had a drink!”

The sun dropped behind the hills so suddenly that it seemed to have slipped and fallen. In the dusky shadow of the corral forms moved cautiously—but the bullets came questing down from the hilltop and sent the figures scurrying back to shelter. On the flat the dust cloud rolled closer, split suddenly at the very base of the hill and went speeding around upon either side. The Kid, who had been sent back to watch the approach, reported this new move excitedly to Rill. Bill went to see for himself.

The two groups swept around the hill at a gallop, closed in with the ranch buildings between them. As they neared they began to shoot—and the Kid gave a sudden whoop. “'S our men! It's the captain—I'll bet a dollar it's the captain!” He clapped Charlie Horne painfully upon a sunburned shoulder. “Gee, it is our men! Darn it, I knew they'd come!

“Look at the white cloth go up, would yuh!” Charlie Horne's voice caught the excitement. “Lord, them greasers have sure got a bellyful now, all right! Look....”

“There goes the girl—they've turned her loose!” Bill's voice cut in hoarsely. “Well, let's be going, boys. I guess we're through up here.”

<!—BMB 1940; BC 1947—>