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+*** 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 ***