Flaming Feud, page 9
Back in the day coach, the sheriff snored. The 'breed sat immobile, only his dark eyes showing life. The prisoner gazed unseeingly across the darkened plain.
The fireman wiped the sweaty grime off his face with a dirty red bandanna, tucked it beneath his belt, bent and was about to slide his broad shovel into the heaped coal, when the shriek of the engine whistle jerked him erect. He spun around, teetered across the swaying cab, grasping his empty shovel, while the engineer jerked the whistle cord, again and again.
"What's the trouble, Jake?" he yelled, "Cows?"
The screeching whistle drowned the answer. He swung head and shoulders outside the cab, peering ahead. Like a spark, a red light swung slowly to and fro on the track ahead.
The train slowed, coasting ahead until a spurred rider stood bathed in the bright radiance of the headlight. His shout reached the ears of the intent men on the cab, "Hold it—the track's out!"
"It's a stall!" The fireman gulped with excitement, grabbed his shovel. "This ain't the rainy season."
"Reach, gents!" A drawling voice from behind swung them around in startled surprise—to face another rider with levelled gun. His eyes glowed like hot coals through two holes cut in a gunny sack, pulled down over his head. Another masked man was clambering up to the cab.
In the day coach, the sheriff came awake, blinking, at the first blast of the whistle. The conductor hurried through the coach.
"What's the trouble?" sang out Roth.
"Cow on the track, I guess," flung back the conductor.
Fiddlefoot looked out of the window. The oil lamps of the coach, reflecting on the glass, made vision difficult, but he fancied he could see shadowy forms moving beside the track. While the hoarse shrieking of the whistle continued to tear the air, the train slowed, stopped.
Roth slid along the seat cushions, pressing his nose against the window. A sudden uneasiness gripped him, "You got yore gun, Charlie?" he asked sharply, feeling for his own.
The 'breed grunted, threw back his unbuttoned coat with his free right hand and exposed a holstered forty-five…with a snarl he grabbed the weapon. The sheriff swung around, snatching for his own gun. Hooded with gunny sacks, men burst in each end of the coach. A gun roared and the window beside Fiddlefoot tinkled into slivers. He slid off the seat and dropped onto the floor, dragging on the 'breed's arm. The thunder of gunfire reverberated in his ear. A slug took the sheriff in the right shoulder. The impact twirled him around. He tripped over Fiddlefoot's body, fell heavily upon the recumbent prisoner and lay jammed between the two seats. His weight almost crushed the breath out of Fiddlefoot and held him like a vice. Meanwhile, the 'breed's gun was belching flame and thunder. Black smoke filled the coach like a fog. Fiddlefoot, helpless beneath the sheriff's bulk and wet with the sheriff's blood, listened to the mingling roar of forty-fives. He felt the 'breed's pull upon his handcuffed wrist slacken.
The gunfire cut off as suddenly as it had begun. Someone heaved Roth's dead weight off the prisoner. Fiddlefoot scrambled to his feet, still handcuffed to the 'breed.
His puzzled eyes probed the thick, slow-coiling smoke. Riders jammed the aisle, grotesque in gunny sacks that enveloped their heads. Their eyes, hot with excitement, smouldered through roughly cut holes in the sacks.
Beside him, slack on the seat, the 'breed, mouth agape, stared with unseeing eyes. The sheriff stood swaying like a drunken man, right arm dangling, the fingers dripping scarlet.
"Gimme the keys, sheriff!" Fiddlefoot thought he recognized the mocking drawl.
Roth twisted and ineffectually fumbled at his right-hand pants pocket with his left hand. "Get 'em yourself, damn you!" he retorted thickly.
"Sure!" came back the masked man. He dipped into the reeling lawman's pocket, came out with a ring of keys. A double snap and the bewildered Fiddlefoot was free.
"Light a shuck, bud!" said the raider coolly, nodding down the aisle. Fiddlefoot sandwiched in their midst, the masked men began to file out.
Roth gripped the back of a seat for support. "You'll hang for this," he croaked hoarsely, "Every son of a bitch!"
A muffled laugh came back from the leader as he followed his men, "Whoall will yuh hang, sheriff?"
The last of the raiders left the smoke-shrouded coach. Roth collapsed upon the cushions opposite his dead deputy. Pain twisted the sheriff's features as the numbness drained out of his smashed shoulder, and pain began to stab like a slashing knife.
The conductor's scared face popped around the angle of the vestibule. Cautiously, he edged into the coach and moved down the aisle. He stared at the dead 'breed, handcuffs still dangling from a hairy wrist, at the sheriff's slumped form, at the blood-smeared cushions.
"A getaway?" He spoke jerkily, his tone high and uncertain.
"A lynching, the way I read it," came back the sheriff tiredly. "Crowd on steam, I gotta get to a telegraph office."
Chapter 12
Jostled by the masked raiders, and with his brain awhirl, Fiddlefoot dropped down the steps of the coach. He breathed deep, filling his lungs with the night air, cool and sweet after the stench of blood and powder smoke inside. Around him, men yanked gunny sacks off their heads and traded talk, elated at the success of the attack. Fiddlefoot glimpsed a mop of flaming red hair and knew what he had previously suspected, Red had levered him out of the clutches of the law.
A flash, like forked lightning, split the darkness down track and the air pulsed as the thunder of the detonation hit his ears. Nearby, the horse-holders strove to quiet stamping, snorting bronks.
The raiders streamed towards their ponies, Fiddlefoot drifted along. Red pulled back and waited for him.
"You sure eased me out of a tight, mister!" Fiddlefoot's voice reflected the fervency he felt. "I could most feel the rope around my neck."
"Ferget it!" came back the rustler carelessly. "You saved me a chore, blowing out Rock's lamp."
"I never beefed Rock!" denied Fiddlefoot vigorously. "I had you placed f'r the killer."
Red stiffened. "I'm no louzy bushwhacker," he replied curtly.
"They picked up Small's badge by the body."
"I tossed thet badge away the night we grabbed you and the beanstalk in the canyon." Red's voice rose high in quick query. "Say, who in hell did wipe out Rock?"
"Yore guess is as good as mine." Fiddlefoot eyed the black bulk of the train, stalled on the flat behind him. "Let's get outa here. They got me tagged f'r two more killings."
Red chuckled, "We'll be back in the barrens afore they get that hooker rolling."
Men were mounting and milling around now. Three riders pounded out of the night from the direction of the explosion. Fiddlefoot recognized Butch, spurring ahead.
Butch mercilessly curbed his pony and it rose high at the goad of the bit. "Hey, Red!" he hailed, "There's a flask of thet blasting powder left. I'm gonna set a charge under the coach and blow thet bloody sheriff sky high." He wheeled off towards the train.
"Like hell you are!" yelled Red, and pulled out of the press of riders. Fiddlefoot, astride a spare pony, was conscious of a sudden tension in the men around him, and sensed that the spare flask of powder was not the only explosive in the bunch.
Butch brought his pony to a sliding halt as Red cut across his front. "What's itching yuh?" he demanded irritably.
"We're riding—right now!"
"Scairt?"
"Jerk yore gun and find out!" flung back the redhead.
Fiddlefoot marvelling at the discord, kneed his pony closer to the rustlers, dim-blotched in the starlight. Quick quiet clothed the riders around him. This was fight talk, with all the earmarks of a showdown.
"Do we hev to trade lead over a gordamned lawman?" The truculence had faded out of Butch's voice.
"Yore the doctor!" came back Red sardonically. He wasn't backing away from no man, considered Fiddlefoot. Grumbling, Mulloy kneed his mount around and headed back into the bunch.
In a compact block, the rustlers jogged westward, towards the mountains. Behind them, the engine whistle screeched—three times. When it died there was no sound save the subdued creaking of saddle leather and the muffled thud of hooves upon the heat-hardened ground. Barely a minute passed before the harsh signal of distress from the trapped train cut through the night a second time, like the cry of a tortured monster hamstrung out upon the lonely expanse. Again and again, slow-dying with distance, it wailed across the flats. Fiddlefoot wondered if it reached other ears.
The longer Dave Winters, foreman of the Boxed H, mulled over the killing of his boss, the more convinced he became that the wrong man was in custody…and there was no man more eager than Winters to see the killer hang. If Frosty Ferlow, chewing a toothpick as he stepped out of the hash house the morning after Fiddlefoot had been taken out of the train, was troubled with the same doubt he kept his misgivings well hidden.
He found Winters hunkered against the front of the law shack. The foreman straightened, followed him inside. "You tangled yore rope over thet Fiddlefoot jasper!" he accused flatly. "He ain't no bushwhacker!"
"Yore crazy!" asserted the deputy brittly.
"Howcome you put the finger on Fiddlefoot?" demanded Winters.
Before the deputy could reply, a gangling rider dipped his head and oozed through the doorway. It was Weary, his long face even more dolorous than usual and his faded eyes troubled. "Jest got word you picked up Fiddlefoot f'r Rock's killing." Anxiety spiked his languid drawl. "Heck, Frosty, he was settin' out at the Barred M."
Winters grinned with chilly satisfaction, "I jest got through telling the old warthog he tangled his rope."
Frosty was on the defensive now, but untroubled. Settling comfortably into his padded chair, he stuffed the bowl of his corncob and eyed his inquisitors maliciously. "We got proof, gents," he retorted, "Plenty proof."
"Such as?" challenged Winters.
The deputy told of the silver-plated derringer from which the death bullet had been fired, found close to the body; Jack Small's badge, lying in the grass; the old warrant, for a killing in Texas. "Heck!" he concluded, "Fiddlefoot killed as careless as you squash flies."
"What proof you got he beefed Small?" demanded the foreman.
"He packed Small's badge, carried his watch, assumed his identity. Ain't thet proof enough?"
"Did he admit the killing?"
"Nope," admitted the deputy grudgingly. "He pitched a windy about Small being knifed by a greaser in a Nogales cantina, La Paloma, on the Mex side. Claimed he grabbed the badge and passed hisself off as Small tuh get back to the States."
"Wal, I gamble he didn't grab Nick's short gun," declared the foreman. "I lamped some jasper kicking thet iron under a table. Figgered right there he was framing to get away with it."
Weary joined in the assault. "The badge clears him! A red-haided rustler grabbed it. 'Member Frosty, when Fiddlefoot and me was corralled in the canyon? We busted out and you craved tuh see his badge. We reported the brand-blotchers had lifted it."
Frosty smoked in silence. It was plain that the badge was a piece of evidence he was not anxious to discuss.
Winters spat in disgust, "Heck, you ain't got a case nohow!"
"Didn't the jasper plant Small? Didn't he plug a feller in Texas?" brindled Frosty.
"You got no proof he beefed Small, and as f'r the Texas warrant—hell, it ain't no crime tuh shoot a man ef you look him in the eye."
"How would you know Fiddlefoot looked him in the eye?"
"I jest got a hunch thet's his style."
The wrangle was interrupted by the quick tramp of hurrying boots on the plankwalk outside. Three heads came around as Slim Ardley, the station agent and telegrapher, tornadoed through the doorway. His eye-shade was cocked at an angle, like a misplaced halo, and a vast excitement gleamed in his eyes. He stood gasping for breath. The deputy reached out, jerked a telegraph flimsy from his hand and scanned it swiftly.
"Holy Moses!" he ejaculated. "Git a load of this!" Aloud, he read:
TRAIN HELD UP BY MASKED BAND. KETCHAM KILLED. PRISONER SEIZED. SUSPECT LYNCHING. HAVE ALERTED ALL SHERIFFS. POSSE ON TRAIL. HIT TOO BAD TO RIDE MYSELF. RAISE POSSE AND INVESTIGATE BOXED H FOR POSSIBLE LYNCHING.
ROTH SHERIFF.
"The Boxed H had no part in it!" said Winters sharply.
"Kin yuh swear to thet?"
"On a stack of bibles!"
"Who else would grab Fiddlefoot?"
Winters shook his head, eyes puzzled.
"Round up thet Red hombre, the coyote's tied up with Mulloy and they're working brands," he offered. "And brace Nick, thet sidewinder would shoot a saint in the back." He moved outside and stood by the hitch rail, plainly itching to get his teeth into something or someone. There had been a close bond between Rock and his foreman, forged through many a smoking affray. Now that Rock was gone, the ownership of the great ranch in doubt, and his own future uncertain, the foreman was a lonely and a baffled man. He had been Rock's watchdog through the long years and he felt that somehow he had failed in the end. He could redeem himself in only one way—by exacting vengeance upon the killer. But who was the killer?
Weary slouched out and drifted aimlessly down the plankwalk, like an oversized calf. At a thought, the foreman's head turned. He whistled. The lanky puncher swung around, checked as Winters raised a hand, loped tiredly back.
"You tied down?" inquired the foreman, when the puncher drew abreast.
"Like a tumbleweed," drawled Weary.
"Know Nogales?"
"Guess I could find my way around." Interest was quickening in the cowpoke's faded eyes.
"Wal, you make tracks," directed Winters. "Locate this Paloma cantina and get the straight on Small's killing." He pulled a roll from a hip pocket, peeled off some greenbacks. Weary pocketed the notes. "It would be a pleasure," he declared with unwonted animation. "Me, I'd say Fiddlefoot was all wool and a yard wide."
"Prove it!" came back Winters dryly, "And f'r gosh sakes, don't fall asleep and forget you got a back trail."
The holdup of Number 834, killing of the deputy and wounding of the sheriff, coupled with the disappearance of the man accused of bushwhacking Rock Hansen was the biggest sensation to stir Skeleton Valley since Cochise and his Chiracahua Apaches had swept through five years before. It furnished the principal topic of conversation from the county seat to the loneliest hill ranch, as posses scoured the country from the Border to the Dragoons. Stirred by a thousand-dollar reward, lawmen combed every dive, watched waterholes and searched stages. Fiddlefoot's square features stared down from the walls of every sheriff's office in the west, but physically he had vanished as completely as though he had shrivelled up and blown away. It was generally agreed that he had been lynched and his body buried.
Public interest seldom focusses upon one object for long. When the posses jogged back, jaded and unsuccessful, and days drifted with no further news of the missing man, the affair faded into the background. The track was repaired and Number 834 again rumbled steadily down to Adobe without incident.
On the wall of a bedroom in Mrs. Maloney's Boarding House at Fremont Wells, a gunny sack, out of which two small holes were cut, drooped over a picture frame. It was Fireman McGill's most prized possession. He would lie abed and eye it dreamily, thrilling to memories of that fateful night when Number 834 had been attacked by renegades and he had stared into the black muzzle of a gun.
Then one evening, Jim Curran, who set type in the Times office and read proof, dropped in for a hand of crib.
For the twentieth time, McGill proudly told the story and exhibited the gunny sack. Curran possessed a doubting mind and eyes like question marks. He fingered the trophy, eying it as closely as he would a six-point proof. Dipped inside. "Acquainted with a red-headed hombre?" he inquired casually.
"Why?" inquired the fireman.
"Well, he sure left a mighty nice sample in this gunny sack!" The printer held a long, waving hair up to the lamp light.
"Christopher Columbus!" almost yelled the fireman, as the significance of the find sunk in. "Don't lose that hair—it's a clew!"
So it came that another reward dodger, for one Timothy Rourke, wanted for train holdup and conspiracy to murder, joined Fiddlefoot's on the bulletin boards. And the hunt was on anew.
Chapter 13
Normalcy had apparently returned to The Longhorn Saloon. Monte Molly still ran her blackjack game, interspersed with a little three-card monte; Nick squatted on his stool at the far end of the bar, like a cherubic monkey, smoking his thin cigars; patrons banged in and out of the batwings.
But a close observer would have noted certain indications that things were not as they should be. The redheaded girl lacked her usual composure, her dealing was erratic and every time the swinging doors squealed back to admit a patron her eyes strayed from the table. As a direct result, she paid out with more than usual frequency.
Nick chewed hard upon his cigar as he eyed the poorly patronized bar, the big Boxed H crew, from which The Longhorn formerly drew a fat slice of business, now confined its patronage to a few quick and necessary drinks.
Such was the state of affairs when Creighton-Caldwell sauntered in and headed for the card table with the instinct of a homing pigeon. For a brief space he watched the game, then moved back to Nick's perch. "If I staked a gambler," he observed, with thinly veiled disgust, "I would pick one who could win—and without the use of a shaved deck."
"Could you?" inquired the saloon man.
"Most decidedly! By the way, has that tall, melancholy rider, very appropriately named Weary, been around? He has disappeared."
"No," replied Nick absently, gazing at a copy of "The Cochise County Times," lying on the bar before him. "Saddlebums got itchy feet."
The Dude frowned. "It's damnably lonely on that burnt-out ranch."
It was then that the great idea came to Nick, an idea so stupendous that, for several seconds, he could do no more than stare with fascination at the newspaper. This was opportunity—decked in diamonds.
