Part 1

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.”