Part 2

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.