Part 3

“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.]