Kid Wolf of Texas Part 35

The Texan's face grew hard and stern.

"No," he said. "I haven't any right to do that. Justice demands that yo' face the ones yo' have wronged. And justice has always been my guidin' stah. I'm a soldier of misfohtune, fightin' fo' the undah dawg. I'm takin' yo' to Skull, sah."

Gentleman John groaned in terror. All the bl.u.s.tering bravado had gone out of him.

"I can't promise yo' yo' life," Kid Wolf went on. "I can, howevah, recommend banishment instead of death, and mah word carries some weight in Skull, undah the new ordah of things. If yo' sign--thus doin' right by Red Morton, whom yo' wronged--I'll do what I can to save yo' from the rope, but I can't promise that yo'll escape it. Are yo' signin'?"

Gentleman John moistened his lips feverishly, and his hand trembled as he reached for the pen.

"I'll sign," he groaned.

When he had scratched his signature, Kid Wolf took the paper, folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.

"_Bueno,_" he said softly. "Now get yo' hat and coat. I hate to rob yo' of yo' sleep, but I have some othah prisonahs to round up to-night."

And while binding Gentleman John's wrists, Kid Wolf hummed a new verse to his favorite tune, "On the Rio."

CHAPTER XXI

APACHES

In the half light of the early morning, a stagecoach was rattling down a steep hill near the New Mexico-Arizona boundary line. The team of six bronchos fought against the weight of the lumbering vehicle behind, with stiff front legs threw themselves back against their harness. The driver, high on his box, sawed at the lines with his foot heavy on the creaking brake.

"Whoa!" he roared. "Easy, yuh cow-faced loco-eyed broncs! Steady now, or I'll beat the livin' tar outn yuh!"

The ponies seemed to disregard his bellowing abuse. They had heard it before, and knew that he didn't mean a word he said. They were almost at the foot of the hill now, and the thick white dust, kicked up in choking spurts by the rumbling wheels, sifted down on the leathery mesquite and dagger plants below.

"I don't like the looks o' that brush down there," said the other man on the box. He was an express guard, and across his knees was a sawed-off shotgun loaded with buckshot.

"Perfect place fer an ambush, ain't it?" admitted the driver. "Well, if the Apaches do git us, I will say they'll make a nice haul."

It was a dangerous time on the great Southwest frontier. Law had not yet come to that savage country of flaming desert and baking mountain.

Even a worse peril than the operations of the renegades and bad men of the border was the threat of the Apaches. Behind any clump of mesquites a body of these grim and terrible fighters of the arid lands might lurk, eager for murder and robbery. And it was rumored that a chief even more cruel than Geronimo, Cochise, or Mangus Colorado was at their head.

The men who operated the stage line knew the risk they were taking in that unbroken country, but they were of the type that could look danger in the face and laugh. The two steely-eyed men on the coach box, this gray morning, were samples of the breed.

Inside the vehicle were four pa.s.sengers. Three of them were men past middle life--miners and cattlemen. The third was a youth who addressed one of the older men as "father." All were armed with six-guns, and all were bound for the valley of San Simon.

The stage had reached the bottom of the hill now, and as the team reached the level ground, the driver lined them out and settled back in his seat with a satisfied grunt. About both sides of the trail at this point grew great thickets of brush--paloverde, the darker mesquites, and grotesque bunches of p.r.i.c.kly pear. One of the bronchos suddenly reared backward.

"Steady, yuh ornery----" the driver began.

He did not finish. There was a sharp tw.a.n.g! An arrow whistled out of the mesquites and buried itself in the side of the coach nearly to the feather! As if this were a signal, a dozen rifles cracked out from the brush. Bowstrings snapped, and a shower of arrows and lead hummed around the heads of the frightened ponies. The driver cried out in pain as a bullet hit his leg.

"Apaches!" the express guard yelled, throwing up his sawed-off shotgun.

Two streaks of red fire darted through the haze of black powder smoke as he fired both barrels into the brush. The driver recovered himself, seized the reins and began to "pour leather" onto his fear-crazed team.

With drawn guns, the four pa.s.sengers in the coach waited for something to shoot at. They were soon to see plenty.

The mesquites suddenly became alive with brown-skinned warriors, hideous with paint and screaming their hoa.r.s.e death cry. Some were mounted, and others were on foot. All charged the coach.

There must have been fifty in the swarm, and still they came! Those that were armed with rifles fired madly into the coach and at the team.

Others rushed up and tried to seize the bridles.

"It's all up with us!" the guard cried, drawing his big .45 Colt.

"But we ain't--goin' to sell out--cheap!" the driver panted.

Escape was impossible now, for two of the horses went down, plunging and kicking at the harness in their death agony. The other animals--some wounded, and all of them mad with fright--overturned the old stagecoach. With a loud crash, the vehicle went over on its side!

The driver and guard, teeth bared in grins of fury, raised their six-guns and prepared to sell their lives as dearly as possible. The pa.s.sengers inside began firing desperately.

The renegade Indians rushed. They nearly gained the wrecked stage, but not quite. Before the straight shooting of the trapped whites, they fell back to cover again. They did not believe in taking unnecessary chances. They had their victims where they wanted them, and it would be only a question of time before they would be slaughtered. The fight became a siege.

It was sixty against six--or, rather, it was sixty to five. For the redskins had increased the odds by shooting down the driver. The second bullet he received drilled him through the heart. The guard, scrambling for shelter, joined the four men in the overturned coach.

The Apaches, back in their refuge among the brush, began playing a waiting game. The fire, for a moment, ceased.

"They'll rush again in a minute," muttered the guard. "We'll do well to stop 'em. Anyways, we won't hold out long. Just a question o'

time."

"Is there any chance o' help?" asked one of the men, while loading his revolver.

He was a broad-shouldered, big-chested man of fifty--the father of the youth who was now fighting beside him.

The guard shook his head. "Afraid not. Unless one of us could get through to Lost Springs, six miles from here. Even if we could, I don't think we'd get any help. There's not many livin' there, and they're all scared of Apaches. Can't say I blame 'em."

Bullets began to buzz again. The Indians were making another charge.

A dense cloud of smoke hung over the ambushed coach. White powder spurts blossomed out from the brush, and the war cry came shrilly. The rush brought a line of half-naked warriors to within a few yards of the coach. Then they fell back again, leaving four of their number dead or wounded on the sand.

"So far, so good," panted the guard. "But we can't do that forever!"

The youngest of the party, pale of face but determined, spoke up quickly:

"I'm willin' to take the chance o' gettin' to Lost Springs," he said.

"Yuh can't make it alive through that bunch o' devils," the guard told him.

"It's our only chance," the other returned. "I'm goin' to try.

Good-by, dad!"

It was a sad, heart-wrenching moment. There was small chance that the two would ever see each other alive again. But father and son shook hands and pa.s.sed it over with a smile.

"Good luck, son!"

And then the younger one slipped out of the coach and was gone.