Bushwack Bullets

  BUSHWACK BULLETS

  by Walker A. Tompkins

  Phoenix Press 1941

  Scanned and Proofed by Highroller and RyokoWerx

  1

  THIRTEEN NOTCHES

  Dev Hewett twisted in saddle to trigger his six-gun at the rancher who was galloping relentlessly in pursuit. For five desperate miles the running gunplay had lasted, but Hewett's horse was winded and staggering so that the end could not be far off now.

  George Siebert had caught the outlaw red-handed in the act of rustling unbranded calves from their Triangle S mothers. Hewett's idea was to haze the bawling critters onto Mexican range at a point where drought had nearly bridged the Rio Grande with sandbars.

  Hewett had driven Siebert to cover with a rifle and then, boarding his ground-tied pony, had set out toward Mexitex in the hope of vanishing in the squalid Mexican section of the cow town where he had made his home.

  But Siebert, sure of the justice of his cause, had pressed the chase hard.

  On a fresh horse, the Triangle S boss was rapidly overtaking his owlhoot quarry. Bullets whined with sinister regularity from Siebert's rifle. The Triangle S had been robbed for years by Dev Hewett, and now the outraged cowman intended to exact full revenge by finishing Hewett's outlaw career with lead.

  Hewett's whiskery visage was gray with panic as he saw the rimrock of the Rio Grande looming before him. Mexitex town was around the bend, still a quarter mile beyond. Siebert was so close that Hewett could hear the clatter of the ranchman's horse; Siebert had booted his Winchester, had drawn a six-gun as he spurred in for the kill.

  The big Colt in Siebert's hand roared, and Hewett screamed with horror as he felt the shock of the bullet hitting his horse. He instinctively kicked boots out of tapaderoed stirrups; an instant later his bronc crumpled in full gallop, and Hewett was catapulting into a dwarf smoketree on the brink of the Rio Grande's canyon.

  George Siebert drew rein fifty feet away and swung out of saddle, hefting his smoking gun warily as he approached the sprawled figure of the cow thief. Hewett appeared to be dead, or else knocked out by his tumble.

  "This'll save the county the price of hangin' you, Hewett," panted the stockman, holstering his gun as he saw no trace of life in the owlhooter propped grotesquely against the smoketree. "You've ambushed yore last—"

  Even as he turned to go back to his horse, Siebert heard Hewett's grunt of exertion as the outlaw bounced to his feet, the black bore of his Colt aimed at Siebert's back.

  Siebert whirled, as Hewett's revolver spat flame and smoke and a heavy pellet of lead drilled the rancher's leg. Numb with bullet shock, Siebert still had the strength to ear back the hammer of his own gun.

  Hewett was staggering backward in panic before the menace of Siebert's gun as it drove a tunneling bullet into his chest, ripping through his right lung.

  Siebert collapsed in a faint, so that his eyes did not see the impact of his bullet carry Hewett backwards over the brink of the Rio Grande's high shale cut-bank.

  Muddy water sheeted in all directions as Hewett's plummeting form struck a deep pool under the shale bank's beetling crest. A trio of Mexican kids clad only in ragged pantalones, were roused out of their drowsy torpor where they were angling for Rio catfish, a dozen feet from where Hewett vanished under geysering water.

  Jabbering excitedly in Spanish, the muchachos plunged into the foamy waterhole and hauled the wounded outlaw to the muddy bank.

  "It's Señor Hewett!" said one of them, staring in sickish amazement at the guttering blood which spouted with each heartbeat from Hewett's bullet-riddled chest. "The hombre who lives on the Avenida de los Palmas, in Mexitex—"

  Coughing river water and crimson bubbles out of his lungs, Dev Hewett opened his eyes. A shudder of pain wracked the dying outlaw's body as he said to the trio of wide-eyed peon fisherboys who had rescued him from drowning:

  "Go to the abogado … the lawyer—Russ Melrose… in town," gasped Hewett, the world spinning giddily about him. "Bring… Melrose here. He will… pay you… mucho dinero. Tell him… hurry—"

  The largest of the three Mexican boys started off for the nearby town at a sprint, leaving his two companions petrified with horror near the stretched-out body of the outlaw. Russ Melrose was a well-known figure in Mexitex town, being the justice of the peace there; and it did not take the boy long to locate the lawyer, in his office above the grimy Purple Hawk Saloon.

  The messenger boy showed no inclination to want to accompany the lawyer back to the fishing hole. And when Russ Melrose had worked his way through the dwarf willow and cottonwood to the spot where Dev Hewett lay, it was to find that the dying man had been deserted by the other two Mexican younkers. Hewett's groans and the sight of his ghastly bullet wound had been too much to watch.

  "Dev!" cried Melrose, kneeling beside the gunman and peering about anxiously. "Who plugged you, Dev?"

  Hewett's pain-shot eyes fluttered. His hand was limp in the lawyer's grasp.

  "Listen to me, Melrose. I'm cashin' in fast, sabe? But before I go… want to get you… to do somethin'… for me."

  With a shaking fist, Dev Hewett pulled a six-gun from its basket-woven holster at his left thigh. It was a gun that bore thirteen notches on its back strap—each a dead man—and Russ Melrose knew that Hewett was too proud to tally his guns for a common mestizo or Indian.

  "Do you know… my kid—Everito?" asked Hewett, shoving the big .45 Colt into the lawyer's hand. "He's… just a whelp… three years old… now. You tell him… when he gets… to be twenty-one. Savvy, Russ?"

  The lawyer nodded, staring at the gun in his hand.

  "Tell him… it was George Siebert… who shot me," panted the outlaw. "Tell Everito… to avenge my death… by killin' Siebert… with this hogleg. It's my… only legacy to him… savvy?"

  Russ Melrose scowled thoughtfully. He knew that Dev Hewett had sired a half-breed son. Its Mexican mother had died in childbirth, and for the past three years the nino had been indifferently cared for by Hewett's second wife, Angelita.

  "It'll take cash to support that kid for eighteen years!" pointed out Russ Melrose bluntly. "Then my fee—"

  Rage and disgust made the blond outlaw flush in spite of the death-drain on his countenance.

  "After all the years… we been pardners… in smugglin'… an' rustlin'… you talk o' money!" panted Hewett. A fit of coughing left him spent and gaunt. "While I lay… dyin'… you talk o' money. You greedy… shyster—"

  Melrose stood up, a cold smile twisting his lips.

  "Yeah—your sand is runnin' out fast, Dev. If you want me to hand over this six-gun legacy to your brat when he's twenty-one, you'll shell over a fee."

  Dev Hewett propped himself up on one elbow. He pressed the palm of his other hand against the wound in his brisket, as if to stem the flow of life-blood which drained his strength.

  "All right. You'll get… your dinero," gagged the dying man. "Listen, Russ. I got… a secret. I found out… from a hotelkeeper down in Presidio… that a prospector named Warren Allen… has struck a gold mine out in the Sierra Secos."

  Melrose scowled, his lips compressing thoughtfully.

  "Allen is bringin' a map… to Mexitex… tonight. I was figgerin'… on waylayin' him . . myself. You salivate that prospector… an' you got a… gold mine, Russ. All I ask… in return… is that you give Everito… that six-gun… when the time comes—"

  The expiring criminal lapsed off into another paroxysm.

  Russ Melrose dropped to a squat beside Dev Hewett.

  "Talk fast, Dev!" urged the callous-hearted lawyer. "Where can I find this prospector? Where's he got that gold map?"

  Melrose had to put his ear close to Hewett's lip, so faint were the dying outlaw's whispered words:


  "Allen's family… livin' in that covered wagon… west edge o' Mexitex by the river… behind the slag pile o' the copper mine. Allen's… comin' up from Presidio… today. You'll find him… visitin' his family… in that covered wagon. You—"

  A ghastly rattle sounded in Hewett's windpipe.

  "Yes—go on!" rasped Melrose. "What—"

  He broke off, as he saw that Dev Hewett was a dead man.

  The cow-town lawyer squatted for several minutes beside the twitching corpse of the Texas desperado. The circumstances of Dev Hewett's last gun fight with George Siebert, owner of the Triangle S spread, were unknown to Melrose.

  All he had been able to gather, from the breathless Mexican stripling who had informed him of Hewett's whereabouts, was an impossible tale about Hewett's having dropped out of the sky into their fishing pool.

  Three abandoned fishing poles nearby, and a string of catfish jerking feebly at the water's edge bore out the muchacho's statement. And it was possible that Hewett had been shot on the brink of the low cliff overhead; or had Siebert hurled the outlaw's body in the Rio to hide it?

  A crafty grin bent Melrose's lips as he pondered the setup which fate had shoved into his lap. There was a very good chance that he could pin a murder onto the wealthy Triangle S cattleman, and if so, nothing could please Melrose better. The unscrupulous lawyer had long had designing eyes on Siebert's range; it was the best watered and most level acreage in the entire Texas Big Bend country.

  He put little stock in Hewett's fantastic tale of a prospector returning to town with a map showing where he had struck a gold mine out in the desolate Sierra Seco range. Nevertheless, it would be worth looking into. Hewett had died before explaining just how the Presidio hotelkeeper knew that this Warren Allen hombre was bound for Mexitex with the key to a golden treasure in his possession.

  Glancing about to make sure his ghoulish operations were not being witnessed from either side of the Rio Grande, Melrose explored the dead outlaw's pockets. He found nothing but water-sogged tobacco, a few pesetas in Mex change, and a bandana.

  The lawyer stood up, and thrust Hewett's cedar-butted Colt .45 six-gun into the pocket of his black frock coat.

  Then he pushed his way back through the brambles to the riverbank trail which led to a bluff overlooking Mexitex town.

  It was a nondescript assemblage of adobe-walled shacks, false-fronted saloons rimming a main street, and a copper mining plant which gave the town its excuse for existence. The curving Rio Grande bisected Mexitex, half of it on the Texas side, half of it in Chihuahua; bridged by a wooden-piled span with Federal immigration and customs headquarters at either end.

  Mexitex was the seat of Yaqui County, and as such boasted a small courthouse—where Melrose had a justice's office—and a one-story adobe jailhouse in which Sheriff Les Kingman maintained the headquarters of law and order.

  Thoughts were rapidly taking form in the lawyer's brain as he made his way toward the sheriff's office. Melrose was tall, angular, and bony; his face had the lean and predatory look of a callous undertaker, and his neck reminded men of a vulture's.

  Among the better-class Americans, Russ Melrose was judged to be an unscrupulous shyster—a stigma which could have been based on fact had the citizens of Mexitex cared to check up on Melrose's past, when a murder and bribery charge had sent him hightailing out of an Alabama town ten years before, two hops ahead of an irate posse.

  Out here on the remote Texas border, Russ Melrose shelved his Blackstones, rented a rolltop desk, and plunged into Yaqui County politics, hoping someday to corral the choice cattle range of the area and establish himself in the enviable position now occupied by George Siebert.

  Melrose licked his lips excitedly as he discovered Sheriff Les Kingman seated at his desk in the jailhouse office. Kingman was a rawboned oldster who had seen careers as a Texas Ranger and a U.S. Marshal before settling down in Mexitex as sheriff.

  Onion-bald, his skin dyed saddle-brown by the winds and suns of almost seventy summers, Kingman was a lawman of the old school who knew how to use his guns to enforce the authority of the tarnished star on his sombrero crown.

  "I'm reporting a murder, Kingman," grunted Russ Melrose without preamble. "Some Mex buttons were fishin' on the Rio. They came and got me, told me that Dev Hewett—"

  Les Kingman waved off the lawyer, swinging in his chair to hook a booted leg over his spur-scuffed desk.

  "I already know about that—sent a deputy over to pick up Hewett's carcass not five minutes ago," grunted the sheriff, waggling a toothpick under his sandy waterfall mustache.

  "You—you know who murdered Dev?"

  Kingman rubbed a horny knuckle along his stubbed jaw.

  "It wasn't murder. Gorge Siebert shot him after a runnin' gun fight. Hewett was chousin' Triangle S beef. It's a wonder that buscadero ain't been plugged long before this."

  Melrose felt a rush of disappointment surge through him at the sheriff's cold dismissal of any murder guilt against Seibert.

  "But… but Hewett said before he croaked that— that he was just riding across Triangle S range, and Siebert bushwacked him—"

  The sheriff snorted his contempt.

  "Hell, Siebert ain't a drygulcher, an' you know it, Russ. Besides, George has got two or three of his cowhands to witness the whole thing except the final shootout."

  Kingman pointed through the open doorway toward a shack where the town medico, Doc Harry Hanson, had his home and county coroner's office.

  "Siebert druv into town an' told me the whole thing," the sheriff said. "Siebert's got a smashed knee—Doc says he may never walk again. He's tryin' to fish out Hewett's slug over there now."

  Russ Melrose grunted his disappointment at the turn of events, and made his way out of Kingman's office. For want of anything better to do, he presented his pass-card credentials at the port of entry gate, crossed the Rio Grande into the Mexican section, and looked up Hewett's shabby jacal on the Avenida de los Palmas.

  There, he found that the Mexican fisherboys had already acquainted Hewett's Mexican wife, Angelita, of her husband's death.

  Melrose found the slatternly Mexican señora busy gathering together her meager possessions, while on the dirty floor in the front room played Everito, the three-year-old half-breed child to whom Dev Hewett had bequeathed his notched six-gun.

  "Si—I know that Dev is muerte," grunted the Mexican woman. "Me, I go to my padre's in Chihuahua. Do I take the nino? Do I take Everito with me? Seguromente, no. No caballero would marry Angelita eef she had a babee. What becomes of Everito, I no care, Señor Melrose. I do not love the keed. I am not his madre."

  The scoundrelly lawyer could not repress a feeling of shock at the cold-hearted refusal of the peon woman to care for her orphaned stepchild. As Hewett's lawyer, he knew that indirectly he would be responsible for the heir's welfare.

  "You are a bad woman, Angelita. Mexitex is better off without you."

  As Melrose returned to the American side of town, his eyes ranged over to the westward, beyond the sluggish Rio Grande's bending channel. Just beyond the towering black slag dump of the Texas Queen Copper Co.'s plant, he made out a canvas-hooded prairie schooner drawn up under a giant cottonwood tree near the river's edge.

  "Hewett wasn't spoofing any about a covered wagon being over there," grunted the lawyer to himself. "The least I can do is check up on his yarn about a gold prospector comin' here to visit his family tonight. If this Warren Allen hombre has a gold map, I'll damned soon know about it."

  2

  ALLEN'S GOLD CHART

  Soon after the sun had settled into the distant notch which the Rio Grande had eroded out of the sky-line to westward, lawyer Russ Melrose made his way cautiously around the base of the man-made mountain of slag, his eyes peering at Allen's wagon.

  A slim young woman was there, cooking over an open fire near the prairie schooner which was her home. A boy about three years of age was frolicking near the campfire, and Melrose recalled having seen this wo
man, with her son, walking along the streets of Mexitex.

  "Her husband hasn't arrived yet," surmised Melrose. "Dev said he was due tonight. I reckon there's enough at stake for me to wait around a spell."

  He could tell by Mrs. Allen's attitude of expectancy—her frequent glances toward the river-bank trail, and her general bearing—that she was awaiting someone's coming. Melrose did not have long to wait.

  Even as twilight shadows were deepening, the atmosphere seeming to press the campfire smoke close to the ground, a lone horseman appeared down the Rio Grande trail. The rider spurred his tired cayuse into a lope, and waved his sombrero in eager greeting as he flung himself from saddle and rushed to sweep his young son into his arms, then hug his wife close.

  "We got your letter, dear," Melrose heard the woman say, when their first excited greetings were over. "I'm sorry we weren't in Presidio when you got there, but there was a smallpox epidemic raging—I thought I should come up here, where Hap would be safe."

  Melrose felt his heart slam with excitement at Allen's words, which carried distinctly to where the lawyer was hiding:

  "It was worth the extry ride, Eleanor. I've got great news. We won't have to worry about Hap gettin' his schoolin', or bein' comfortable in our old age. Let's get in the wagon where it ain't so chilly, an' I'll tell you all about it."

  Melrose stifled an oath of disappointment as he saw the Allens climb into the wagon. Their happy voices came from within; and a moment later Melrose saw their silhouetted shadows on the canvas, cast there by the lemon-yellow glow of a lamp.

  Melrose drew in his breath huskily. He felt for the reassuring bulk of a shoulder-holstered Colt .45 under his frock coat lapel.

  Then, glancing about through the gathering darkness to make sure no loitering Mexicans were about, he came out of hiding and slipped across the open ground toward the Allens' camp, making a wide circuit to avoid the pink glow of firelight.

  He approached the prairie schooner from the river side, noiseless as a ghost as he passed the picketed horse of the Allen wagon.