Bushwack Bullets Page 10

  Even as Hap Kingman locked his fingers about Señor Giboso's right arm to prevent the outlaw from drawing his .45 Colt, he stared into the crook's face and recognition made him gasp Señor Giboso's real name:

  "Russ Melrose!"

  16

  BOOT-SOLE HUNCH

  Russ Melrose brought up his left knee in a jarring blow to Kingman's solar plexus that left him limp. But with bulldog tenacity the cowboy kept his grip on the lawyer's gun wrist, hanging there with all his weight as he fought to prevent the exposed "Señor Giboso" from triggering a slug through him.

  Their rolling legs kicked the lantern to one side, but it continued flickering and smoking.

  With a supreme effort, Melrose wrested his Colt out of leather, but a flesh-crushing pressure of Kingman's hand made him drop the gun before he could flex his trigger finger.

  Frantically, Kingman kicked the six-gun far back into the shadows.

  Then the two separated and struggled to their feet, lungs heaving with labored breaths as they squared off, fists raised, eyes hunting for an opening.

  Melrose opened his mouth to scream for help to Juan Fernandez, the Mexican guard outside the cavern. But before he could give voice to the yell, Hap Kingman rushed him with berserk fury.

  A rib snapped under Kingman's terrific punches, but the Mexitex lawyer was a big man. His slabby muscles held the power of a grizzly, and he matched Kingman, reach and weight.

  Both men were fighting for their lives, and they knew it. If Kingman got across a punch that would drop Melrose, the lawyer knew he would be dragged forwith to the Yaqui County sheriff, and his grim secret exposed.

  The cowboy, on the other hand, knew just as surely that the smuggler would never allow him to leave this subterranean rendezvous alive, if he gained the upper hand in their conflict.

  They swept into a grapple, Melrose's talonlike fingers clawing at the puncher's throat, fingernails razoring ribbons of flesh from his Adam's apple. But, before the throttling pressure of those fingers could close about his windpipe, Kingman had pounded his way into the clear with blows which reduced the lawyer's beaklike nose to a squirting pulp, sealed up one eye and brought blood to a battered lip.

  Everett Kingman could not come to his chief's aid; the treacherous gringo lay sprawled as he had fallen, knocked out by his brother's kick to the jaw in the initial onslaught.

  Breaking through the lawyer's desperate defense, Kingman drove a pile-driver right into the lawyer's plowshare jaw.

  The punch carried every ounce of the cowboy's wiry, supple weight behind it, and staggered the lawyer.

  Breathing hard through grating teeth, Hap Kingman pounced with tigerish ferocity to follow up his advantage.

  Toe to toe they slugged for a brief moment, and then the lawyer crumpled to his knees, arms lifted defensively to shield his head.

  But a jarring series of rights hammered against an exposed temple, and with a gusting sigh of agony, Russ Melrose collapsed on his side, eyes glazed with the stunned look of a pole-axed steer.

  Panting heavily, Hap Kingman hunted in the murk until he found the lawyer's six-gun.

  Then he righted the smoking lantern and made his way to where the lawyer was pulling himself into a sitting position, blood dribbling through his splayed fingers as he lifted both palms to his beef-steaked face.

  "A lot… o' things… are a damned sight… clearer to me… now, Melrose," gasped Kingman, training the muzzle of the Peacemaker at the groaning lawyer below him. "I can see now why you wore a mask an' whispered. You didn't want even yore men to know that Señor Giboso was the lawyer who ramrods the Mexitex court. You didn't trust even Everett—"

  Hate blazed behind the film of pain in Melrose's eyes as he stared at the black bore of a gun in Kingman's hand. Melrose was a hard man as well as evil. No trace of cowardice was in his bearing, now that he knew his life hinged on the trigger finger of Kingman's hand.

  "You won't get out of here alive, Kingman!" wheezed Melrose thickly. "Fernandez isn't the only greaser guarding this cave. There are four or five men scattered up and down the Rio bank."

  Kingman grinned crookedly.

  "You're not in any position to bluff me, Melrose!" snarled the cowboy. "You're the hostage that'll see to it that you and me cross the Rio Grande in safety. If Fernandez takes a shot at me in the dark, I'll kill you first."

  Kingman stared down at the lawyer's boots, and a sudden hunch dawned in his brain.

  "You baited me into goin' out to kill Siebert— you didn't have to turn my father's six-gun legacy over to me, if you hadn't wanted me to kill Siebert that day," the cowboy said bitterly. "What was the idea, Melrose? Why did you want George Siebert out of the way?"

  The lawyer fingered a rapidly closing eye.

  "It was your idea, Kingman. You were getting revenge because Siebert shot your mother and father. I just did my duty—like I promised Dev Hewett before he died. The rest was up to you."

  Kingman continued staring fixedly at the lawyer's hobnailed boot soles.

  "Anna Siebert found boot tracks in the dried mud up on top of Manzanita Hill, Melrose," said the cowboy at length. "She got the coroner to dig out the bullet that killed Siebert. It was a steel-jacketed .30-30 slug."

  Kingman thought he saw Melrose go pale under the impact of this information.

  "What's that got to do with me?" challenged Melrose, getting shakily to his feet. "You tryin' to pin Siebert's killin' onto me, Kingman?"

  The cowboy grinned mirthlessly, his thumb caressing the knurled prong of the .45 he held leveled on Melrose's chest.

  "Wouldn't it be interestin'," he suggested, "if those boots of yours matched the tracks in that dry adobe on Monzanita Mill? That'd prove you shot Siebert."

  "Didn't I defend you in court?"

  "Defended me! You let yourself give enough testimony about me and that six-gun of my father's to hang me, and you know it."

  Russ Melrose shook his head defiantly.

  "You won't pin any killing onto me, Hap. It'll be my word against yours. You're a wanted killer. A smuggler—"

  Kingman laughed harshly.

  "A smuggler, railroaded into workin' one night for Señor Giboso. An' who is Señor Giboso? None other than Russ Melrose, who'd ride down to Maduro town whenever he did a smugglin' job. Wait till Sheriff Reynolds and the border patrol hear that—and we'll see how far your bogus respectability gets you with a jury. And Everett will squeal on you to save his hide—"

  Catching the angry cowboy off guard, Russ Melrose opened his bruised mouth and bawled at the top of his lungs:

  "Fernandez! Pedro! Help—"

  The yell echoed deafeningly in the stuffy confines of the cavern, and for an instant Kingman was tempted to blast a .45 slug into the lawyer's belly.

  Instead, he leaped forward and clubbed the six-gun barrel hard across the lawyer's head, wilting him in an inert heap at the cowboy's feet.

  Spinning about, Hap Kingman heard Mexicans shouting to each other outside the cavern, confirming Melrose's threat that Juan Fernandez was not the only smuggler guard outside.

  The yells got closer, telling the trapped cowboy that Señor Giboso's sentries were sprinting toward the cavern to determine the cause of their leader's frantic cry for help.

  Stooping swiftly, Hap Kingman jerked at the lawyer's left boot until it came off Melrose's leg.

  Then he sprang to the lantern and smashed it, plunging the cavern into darkness.

  He was not a moment too soon. Running feet slogged into the entrance of the cavern, and hoarse Mexican voices called to their leader inside.

  Feeling his way along the curving wall of the underground chamber, Hap Kingman crept to the opening of the cavern.

  A moment later he heard three Mexicans grope past him, spur chains clanking.

  "A light!" came Juan Fernandez's frightened whisper. "Strike a match, Pedro. Something is wrong."

  Taking advantage of the Mexicans' confusion, Hap Kingman slipped behind them and felt his way along the cave
until the natural tunnel took its right-turn bend toward the Rio Grande outside.

  A match flicked inside the cave, but Kingman was already outside. Against heavy odds, he knew it would have been impossible to attempt holding Everett and Señor Giboso prisoners.

  The quick reinforcement of the lawyer's Mexican guards had turned the tables on Hap Kingman. But outside would be his waiting horse.

  He forced his way through the brambles until he came to two horses, those belonging to himself and Everett, where Juan Fernandez had tied them to a dwarf cottonwood.

  Swiftly he swung into saddle and spurred Anna Siebert's pony out into the river.

  Behind him, hoarse yells came from Fernandez and his fellow Mexicans as they discovered the unconscious bodies of Everett Kingman and the gringo lawyer they had known as Señor Giboso, their smuggling chief.

  Shots shattered the quiet of the night, as the Mexicans opened fire on the dimly visible form of horse and rider, now out in midcurrent.

  Bullets spat geysers of muddy water about Kingman's swimming horse. A slug plucked his sombrero brim. Others ricocheted off the river, whined off into the night.

  Then the winking gun flashes ceased, as Hap Kingman made good his getaway to the black background of the Texas bank.

  17

  TRACKS ON MANZANITA HILL

  The Sierra Seco range, looming sinister and forbidding against an eastern horizon that was beginning to pale before the advent of a lifting sun, was known to be the refuge of hunted men throughout southwestern Texas.

  Hap Kingman spurred his horse in that direction now, thankful that he had gained a fair knowledge of the trackless mountains during his youthful hunting trips after deer and mountain lions.

  He could never go back to Mexico, he knew. Although he stood cleared of George Siebert's actual murder, he was still a hunted man, wanted for jail break, and for complicity with a smuggling ring.

  Furthermore, he had given Anna Siebert his oath to leave Texas. But, from some remote point, he intended to ship back to her by Wells Fargo express a package which would contain the boot he had shucked from Russ Melrose's leg tonight.

  If the hobnails in the sole of that boot matched the ambusher's tracks the girl had found on Manzanita Hill, overlooking her father's Triangle S ranch house, it would give her something tangible to provide Sheriff Bob Reynolds.

  And that lawman, cagy man hunter that he was, would sooner or later spy out Russ Melrose and capture him in the role of Señor Giboso. When that day came, perhaps destiny would provide a way for Hap Kingman to come back to the only range he had ever known.

  But until then he was an outcast, and if he valued his hide, he would steer far and clear of Mexitex for many moons to come.

  As the blanket of night lifted slowly and the crags which spiked the Texas horizon began to wear edges of gold and rose light, the cowboy made out landmarks. Mexitex town, a sprawling blot miles to the west, along the Rio Grande. A tiny speck on the terrain that marked his own Flying K home. And nearer at hand, between the Flying K and the ridge where stood his mount, were the whitewashed walls of George Siebert's Triangle S.

  Only two miles beyond and below him, he could see the small ridge named Manzanita Hill because of the profusion of the red-barked scrub which carpeted its slopes.

  The cowboy's gaze dropped to the Coffeyville boot tied to his saddlehorn—the hobnailed footgear belonging to lawyer Russ Melrose. Then his vision focused on the brushy crest of Manzanita Hill, where an unknown drygulcher had fired a bullet into George Siebert's chest.

  "I'll settle my curiosity first-hand!" decided the cowboy, reining about and spurring toward the Triangle S ranch buildings. "This early, I'm not likely to be spotted."

  He rode ridge tops, scanning the surrounding country sharply for riders who might be in the saddle at this hour.

  The rising sun threw his long shadow before him as he reached the base of Manzanita Hill, the bulk of the ridge hiding any view of Siebert's ranch.

  Picketing his pony carefully in a brush-choked draw, Hap Kingman tucked Melrose's boot under his elbow and climbed to the summit of the ridge.

  He paused a moment, looking down at the north porch of Siebert's ranchhouse. Distinct in the ruddy glow of the Texas dawn, the cowboy saw the spot where he had encountered the syndicate boss in his wheelchair on that grim afternoon of showdown.

  Kingman's heart began racing with suspense as he worked his way along the ridge, eyes searching the ground for the telltale clues to ambush which Anna Siebert had told him about the night before.

  Then, at a point where a buckthorn thicket formed a hedge directly overlooking the spot where George Siebert had died, Hap Kingman discovered the tracks which Anna Siebert had hunted out before him. The tracks which told the girl that Hap Kingman had not slain her father—clues which had directly been responsible for Hap's being alive today.

  The rains which had soaked Manzanita Hill had turned the adobe to thick gray mire. Anyone walking in that mud would leave clear and distinct tracks which the succeeding sun would harden into an imperishable record, like casts made of plaster of Paris.

  "It was Melrose. No doubt of it!"

  Kingman muttered the words, as he knelt to examine a series of hobnailed tracks which had hardened in the mud behind the buckthorn bush.

  Carefully, the cowboy fitted Russ Melrose's boot into the tracks. They fitted exactly, to the last tiny variation of the pattern of the hobnails on the soles.

  A strange torrent of emotions swept through the outcast puncher, as he tried to absorb the knowledge which this evidence proved. Placed in the capable hands of Sheriff Bob Reynolds—

  "But Melrose is a slippery snake. He's been a lawyer too long to let circumstantial evidence swing him. He'd say he bought those boots from somebody, or that they were stolen and returned at the time of Siebert's murder. He'd wiggle out some way or other."

  A rustling in the brush before him made Kingman leap to his feet, hand sliding to his holstered gun.

  Then he froze, as he saw Anna Siebert standing before him, bareheaded in the morning sunlight.

  "So it's you, Hap," the girl said heavily. "I saw someone moving around up here, from my window. But I… I hardly expected… to find you."

  Hap Kingman fumbled clumsily with his Stetson brim. For the moment, all thought of embarrassment or dread of being discovered by Anna Siebert was erased in the sheer beauty of the girl before him.

  The ruddy sunlight did something to her face, highlighting the straight nose and firm mouth, her warm hazel eyes.

  She was wearing a fringed buckskin blouse this morning, bright with Indian beadwork. Her split skirt was likewise of buckskin, and she was wearing taffy-colored riding boots.

  "I thought you gave me your word to leave Texas yesterday," Anna Siebert went on, as he stood there in silence. "Why do you persist in—"

  Hap Kingman stepped forward, gripping Melrose's boot in his hands. Words tumbled from his lips as he blurted out:

  "Miss Siebert, I meant it when I promised to vamoose. But things have happened durin' the night. Things you'll find it hard to believe. I know who murdered your dad, now, and framed me with that killin'. This is his boot."

  Anna Siebert listened slowly with melting disbelief as Hap Kingman told her of his capture by his brother Everett the night before at his Flying K ranchhouse, his visit to Señor Giboso's cave on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, and the startling discovery he had made regarding Señor Giboso's true identity.

  "And then his boot—it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, Miss Siebert, that Russ Melrose is the ambusher we're lookin' for. Not only is Russ Melrose masqueradin' as Señor Giboso, on the south side of the border—but for some reason, he wanted your dad put out of the way."

  The girl's lips curled in a scornful smile.

  "And you were the man he chose to… to put dad out of the way."

  Kingman's heart sank as he saw the grim light of tragedy in the girl's eyes. Although technically he had not murdered Geo
rge Siebert, he knew that Anna still regarded him as a potential killer, and would never forgive him for the murder mission that had brought him to the Triangle S.

  "Miss Siebert," pleaded the cowboy, "you can't understand. That memory I had of an hombre murderin' my parents—well, it poisoned my heart, made me brood all through my boyhood years. When Russ Melrose told me who I was—that my father, Dev Hewett, wanted me to avenge his death—I guess I sort of went loco. It sounds flat to say, but I don't… I don't think I would really have prodded your dad into a shootout. My temper would have cooled—"

  Unexpectedly, Anna Siebert stepped forward and thrust out a hand to grip the cowboy's.

  "Hap, let us forget the unfortunate past. The thing to do now is to see what we can do about Melrose."

  Anna Siebert walked with him down the other slope of Manzanita Hill and conducted him into the big living room of the Triangle S ranchhouse, where a crackling fire cut the morning chill.

  "You may be mystified as to what motive Russ Melrose would have in wanting my father dead, Hap," she told him, after giving orders to a wide-eyed mestizo to serve them breakfast immediately. "But I know—or at least, I think I do."

  Sombrero on his knee, Hap leaned forward as the two sat down before a cowhide-covered table by the fireplace.

  "You know why Melrose shot your dad?"

  "Yes. I found out, while going through my papers last night, that my father owed Melrose ten thousand dollars. I knew he mortgaged the syndicate last year when blackleg wiped out our herds, but I didn't know Melrose held the paper."

  Kingman's jaw dropped as understanding flooded his brain.

  "Then if Melrose can foreclose that mortgage—"

  "He could be in control of the Mexitex Cattle & Land Syndicate, Hap," finished the girl.

  Kingman whistled to himself.

  "When is that mortgage money due Melrose?"

  "It's due," the girl replied, "one week from today."

  "And I don't suppose," Kingman said anxiously, "that you got that much money floatin' around to pay Melrose off?"