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  Then, reaching the end gate of the Conestoga wagon, the lawyer cupped palm to ear and picked up Warren Allen's excited voice:

  "One-eye an' me found some float ore in a dry arroyo, darlin'. That was three months ago, just after I left you folks down in Presidio. Well, we followed up that ore, findin' plenty o' yellow color in the gravel, an' a few nuggets. I got 'em here—"

  Melrose risked a peep through the puckered oval-shaped opening which was in the rear of the wagon hood.

  He saw Warren Allen and his wife bending over a buckskin poke as they sat on a blanketed bed. A tiny stream of nuggets flashed in the lamplight as the prospector poured the golden fragments into his wife's hand.

  "And there's more where this came from, Warren?" The woman's voice was low-pitched with excitement.

  The prospector kissed her.

  "Plenty more, Eleanor. One-eye an' me found the vein that fed that arroyo a million years ago. It's a lucky strike, a bonanza, no less! After a lifetime o' grubbin' an' shovelin', honey, One-eye an' me are rich. Rich!"

  Russ Melrose, forgetful that his twisted visage might be visible through the wagon-hood opening in case Allen or his wife chanced to look up, saw the happy couple bend over the wriggling and playful form of their child, to embrace ecstatically.

  "Where is this… this strike, Warren?" the woman asked, finally. "Is it far from here?"

  The prospector chuckled, and Russ Melrose ducked back out of sight, his ears straining to pick up every kernel of information that Allen might drop.

  "It's took me six days to get here. It's out in the wildest, most inaccessible part of the Sierra Seco range. That's why that gold has lain there so long, Eleanor, without some other hardrock miner locatin' it."

  Melrose could hear the heavy breathing of the prospector's wife. No doubt she had endured years of hardship, waiting for just this bit of news. Now it had come, and the realization that wealth lay before them was almost too much to realize.

  "Is One-eye there now?" Eleanor Allen asked.

  "No—we decided that One-eye would take the pack string up to Fort Stockton to get supplies an' tools. We'll have to make a little stamp mill, sluice boxes an' stuff. Me, I decided to come back here, pronto, to get you an' Hap."

  Eleanor Allen voiced the question which had leaped instantly to the mind of the eavesdropping lawyer outside the wagon:

  "But Warren—if it's in such wild, trackless country as you say—what if you lose the location? You and One-eye might hunt the rest of your lifetimes and never locate it again."

  Allen's booming chuckle reassured her.

  "You won't have to worry, honey. Me an' One-eye thought of that. So we made a map. Only one copy, an' I got that with me. One-eye is to meet us at Marfa when he gets back from Fort Stockton. We'll use the map to follow our trail back into the Sierra Secos."

  Once more Russ Melrose peered into the wagon. His face went hot with excitement as he saw Warren Allen reach into a hip pocket and draw forth a small sterling silver snuffbox. Opening the box, Allen revealed a small bit of soft sheepskin.

  "Here's the map," Allen said. "It'll take us back to our mine, don't worry!"

  Grimly, Russ Melrose shucked off his frock coat. From a pants pocket he drew forth a red bandanna, which he knotted over his face to form a mask.

  Then, drawing his six-gun, the outlaw lawyer vaulted through the opening of the covered wagon's hood.

  "Lift 'em, both of you!"

  Warren Allen and his wife started violently, whirling about to stare at the crouched figure of the stranger who had leaped into their wagon. They saw death staring at them down the bore of Melrose's .45, saw a killer gleam smoldering in the slitted eyes between hat brim and bandanna mask.

  With a hoarse bellow, the prospector stabbed a hand for a belted Colt.

  Instantly, flame spat from the lawyer's gun and Warren Allen was slammed backward under the terrific impact of a bullet drilling his forehead between the eyes.

  Eleanor Allen screamed, but it was not the hysteria of a cowardly woman. Eleanor Allen was raised in the outdoors, and now she was fighting for her life and the life of her baby.

  Even as she snatched the gun from her dead husband's belt, Russ Melrose fired again, aiming through the spouting smoke clouds of his first shot.

  The bullet caught the woman in the stomach, crumpling her with a sob of pain.

  Behind her, little Hap Allen broke into frantic screams. But Russ Melrose disregarded the child's cries as he reached out to snatch up the silver snuffbox and the folded bit of sheepskin which it had contained.

  Then, with a final glance over his shoulder, the lawyer blew out the lamp and crawled back outside. He snatched up his coat and fled through the darkness toward the slag dump.

  Not until he was safe in the privacy of his own living quarters above the Purple Hawk Saloon did Melrose pause to examine his loot.

  It was a gold map, all right. But, even as he looked at the waggly lines and mystic designs that had been drawn on the bit of sheepskin with a hot needle, Russ Melrose knew he had killed two human beings in vain, except for a few ounces of gold dust.

  For the map gave no clue as to what section of the Sierra Secos the Allen gold mine was to be found in. It was a carefully drawn chart of a localized area, Russ Melrose knew it would be as hopeless as looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

  Back in the covered wagon by the Rio Grande, Melrose had left a dead man, a dying woman, and a child. And indelibly etched in that child's brain was a horrifying picture of murder, a nightmarish vision of a red-masked killer that would sear Hap Allen's memory for as long as he lived.

  3

  ORPHANS OF THE BADLANDS

  A mile east of Mexitex town, grizzled old Sheriff Les Kingman lived on his Flying K cattle outfit with Florence, his silvery-haired wife.

  Tonight, for the first time in the fifty years of their married life, a child scampered about the Flying K ranchhouse, engaged in play with Wing Sing, their Chinese cook.

  Every night for most of those fifty years, the lawman and his wife had sat down for a game of rummy—a routine which never was interrupted unless Kingman was out riding the range with a posse on some man-hunt trail.

  "Rummy!" chuckled the sheriff, snatching up an ace which the old lady had just dropped on the discard pile. "Floss, I declare if you ain't losin' your memory. That's twice in this hand you've let me rummy a card on you. What's wrong, anyhow?"

  The old lady smiled wistfully as he glanced over her shoulder at the sight of their oriental cook playing pick-a-back with a little tike that Sheriff Kingman had brought home to supper that night.

  "I can't get my mind off little Everito Hewett, Dad," the sheriff's wife whispered. "What's to become of him, now that his ungrateful stepmother has run away to Chihuahua?"

  The sheriff gave his wife a sidelong glance and rubbed his nose thoughtfully.

  "I rattled my hocks all over the Mex section this afternoon, and none of 'em want Everito," admitted the lawman. "Seems like there would be room in some of those casas for one more little feller, but they all shrug their shoulders and say no. Can't say as I blame 'em—that worthless Angelita should have taken the kid with her, even if Everito ain't her own flesh and blood."

  They watched the son of the slain outlaw, Dev Hewett, as he scampered about the room, his joyous laughter re-echoing through the home that for too long had been childless.

  "Les," Mrs. Kingman said, polishing her spectacles energetically. "I never saw such a cute little feller, have you?"

  The sheriff began shuffling the deck of cards indifferently, but his lowered lashes hid a peculiar twinkle in his eyes.

  "That I haven't, Floss. Smart as a whip, and healthy as a bantam rooster. I reckon by the time he's ready for school he won't remember he got his start in a filthy Mexican hovel."

  The kindly old woman nodded.

  "And he favors his father's American blood more than his mother's. He doesn't look like a mestizo."

  "That's
true. For a half-breed, his blond hair is plumb deceivin'."

  Mrs. Kingman took a long breath and avoided the direct gaze of her husband.

  "Dad, I've been wondering," she began tentatively. "Seein' as how Everito is so young—and seeing as how we always wanted children, but the good Lord denied us the blessing—and seeing as how Everito is an unwanted orphan, and all—"

  "Yes, Floss?"

  "I was just wondering, dad, if maybe you and me—"

  Before she could finish what she had started to say, a frenzied knocking at the front door interrupted her.

  "Come in!" The sheriff bounced to his feet, hand going to a holstered gun at his thigh.

  The door slammed open to reveal the Mexitex deputy sheriff, Bob Reynolds.

  "There's been a killin' in town, sheriff!" cried the lawman breathlessly. "Grab yore hat and come on."

  The sheriff had a horse saddled and was galloping through the darkness with his deputy within five minutes. Even at seventy, Les Kingman was used to emergencies.

  As they rode, Reynolds gave his superior what facts he knew about the killing that had sent him hell-for-leather out to Kingman's Flying K home:

  "That woman who lived with her kid down in the covered wagon by the Rio—she come staggerin' up to the jail tonight. Covered with blood, and dyin' on her feet. She had her little tike with her."

  "She wasn't dead when you left town to get me, Bob?"

  The deputy lifted his voice above the drumming of hoofs:

  "No, but her husband was. Dead as a tick in sheep dip. She said a masked gunman shot him and her while they was talkin' inside that wagon. Seems he's a prospector, name of Allen."

  "Where's Mrs. Allen now?"

  "She's fainted, and I lugged her over to Doc Hanson's. Then I goes down to the wagon, and finds her husband shot through the head. Then I lit a shuck to get you."

  They drew to a bucking halt in front of Doc Hanson's lamp-lighted shack on the main street.

  Racing inside, they found the medico kneeling at the bedside of a woman on whose face was the white pallor of approaching doom. She clung tightly to a frightened little boy who was standing at the bedside, eyes wide but tearless.

  "No hope, Les," whispered the doctor, rising at the entrance of the two lawmen. "Bullet took her in the stomach and I can't probe for it. She's wantin' to talk. Maybe she can give you a line on who did this."

  Kingman knelt beside the dying woman and clasped his big gnarled hand over the one in which she gripped her child's chubby fist. A knot was in the sheriff's throat as he said:

  "It's the sheriff, Mrs. Allen. Who done this?"

  Eleanor Allen's eyes opened wide, and recognition gleamed in them. When she spoke, blood flecked the corners of her mouth.

  "Sheriff… I want you to look out… for Hap. He's got an uncle… my husband's brother. His uncle's name… is One-eye Allen."

  The sheriff nodded grimly.

  "One-eye Allen," he repeated. "Can you tell me who did this shootin', Mrs. Allen?"

  Desperation rose in the woman's eyes.

  "Promise me… you'll see… that Hap finds his… uncle. One-eye can be located… over at… over in the town of M—"

  A paroxysm of coughing seized Mrs. Allen, and she lapsed into merciful unconsciousness.

  The sheriff stood up, turning to Dr. Hanson.

  "If she comes to, find out where this One-eye Allen is, Harry," ordered Kingman. "Otherwise we won't know where to take this kid. Meanwhile, Reynolds and I will hunt for skunk sign down by that wagon where the shootin' occurred."

  For the better part of an hour, the hawk-eyed old sheriff hunted in vain for clues, in and around the ill-fated prairie schooner by the Rio's edge. But the slag-carpeted ground held no boot prints, and an exhaustive search by lantern light disclosed no discarded mask, no ejected cartridges, or any other clue that would shed light on the night's outrage.

  After removing Warren Allen's stiffening corpse to the morgue in the rear of Hanson's shack, the sheriff entered the doctor's office to find that a sheet had been drawn over Mrs. Allen's still form.

  The doctor had just finished mixing a sedative to bring sleep to Hap Allen, the stout-hearted little son who had been orphaned by the unknown slayer's bullets.

  "She died without recoverin' consciousness, sheriff," reported Dr. Hanson. "What's to become o' this child?"

  Sheriff Les Kingman wagged his head sadly.

  "I'll take him home tonight," decided the sheriff finally. "This is nasty business, Doc. It's too bad she didn't give us some line on what happened— before she went."

  Back at his Flying K ranchhouse, Kingman found his wife still up. Everito, the orphaned son of a notorious thief, was sleeping soundly in a spare bedroom.

  "Here's another little chap to keep Everito company, mama," whispered the sheriff, placing the sleeping child into her arms. "You was aimin' to adopt Everito, wasn't you?"

  With tears streaming down her aged cheeks, Florence Kingman nodded hopefully.

  "It's O.K. by me, mama," agreed the sheriff. "And if little Hap's uncle doesn't show up, I'll get lawyer Melrose to draw up legal adoption papers for the two kids. We'll give 'em our name, and they'll never know what was in their past, I reckon."

  Mrs. Kingman smiled through the tears. "I'm glad," she said. "It—it isn't proper for a child to grow up without a brother and playmate."

  4

  AFTER EIGHTEEN YEARS

  Eighteen years brought their inevitable change to Yaqui County and its peoples.

  Mexitex remained much as it had always been, a squalid border town with saloons outnumbering its stores; its shacks growing more weather-beaten with the years; and the Texas Queen Copper Co., having exhausted its resources, had gone into bankruptcy shortly after its slag dump had encroached upon and overflowed the spot of ground where Warren Allen's covered wagon had been camped by the river, erasing forever the stage set of tragedy.

  The cemetery had doubled in size. Outlaws had gone to fill nameless boothill graves. Warren and Eleanor Allen slept side by side under one stone, but of late years weeds had overgrown the mounds and flowers were no longer kept blooming there.

  The flowers had been Mrs. Kingman's idea, but Mrs. Kingman had died of a broken heart five years before, following the death of her husband. Game old Sheriff Kingman had died with his boots on, victim of a Mexican smuggler known as Señor Giboso.

  Bob Reynolds, the deputy, now maintained Texas law and order in Mexitex. Murder cases were tried before a man who had graduated from a cow-town lawyer to a judgeship—Russ Melrose. And eighteen years had seen Melrose grow in power and wealth.

  Melrose had lived to gain his ambition of being the power behind Yaqui County politics. He was the second largest range owner in the Big Bend country now—second only to George Siebert, whose Triangle S ranch had grown until it was incorporated under Texas law as the Mexitex Land & Cattle Syndicate.

  Among the few small ranches which Russ Melrose had never been able to seize through tax sale or mortgage foreclosure—and a ranch which had not joined the ever-growing syndicate controlled by George Siebert—was the tiny Flying K outfit that had been owned by Sheriff and Mrs. Les Kingman.

  Except for the fact that the Flying K range bordered the Rio Grande, and therefore had proximity to an inexhaustible water supply, Russ Melrose had never particularly coveted the sheriff's range.

  Besides, Russ Melrose controlled the Flying K in fact, if not in title. For Melrose, as the only lawyer in Yaqui County, was the legal guardian of the young cowboys who had inherited the Kingman estate—cowboys who were known, locally, as the Kingman twins.

  Hap and Everett, their names were; and identical enough in stature to be twins by bond of blood. Both had developed into six-foot specimens of manhood; both had gained proficiency in riding and roping, in handling guns and ponies.

  There the resemblance ended.

  Hap Kingman—so called from his happy disposition since infancy—had hair as black as a raven's wing, and eyes
to match. His brother Everett had hair like sisal straw, and his eyes were cold and colorless, like chips of yellow agate.

  Since the deaths of Sheriff Kingman and his wife, Hap had assumed the role of foreman on the small cattle outfit, going on trail drives as its rep, and in general handling the Flying K's business.

  Everett, on the other hand, had chosen the companionship of saloon rowdies in Mexitex; he was more interested in courting sloe-eyed Mexican señoritas or developing his skill at roulette or poker, than he was in acquiring honest blisters from a lariat.

  The morning of April 10th dawned clear and bright after a week of rains. The Texas sky was as blue as enamel, and the lifting sun promised the usual humid heat common to that section of the Rio Grande country in springtime.

  The Rio Grande was no longer a sluggish series of puddles, but was swollen by freshets from El Paso to the Gulf. The added difficulty in crossing the river had helped the border patrol in their ceaseless vigilance against smugglers and border-hoppers.

  "Reminds me of the morning of April 10th when Dev Hewett was shot to hell by George Siebert," thought Russ Melrose, arriving at his office in the Purple Hawk Saloon building. "Lots has happened since then. A lot of water over the dam—"

  Picking his teeth with a gold toothpick, the cow-town judge stared off through the windows toward the tawny ridges which marked George Siebert's cattle range.

  Dry season or no, Siebert's range was never in danger from a shortage of water; artesian wells protected him. His Triangle S range was always bountifully grassed, and syndicate herds fattened thereon.

  Melrose turned to his desk. Beside it was a black steel vault, and Melrose was whistling tunelessly as he spun the dial to open the safe.

  He took out his appointment book. The court docket was free; he would have the day to devote to private business.

  "This is the day I been waiting for—for eighteen years," commented the lawyer out loud. "With a little jugglin' of my influence, maybe I can get hold of the Flying K ranch. That'd give me a foothold against Siebert's outfit."

  Penciled on the appointment book was scrawled: "Kingman twins come of age. Read them Mrs. Kingman's last testament."