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  Sobolo snarled a livid oath.

  "You got Hap Kingman roostin' inside. We're after him."

  The veteran jailer turned white. He had bucked lynch mobs before, and he knew the fever for murder which was burning in the hearts of the mob massed in front of the jail.

  "Tell that to the sheriff, Fanner," quavered the jailer, dropping a scrawny hand to the holstered gun at his side. "Bob Reynolds is over at the coroner's office. Seems as though he's dug up evidence that Kingman ain't guilty o' Siebert's murder, and—"

  Sobolo shot out a hand to clamp a skin-crushing grip on the jailer's gun arm.

  "Kingman is a dirty, low-down smuggler. He wears Señor Giboso's collar. An' we intend to see justice done—an' save the border patrol the cost o' convictin' the skunk!"

  Before Grandpa Neeley could make an outcry, his head was rocked on his shoulders by a vicious uppercut from the hand of the mammoth saloon brawler.

  Flinging the unconscious jailer to one side, Fanner Sobolo strode into the sheriff's office.

  A ring of keys was on Reynolds' desk, near the chair where Neeley had been sitting.

  The yelling mob jammed into the office as their leader, laughing like a berserk maniac, unlocked the cell-block door and strode into the jail proper.

  One of his saloon henchmen carried in the office lamp, and by its flickering beams Sobolo made out the form of Hap Kingman seated in a cell, smoking a cigarette.

  The cowboy's eyes narrowed as he saw Fanner Sobolo unlocking his jail door and swinging it wide.

  Standing wide-legged in the doorway, the lobo glared down at the lone prisoner on the cot.

  "Say yore prayers, Kingman. You're headin' for hang rope. An' while you're thinkin' things over, try to remember how you bashed my nose into a pulp at the fiesta last fall. Remember?"

  The cigarette dropped from Kingman's lips as he stood, shoulders crouched defensively.

  He saw the hatred glowing in Sobolo's piggish eyes, saw the grating teeth through the screen of the saloon tough's reddish mat of beard.

  Then Kingman launched himself at the towering gunman, fists pummeling before him.

  Sobolo reeled back under the unexpected ferocity of the cowboy's charge.

  But yelling renegades pounced wolflike on Hap, even as he launched damaging haymakers at Sobolo's ugly visage. A moment later he was being smothered under a welter of bodies, iron-muscled fingers gripping his arms and legs.

  Then, struggling dazedly, Hap Kingman felt himself being carried bodily out of the jail.

  "We'll use the hangman's tree at the plaza, boys!" sang out Fanner Sobolo, as they gained the middle of the street. "An' we'll leave his carcass hangin' there as a warnin' to other snakes who may be workin' for Señor Giboso!"

  The lynch mob took up the hoarse chant of hate, as they dragged their struggling victim through the night-shrouded streets toward the gnarled cottonwood at the village square where other men had died in the past.

  As is the case with most lynch mobs, the real reason for their frenzy was hazy in every mind. A shrewd brain might have realized that Fanner Sobolo was carrying out a thirst for personal revenge against a private enemy. But the charge of "smuggler!" was the peg on which they were hanging the excuse for their lawless action.

  As they approached the plaza, a sombreroed man rushed out of Dr. Hanson's coroner's office, and the yelling lynchers came to a halt as they found themselves faced by the grim-faced sheriff of Yaqui County, Bob Reynolds.

  "What's this, Sobolo?" came the lawman's steely voice, in the death-hush which jelled the saloon mob. "Who's this you—Kingman!"

  The sheriff hauled a gun from holster as he recognized the bruised and bleeding figure of Hap Kingman, supported by two of the Purple Hawk barroom crowd.

  "We're swingin' Kingman, an' you ain't stoppin' us, Sheriff!" roared Fanner Sobolo, advancing toward the sheriff with murderous calm. "Stand aside!"

  Liquor had given Sobolo false courage, but the leveled gun in the sheriff's hand had cowed the mob.

  Hap Kingman felt the iron grasps of his captors wavering, as the sheriff's rasping voice carried to the rearmost man in the tense mob:

  "There's hasn't been a hangin' bee in Mexitex since I took office, Sobolo, and we're not startin' now. Kingman will be dealt with accordin' to due process of law. Get your claws up, Sobolo. You're under arrest—for incitin' mob violence!"

  Hap Kingman's heart leaped with hope. In that moment, Sheriff Bob Reynolds had won. The forces of law and order had overcome the murderous insanity that gripped the mob.

  Fanner Sobolo's jaw dropped. His tense hands started to waver—and then, from somewhere out of the night, came a flying rock, hurled by a drunken lyncher.

  It was a lucky throw. Unprepared for attack from an unexpected quarter, the sheriff caught the full force of the flung rock, and wilted as blood gushed from an ugly welt on his forehead.

  Sobolo turned to wave at his mob.

  "Come on, gang! What are we waitin' for?"

  Hap Kingman groaned with despair as he felt himself hauled brutally to the foot of the grim hang tree at the edge of the Mexitex plaza.

  While Fanner Sobolo was adjusting a hangman's noose about Hap's neck and his henchmen were tying his arms behind his back preparatory for the hanging, other members of the mob brought a backless chair from a nearby saloon porch.

  The end of the hang rope was thrown over a gnarled limb of the cottonwood and then Kingman was boosted up on the chair. The rope was drawn taut, nearly strangling the cowboy as he stood helplessly above the surging mob.

  The rope was knotted about the scarred bole of the cottonwood. Then the mob shoved back to form a tight ring of hate about the doomed cowboy, as Fanner Sobolo, his face purple with fiendish excitement, stationed himself alongside the chair on which Kingman stood.

  "I'm kickin' this chair out from under you, Kingman!" screamed the berserk killer. "An' if any o' Señor Giboso's men are watchin' tonight, let this be a lesson to all smugglers!"

  Over on the elevated porch of a nearby gambling hall, Lawyer Russ Melrose grinned to himself as he saw the drunken mob leader draw back a booted foot to kick the chair out from under Hap Kingman, a move which would snap the cowboy's neck and plunge him into eternity.

  13

  HELP ON HORSEBACK

  The crash of a fast-triggered gun and the whip-cracks of bullets speeding past his head caused Fanner Sobolo to freeze in the act of kicking the chair from under Hap Kingman's feet.

  Hap Kingman, from his elevated position above the mob leader, was the first to see the five hard-spurring riders who were galloping their horses into the outskirts of the hang mob.

  He caught the brief winks of gun flame from the oncoming riders as they charged the mob, their horses' flailing hoofs knocking men sprawling.

  Fanner Sobolo went into a killer's crouch as his right hand whipped a gun from a holster, even as an aisle spread apart the yowling lynch mob and the approaching horsemen dashed their mounts into the cleared-off circle around Kingman's chair.

  Sobolo's left hand swept in a fanning motion over his prong-shaped gun hammer in the fanning technique which had served the red-whiskered outlaw in so many close-range brawls in the past.

  But a pair of six-guns blazed in Sobolo's very face as the riders reined their jouncing mounts to a halt in the form of a rough ring about the would-be lynch victim, and Fanner Sobolo crumpled under tunneling slugs without knowing from what quarter aid had come to the doomed cowboy.

  Hap Kingman was dimly aware of one of the riders leaning from saddle, felt the tug of the hang rope about his throat as a knife slashed the hempen strands.

  Then the rider spurred behind him, stooping low to slash asunder the ropes which were knotted about his wrists.

  Pandemonium rose as the lynch mob surged back before the grim menace of guns in the hands of the other four riders. Steel-shod hoofs trampled the bleeding corpse of the ringleader as Sobolo was ground into the dirt, his gun spewing smoke.

  Over
on the gambling hall porch, Russ Melrose had a gun half drawn from leather before he realized that he must take no public part in the lynching bee which he had launched like a tidal wave upon the helpless cowboy.

  With his eardrums stunned by the crash of sound about him, Hap Kingman leaped from the backless chair to a position astride the horse of the rider who had cut his hang rope.

  He thrust a free arm about the rider's midriff to seize the saddlehorn, even as he felt the horse rear and then level out into a hard gallop under the rider's roweling spurs.

  Wind tugged at the cowboy's face, whipped the short length of hang rope about his neck as he loosened the noose and hurled it aside, then clamped his knees hard against the barrel of the mustang and concentrated on maintaining his seat behind the cantle.

  Long chestnut hair bannered from his rescuer's head and brushed his face, but Hap Kingman did not realize the significance of that long hair until later.

  Now, he was dimly aware of the fact that they were galloping madly out of the lynch mob, heading into the outer darkness of the town plaza.

  Behind them, his rescue party was galloping on its leader's heels.

  Gradually the roar of the disgruntled hang mob died in his ears, was finally lost in the thunder of racing hoofbeats as the quintet of riders headed out into the sagebrush flats, putting Mexitex far behind them.

  A mile from town the riders wheeled to the right and sped in the direction of his own Flying K spread.

  Over ridge tops and through murky valleys, they galloped until their horses were spent with the gruelling effort. But not until they had gained the top of a ridge which commanded a view of the distant cow town and the blacker line of the Rio Grande did they rein up.

  Not until he had slid from horse and turned to face the five riders did Hap Kingman realize that the men who had snatched him from the very brink of doom were all wearing bandannas pulled up about their faces.

  The possibility flashed through Kingman's brain that these were members of Señor Giboso's gang of smugglers, who were coming to the rescue of a fellow member.

  Peering through the starlit darkness Hap Kingman stared hard at the figure of the leader, behind whom he had ridden on the wild burst for freedom.

  It was not Everett Kingman as he had suspected. Nor was it any member of Sheriff Reynolds' staff of deputies.

  "I… I sure owe my neck to you hombres," Kingman panted, his chest heaving. "I still don't see how… how things happened. They happened too quick to figger out."

  The sombreroed men dismounted, and one by one lowered the masking bandannas. In the darkness, Kingman recognized none of them, but he did make out that they were not Mexicans. They appeared to be ordinary American cowboys.

  If so, why should they have risked a murder-hungry saloon mob, to snatch him from under the hangman's tree?

  Only when their leader pulled the bandanna mask off to reveal a white, indistinct face did Hap Kingman get an inkling of the truth.

  For that leader was a girl!

  "Anna Siebert!" the rescued cowboy gasped. "How come—"

  The daughter of the murdered Triangle S owner shook back her long chestnut tresses.

  "I was at the coroner's office tonight with the foremen and three of my syndicate riders, talking to the sheriff about you," said the girl in a low voice. "We saw Bob Reynolds try to stop that mob."

  Kingman eyed the silent men about him with bewilderment.

  "But you… you felt like mobbin' me yourselves, durin' the trial!" said the puzzled cowboy. "And now—"

  Anna Siebert, gripping the reins of her blowing horse, stared bleakly at the man she had rescued as she explained:

  "There was nothing we could do but get on our horses and do what we could to get you away from Sobolo's gang."

  One of the men beside her took a six-gun from holster and spun the cylinder with a quick motion of his wrist.

  "I had the satisfaction of salivatin' that drunken gunhawk, anyhow," he said with a note of satisfaction in his voice.

  Anna Siebert put a hand on her cowhand's arm.

  "We'll all forget you said that, Elmer," said the girl. "I don't know if the sheriff will ever find out who it was who broke up that saloon mob. But one thing certain—we don't want you being arrested for Sobolo's killing, Elmer."

  A weighty silence fell upon the group.

  "Then… I take it… you figured I didn't kill your father, Anna," faltered Hap Kingman. "…You… you wouldn't have done this otherwise?"

  The girl avoided his grateful gaze. "After you broke jail I found evidence that you didn't kill daddy," she said in a low voice. "He was ambushed with a rifle from on top of Manzanita Hill. I located footprints—and the ejected cartridge. Then I had the bullet removed from daddy's body. It was a .30-30 bullet. So that proved your Colt didn't fire the shot that killed dad."

  A great burden seemed to roll off the cowboy's heart, as he realized that he stood acquitted of murder by this sad-faced girl who stood to suffer most from George Siebert's death.

  With an impulsive movement, the cowboy reached out to seize the girl's hand in his own. A moment later he stood abashed, stung to the quick by the girl's snatching her hand from his grasp, her lips curling with revulsion.

  "You didn't kill daddy," she said in a taut voice, "but that was only by a quirk of fate. You came out to the ranch with the confessed intention of killing him."

  Elmer, the Triangle S rider who had acknowledged slaying Fanner Sobolo, turned to the girl and inquired brusquely :

  "What are we goin' to do with this jasper, Miss Siebert? If you want, me an' the boys can take him back to town an' turn him over to the sheriff."

  Kingman was aware of the fact that the other cowboys had guns out of leather, that he was hemmed in by hostile men. But his senses were too dulled from the beating of Sobolo's gang to worry much now.

  "Bob Reynolds told us tonight that you are a member of Señor Giboso's gang," said Anna Siebert, turning to Kingman. "I can't think of anything lower than a smuggler of narcotics. But—I'm willing to give you a chance, Hap Kingman. On one condition."

  The cowboy stared groundward, his heart heavy.

  "I'd promise you anything, Miss Siebert," whispered the cowboy. "I owe you my life. I'll do anything in return. Only—I'm not really a smuggler. I give you my word on that."

  Anna Siebert thrust her bridle reins into the cowboy's hand.

  "Take my pony," she said. "He's fast, and has plenty of bottom. By daylight you ought to be far out in the Sierra Secos."

  Muttered words of dissent came from the Triangle S riders.

  "You mean," stammered the puncher she had called Elmer, "that you're turnin' this smuggler loose, boss?"

  The girl lifted her chin defiantly.

  "He gave me his word he didn't work for Señor Giboso."

  The Triangle S cowman snorted his contempt.

  "Beggin' your pardon, Miss Siebert, but you bein' a woman, you're apt to overlook the pizen meanness of Hap Kingman. The sheriff caught Hap with dope in his possession. He told us at the coroner's office that Hap admitted he got that dope from Señor Giboso."

  Kingman interrupted eagerly:

  "If I could talk with you alone, Miss Siebert, I could tell you my story. You could turn me back to Bob Reynolds if you didn't believe it."

  Anna Siebert turned away, a tumult of emotions making her tremble in the darkness.

  "I'm giving you my horse," she whispered brokenly, "on the one condition that you promise to get out of Texas—forever." She whirled to face him. "Would you promise me that?"

  Knots of muscle gritted on Kingman's jaws. He was aware of the sullen hostility of the Triangle S riders, but he knew they were under her authority.

  "I promise to hightail it out of Texas for keeps, Miss Siebert!" he vowed solemnly. "Soon as I get the money I'll send it to you for this bronc and saddle. And I'll thank you till the day I—"

  The girl moved away, pushing through the silent men about her.

  "St
raddle that pony and ride, Hap!" she told him. "Ride—before I come to my senses and send you back to the sheriff!"

  For a moment Hap Kingman paused. Then, looping the bridle reins over the horse's head, he wedged boot toe in stirrup, gripped the horn and swung aboard the leggy pony that had carried him away from the menace of the cow town.

  "Adios, Miss Siebert!" called the cowboy, spurring away from the horsemen. "I won't be forgetin' what you've done tonight."

  The little knot of Triangle S riders swore under their breath as Hap Kingman spurred the girl's pony into a gallop, and vanished into the encircling darkness of the Texas night.

  When the sound of hoofbeats had ebbed and died away, Elmer turned to the grim-faced girl at his side and said respectfully:

  "Miss Siebert, you know that us boys would do anything you say. We proved that when we choused that Kingman feller away from Sobolo's crowd tonight. But damned if it wasn't hard work keepin' my gun holstered when you let Kingman make a gitaway."

  Anna Siebert inhaled deeply.

  "A woman's got intuition about things, Elmer," she whispered wearily. "Somehow away from here, I think Hap Kingman can make good. He's got a man's heart, given the chance. I don't think I made a mistake."

  14

  ON THE DODGE

  The Texas sun dawned over the Big Bend country to find Hap Kingman hidden in a rocky draw far back in the Sierra Seco range.

  But he was only temporarily safe; he knew that. Sheriff Bob Reynolds, perhaps backed by the border patrol, would undoubtedly start combing the badlands for him with posses.

  In a manner of speaking, his name had been cleared of the charge of murdering George Siebert— if the startling news which Anna Siebert had divulged could be construed as an acquittal.

  "Some drygulcher was squattin' on the brow of Manzanita Hill when I was talkin' to Siebert," thought Kingman, trying to puzzle it out. "Somebody with a carbine, probably, accordin' to what Anna said about the coroner diggin' a .30-30 slug out of Siebert's brisket."

  Siebert's murder was no accident. Kingman could not bring himself to any conclusion but that the ambusher had known that Kingman's visit to the Triangle S outfit had been for the purpose of forcing a showdown with the syndicate boss.