Bushwack Bullets Page 9

  But who would want Siebert killed?

  The key to the riddle lay in the answer to that question, Kingman knew.

  Was it one of Siebert's cowhands? That seemed unlikely, for Siebert had a local reputation for being popular with his men. After all, the Mexitex Land & Cattle Syndicate paid top wages to its range riders. So far as Kingman knew, Siebert had no personal enemies.

  Bitterness against Siebert no longer burned in the cowboy's heart, despite the memories he had carried since earliest boyhood of a red-masked hombre who had shot his father and mother in cold blood eighteen years before.

  It had come as a distinct surprise when the lawyer, Russ Melrose, had informed him that his father's slayer was George Siebert, the respectable cattleman. Yet Russ Melrose would have no reason to lie about the identity of—

  "Russ Melrose!" cried the cowboy aloud. "He knew I was aimin' to kill Siebert. He could have ridden out to the Triangle S ahead of me, and watched me arguin' with Siebert there on the Triangle S porch. Then he saw Anna comin' around the corner, maybe, and knew her appearance would bust up the shootout I was hoorawin' her dad into, so Melrose could have killed Siebert with a long-range rifle—"

  No, it didn't add up. It didn't make sense. Melrose was an influential citizen of Yaqui County; hardly a man with guts enough to plot a murder. Besides, Melrose had nothing to gain from Siebert's murder that Kingman could figure out.

  "I've promised Anna Siebert I'd hightail it to other parts, so I can't very well stick around and try to solve this mystery," the cowpuncher muttered. "I better be thinkin' about savin' my hide instead of restorin' my reputation."

  He stationed himself in a prickly pear thicket on the crest of a Sierra Seco foothill, a vantage point that gave him a wide view of the terrain below. In the far distance he could see the greenish line that marked the Rio Grande.

  Mexitex was hidden beyond the hazy skyline to the southwest. But if any posse moved in the middle distance, Hap knew his eagle-keen eyes would pick up a telltale column of dust, in plenty of time to mount the pony Anna Siebert had given him.

  Hunger gnawed at his vitals. He had located water in the draw where the pony was hobbled, but food was unavailable. He had no weapons, so that it was impossible to get a rabbit or deer.

  By nightfall, he had figured out a plan of action. Back at his Flying K ranchhouse he had money, blankets, food supplies. He doubted if Sheriff Reynolds would post a guard at the ranch, for it was against all likelihood that the fugitive cow-puncher would dare come back to his own ranch.

  There would be guns and ammunition available at his home ranchhouse, too. Thus outfitted, he would be in a position to make his break for freedom. Luck had already enabled him to avoid the gallows and a lynching mob; he could not play any further.

  With the coming of darkness, Hap Kingman saddled his borrowed pony and rode down out of the foothills. He was familiar with every inch of the territory, and utilized this information now to avoid box canyons or open spaces where his horse's hoofs would leave a telltale track.

  The stars had wheeled to the midnight position in the heavens when he neared the familiar outlines of the Flying K spread, where Sheriff Les Kingman and his wife had played out their lifetimes.

  A thousand memories of his own boyhood with Everett Kingman rose to haunt the fugitive cowboy as he tied his horse in a bosque of dwarf cottonwoods a quarter mile from the Flying K ranchhouse, and proceeded on foot toward the familiar buildings.

  He was glad that his kindly old foster parents had not lived to see the disgrace he had brought their proud name. It seemed impossible that the maelstrom of destiny had seized him, turned him from an industrious young ranchman to a wanted owlhooter, on the dodge for probably the balance of his lifetime.

  Cautiously he approached the ranchhouse, on the alert for possible guards placed there by Sheriff Bob Reynolds on the off chance that the fugitive might try to return to his home under cover of night.

  But he gained the front porch without difficulty, and after a long period of listening, dared to try the front doorknob.

  It was unlocked. A moment later Hap Kingman slipped noiselessly into the house, and began feeling his way toward the bedroom where Everett Kingman slept.

  The room was empty; dim starlight streaming through an open window on Everett's bed proved that.

  He went to his own room, and then to the one in which Sheriff and Mrs. Kingman had used. All were empty.

  "Everett's probably buckin' the tiger in some Mexitex saloon, as usual," thought Hap. "Anyhow, it's all for the best."

  From a bureau drawer in his own bedroom, Hap Kingman obtained a cartridge belt and a holstered .45, a gift from his foster-father on his fifteenth birthday. He breathed easier when he had the reassuring weight of a gun buckled about his midriff.

  Removing blankets from his bed, he wrapped them in an oilskin slicker and tied them into a bedroll. Then he tiptoed to the kitchen, stopping in a corridor to obtain a pair of Sheriff Kingman's scuffed old saddlebags.

  Reaching the kitchen, the cowboy was groping about in the darkness obtaining canned goods, a slab of bacon, coffee, sugar and other supplies for the long trail that stretched before him, when a soft voice startled him from out of the darkness:

  "I leckon that is you, Mist' Hap?"

  Hand coiled about gunstock, Hap Kingman relaxed as he recognized the oily whisper of his faithful old ranch cook, Wing Sing. The aged Chinaman had come barefoot from his own quarters in a shed off the kitchen, his sharp ears detecting the sound of someone moving in the house.

  "Yeah—it's me, Wing Sing."

  The two men met in the darkness, and gripped hands. Hap Kingman knew that of all men in Texas, he could trust the moonfaced old Oriental to the limit.

  "I figger mebbeso you come back home, Mist' Hap," whispered the aged Chinese. "But you no ketch up sleep here. Mebbeso Mist' Reynolds fligger mebbeso you try to hide here, no?"

  Hap Kingman shouldered the food-packed saddlebags and nodded in the gloom of the Flying K kitchen.

  "I'm on my way now, Wing Sing. I've got some dinero hid under the clock on the mantelpiece. I'll get that, and then vamoose. I don't reckon I'll be seein' you again, old pard, so I'm glad I woke you up tonight."

  Wing Sing's sibilant voice said, "Velly solly, Mist' Hap, but the money, she gone. Mist' Everett take him money flom undah clock, two-thlee day ago. But here—I bling you money."

  Kingman's heart flooded with gratitude as the kindly old Chinaman pressed into his hand a roll of currency—Hap had no doubt but that it represented Wing's life savings.

  "Thanks, old pard. I'll return this loan as pronto as possible. You know where Everett is?"

  Wing Sing shrugged.

  "No sabby where Mist' Everett is. Not in Mexitex town—me come flom town tonight."

  Hap rubbed his lower lip thoughtfully. Everett's absence was not hard to figure out. He was probably out in the Chihuahuan wilderness somewhere on one of Señor Giboso's smuggling jobs. The suspicion brought a stab of pain to the cowboy's heart.

  "Well, adios, Wing Sing. Don't expect to hear from me for a while—and keep your lip tight-buttoned about me comin' here for guns and supplies tonight. I got to be dustin'."

  The two shook hands in farewell, and unseen in the darkness tears rolled down Wing Sing's cheeks. They had been close, this orphan of the rangeland and the old cook who was many thousands of miles from his own beloved China.

  A moment later, Hap Kingman was striding out of the front door of the only place that he had ever known as home.

  Because he had thoroughly scouted the porch, and because he had received Wing Sing's assurance that the ranch was not guarded, he was caught by surprise when a dark figure loomed out of the murk beside him and a six-gun barrel prodded him in the ribs.

  Despair seized the cowboy's heart, and he slowly lifted his arms.

  "All right, sheriff. I won't cause trouble."

  The dark figure grunted.

  "I ain't the sheriff," came the
voice of his brother, Everett Kingman. "But I spotted you comin' in, Hap. I figgered you'd be back for your dinero, so I waited out by the pumphouse tonight."

  Hap Kingman's relief turned to dread, at the icy tones in which Everett addressed him. Everett spoke more like a foeman than the man who had been raised alongside him as a twin brother.

  "What's the bur under your saddle, Everett?" demanded the cowboy. "How come you got a gun in my ribs thisaway?"

  Everett Kingman reached out to lift the Colt .45 from his brother's holster.

  "If you think I'm turnin' you back to the sheriff to collect the reward on your noggin' you're mistaken," rasped Everett Kingman. "But I'm takin' you over to the cave on the south bank o' the Rio."

  Hap Kingman looked at him.

  "Isn't it enough that I'm a wanted man, with the border patrol huntin' me and the sheriff postin' a reward for my capture? Why can't you let me take my chances on gettin' out of the country?"

  Everett Kingman's snarl was like a beast of prey.

  "I saved you from the sheriff's gallows once," he reminded Hap ominously. "You repaid that favor by double-crossin' me an' Señor Giboso."

  Hap Kingman bridled angrily.

  "Juan Fernandez did the double-crossin'!" he retorted hotly. "Your damned go-between in Mexitex thought more of the reward he'd get out of my carcass than he did of stickin' by the smugglin' ring, he worked for."

  Everett Kingman shook his head mercilessly: "Get goin' to wherever you got your hoss cached, Hap!" he ordered, jabbing Hap's side with his gun muzzle. "Señor Giboso will be waitin' over at that cave on the Mex bank. You can tell Señor Giboso you didn't double-cross us. If he believes you, it's muy bueno with me. If he don't—your blood ain't on my conscience!"

  15

  SEÑOR GIBOSO UNMASKED

  Down the windswept mesa toward the Rio Grande, through night thick enough to cut with a bowie, the two Kingman brothers rode.

  The hot, seething tide of hate was beginning to swell in Hap Kingman's heart, as he rode his horse grimly toward the river and Mexico. Stripped from him, now, was any feeling he had ever had for the degenerate drunkard who had been raised as his brother.

  "I been a damned fool," said Hap, hipping about in saddle to stare at the rock-faced outlaw who rode at his stirrup. Starlight glinted faintly off the blued steel barrel of the six-gun which Everett Kingman held above the pommel, alert for any attempt at getaway on the part of his prisoner.

  "Meanin' what?" asked Everett. "Meanin' that you shouldn't've risked comin' back to the Flyin' K? Any dodo knows that was foolish. What if Sheriff Reynolds had dabbed his loop on me, instead o' you?"

  Hap quelled a fierce desire to launch himself at Everett who had shared his life as a brother during the past eighteen years. "I mean," said Hap, "that there is such a thing as misplaced loyalty. When Fernandez turned me over to the border patrol, I could damn well have told the law what I know about you bein' a tool of that hunchbacked smuggler, Señor Giboso. But I didn't. I figgered that I owed you a debt of loyalty because you sent those greasers to get me out of jail that night."

  Everett laughed, his voice harsh as a saw on a hardwood knot.

  "Loyalty don't exist when you're on the dodge, hermano. You won't live long enough to use that info, but it's good advice. When you're an owlhooter, the only man you can trust is yourself."

  They reached the rim of the mesa and slanted down into the Rio Grande's eroded channel. A few minutes later they were riding with boots straddling their saddle pommels, as their horses swam in withers-deep water through the muddy current of the Rio Grande.

  They gained the Mexican bank at a point a hundred yards upstream from the towering shale bluff whose chapparral-choked base hid the entrance to Señor Giboso's cavern.

  Keeping Hap under the menace of his gun, Everett ordered the cowboy to dismount. They tied their horses to a salt cedar, and then headed toward the brush which matted the base of the Chihuahuan bluff.

  Everett Kingman gave a low series of whistles as they approached, a signal which was instantly answered by a cone-hatted Mexican who appeared magically out of a boulder nest as they walked by.

  "Señor Giboso is waiting, amigo," grunted the sentinel. "And thees hombre ees Señor Kingman, si?"

  The guard's slurring Mexican voice was familiar to Hap Kingman, and an instant later Everett's reply told him who the smuggler was:

  "Correct. An' if things turn out like I figger they will, I wouldn't be surprised if Señor Giboso don't give you the pleasure o' chuckin' Hap's carcass to the catfish, Fernandez."

  As they burrowed through the chaparral toward the cavern, Everett commented with a brittle laugh:

  "That was Juan Fernandez. You spilled the beans about him bein' a smuggler, when you delivered that contraband to his hut the other night. Fernandez got boogery an' lit a shuck out o' Mexitex for fear the border patrol might put two an' two together. Juan ain't even claimin' the reward due for yore capture."

  Everett gripped the cowboy's arm as they entered the black maw of the cave, and any notion Hap might have entertained to turn on his brother was discouraged by the prodding .45 muzzle in his spine.

  A moment later they rounded the bend of the cave, and Hap Kingman found himself once more inside the damp-smelling smugglers' rendezvous.

  Only one horse was now stabled in the underground hide-out; and seated at the rough pine table beside a kerosene lantern was the horribly deformed' figure in sombrero and serape whom Hap recognized as the smuggler chief he had contacted in Maduro— Señor Giboso.

  "Ah—we meet again, Señor Hap!" whispered the contrabandisto, drumming the pine table with gloved fingertips as Everett ushered his prisoner into the glare of the lantern.

  Sweat dewed the American cowboy's face as he stared at the glittering eyes above Señor Giboso's mask. It struck him queer that the smuggler chief should wear a mask at all, here in the sanctuary of his headquarters.

  "I delivered that load of dope to the man you told me to deliver it to," replied the cowpuncher evenly, as he saw Everett Kingman walk over and straddle a powder-box at Señor Giboso's left elbow. Everett kept the Colt six-gun on the table in front of him. "It isn't my fault if Juan Fernandez double-crossed you when he turned me over to the border patrol along with the contraband."

  For a long minute, Señor Giboso stared at the unarmed cowpuncher before him. Hap got the uneasy sensation that he was facing a hostile judge who, with his next breath, would pronounce a death sentence. And Hap, having undergone just that experience at the Mexitex courthouse, felt the same shudder of apprehension coast down his backbone. This verdict would be one from which there would be no hope of pardon or reprieve, he knew.

  "We will take up that matter in a few minutes," whispered the masked outlaw. "I was not expecting Señor Everett to capture you at all, let alone today."

  The humpbacked smuggler stood up, and flung off his poncho. In doing so, he revealed a peculiar hardness about his shoulders, a set of straps which supported the burden of a peculiar packsack buckled high up on his back.

  As he removed the packsack, Señor Giboso stood revealed as a hoax! His hunchback—the deformity that had given him his Mexican name—was nothing more nor less than the leathern sack he carried perched on his shoulders! A packsack which, viewed with a poncho covering it, looked like a humped spine!

  Oblivious to Hap's gasp of astonishment, Señor Giboso turned to Everett Kingman and whispered hoarsely:

  "Before you take this shipment to Mogollon, I've got another job for you, Everett. I'm expecting Joe Ashfield, the Triangle S foreman, to take a shortcut across the Sierra Secos on his way home from El Paso. He'll be carrying over thirty thousand dollars of syndicate money, and I want you to get that dinero for me."

  Hap Kingman had not yet recovered from the shock of discovering the secret of Señor Giboso's disguise, so that the outlaw's instructions to ambush a man did not register on his brain.

  "Señor Hap," went on Giboso in his sibilant whisper, "you b
etrayed my organization. You delivered the contraband to Señor Fernandez in a careless fashion that told outsiders that he was a smuggler. Juan was forced to protect himself by turning both you and the contraband over to the federal authorities."

  Everett Kingman snarled nastily:

  "The damned skunk did it on purpose, chief. He was aimin' on double-crossin' us, if you ask me. He ought to be gut-shot."

  Hap Kingman was staring hard at the masked outlaw. A question was hammering at his brain: if Señor Giboso were a Mexican, as was generally supposed, how did he speak with such flawless English without a trace of peon accent?

  "Men do not make mistakes when they work for Señor Giboso," went on the masked leader in his reptilian whisper. "You are going to die, Señor Kingman. And your own brother will fire the bullet that kills—"

  With a yell of desperation, Hap Kingman lashed out a boot toe which landed with terrific force on the under side of the table top immediately before him.

  The swift, totally unexpected move dumped Everett Kingman and Señor Giboso off their feet as the table upset, knocking the kerosene lantern and Señor Giboso's packsack to one side.

  With a running leap, the cowboy pressed his momentary advantage as he saw Everett Kingman's six-gun go flying off into the murky cavern.

  Even as the two smugglers struggled to throw off the table and rear to their feet, Hap Kingman launched a bone-crushing boot straight at Everett Kingman's jaw.

  The kick landed flush on the point of the smuggler's chin, and Everett's bulging eyes glazed with insensibility as he flopped back.

  The lantern lay smoking on its side, its wick still burning. By the guttering rays of the light, Hap Kingman rushed Señor Giboso as the latter pawed frantically for a holstered gun.

  The cowboy drove a rock-hard fist at the masked face of Señor Giboso, saw the blow send the smuggler reeling to crash up hard against the limestone wall of the underground chamber.

  Señor Giboso's ball-tasseled Mexican sombrero went flying as he crashed against the cavern wall, and as the hat fell to the ground the blue bandanna mask dropped away to reveal Señor Giboso's hate-twisted visage.