The Lone Star Ranger, Zane Grey [best ereader for pc TXT] 📗

Duane saw that the room was comfortably, even luxuriously furnished. There must have been a good trail, he thought, else how could all that stuff have been packed in there. Most assuredly it could not have come over the trail he had traveled. Presently he heard the men go outside, and their voices became indistinct. Then Knell came in and seated himself without any of his chief’s ease. He seemed preoccupied and, as always, cold.

“What’s wrong, Knell? Why didn’t you get here sooner?” queried Longstreth.

“Poggin, damn him! We’re on the outs again.”

“What for?”

“Aw, he needn’t have got sore. He’s breakin’ a new hoss over at Faraway, an you know him where a hoss ‘s concerned. That kept him, I reckon, more than anythin’.”

“What else? Get it out of your system so we can go on to the new job.”

“Well, it begins back a ways. I don’t know how long ago— weeks—a stranger rode into Ord an’ got down easy-like as if he owned the place. He seemed familiar to me. But I wasn’t sure. We looked him over, an’ I left, tryin’ to place him in my mind.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Rangy, powerful man, white hair over his temples, still, hard face, eyes like knives. The way he packed his guns, the way he walked an’ stood an’ swung his right hand showed me what he was. You can’t fool me on the gun-sharp. An’ he had a grand horse, a big black.”

“I’ve met your man,” said Longstreth.

“No!” exclaimed Knell. It was wonderful to hear surprise expressed by this man that did not in the least show it in his strange physiognomy. Knell laughed a short, grim, hollow laugh. “Boss, this here big gent drifts into Ord again an’ makes up to Jim Fletcher. Jim, you know, is easy led. He likes men. An’ when a posse come along trailin’ a blind lead, huntin’ the wrong way for the man who held up No. 6, why, Jim—he up an’ takes this stranger to be the fly road-agent an’ cottons to him. Got money out of him sure. An’ that’s what stumps me more. What’s this man’s game? I happen to know, boss, that he couldn’t have held up No. 6.”

“How do you know?” demanded Longstreth.

“Because I did the job myself.”

A dark and stormy passion clouded the chief’s face.

“Damn you, Knell! You’re incorrigible. You’re unreliable. Another break like that queers you with me. Did you tell Poggin?”

“Yes. That’s one reason we fell out. He raved. I thought he was goin’ to kill me.”

“Why did you tackle such a risky job without help or plan?”

“It offered, that’s all. An’ it was easy. But it was a mistake. I got the country an’ the railroad hollerin’ for nothin’. I just couldn’t help it. You know what idleness means to one of us. You know also that this very life breeds fatality. It’s wrong—that’s why. I was born of good parents, an’ I know what’s right. We’re wrong, an’ we can’t beat the end, that’s all. An’ for my part I don’t care a damn when that comes.”

“Fine wise talk from you, Knell,” said Longstreth, scornfully. “Go on with your story.”

“As I said, Jim cottons to the pretender, an’ they get chummy. They’re together all the time. You can gamble Jim told all he knew an’ then some. A little liquor loosens his tongue. Several of the boys rode over from Ord, an’ one of them went to Poggin an’ says Jim Fletcher has a new man for the gang. Poggin, you know, is always ready for any new man. He says if one doesn’t turn out good he can be shut off easy. He rather liked the way this new part of Jim’s was boosted. Jim an’ Poggin always hit it up together. So until I got on the deal Jim’s pard was already in the gang, without Poggin or you ever seein’ him. Then I got to figurin’ hard. Just where had I ever seen that chap? As it turned out, I never had seen him, which accounts for my bein’ doubtful. I’d never forget any man I’d seen. I dug up a lot of old papers from my kit an’ went over them. Letters, pictures, clippin’s, an’ all that. I guess I had a pretty good notion what I was lookin’ for an’ who I wanted to make sure of. At last I found it. An’ I knew my man. But I didn’t spring it on Poggin. Oh no! I want to have some fun with him when the time comes. He’ll be wilder than a trapped wolf. I sent Blossom over to Ord to get word from Jim, an’ when he verified all this talk I sent Blossom again with a message calculated to make Jim hump. Poggin got sore, said he’d wait for Jim, an’ I could come over here to see you about the new job. He’d meet me in Ord.”

Knell had spoken hurriedly and low, now and then with passion. His pale eyes glinted like fire in ice, and now his voice fell to a whisper.

“Who do you think Fletcher’s new man is?”

“Who?” demanded Longstreth.

“BUCK DUANE!”

Down came Longstreth’s boots with a crash, then his body grew rigid.

“That Nueces outlaw? That two-shot ace-of-spades gun-thrower who killed Bland, Alloway—?”

“An’ Hardin.” Knell whispered this last name with more feeling than the apparent circumstance demanded.

“Yes; and Hardin, the best one of the Rim Rock fellows—Buck Duane!”

Longstreth was so ghastly white now that his black mustache seemed outlined against chalk. He eyed his grim lieutenant. They understood each other without more words. It was enough that Buck Duane was there in the Big Bend. Longstreth rose presently and reached for a flask, from which he drank, then offered it to Knell. He waved it aside.

“Knell,” began the chief, slowly, as he wiped his lips, “I gathered you have some grudge against this Buck Duane.”

“Yes.”

“Well, don’t be a fool now and do what Poggin or almost any of you men would—don’t meet this Buck Duane. I’ve reason to believe he’s a Texas Ranger now.”

“The hell you say!” exclaimed Knell.

“Yes. Go to Ord and give Jim Fletcher a hunch. He’ll get Poggin, and they’ll fix even Buck Duane.”

“All right. I’ll do my best. But if I run into Duane—”

“Don’t run into him!” Longstreth’s voice fairly rang with the force of its passion and command. He wiped his face, drank again from the flask, sat down, resumed his smoking, and, drawing a paper from his vest pocket he began to study it.

“Well, I’m glad that’s settled,” he said, evidently referring to the Duane matter. “Now for the new job. This is October the eighteenth. On or before the twenty-fifth there will be a shipment of gold reach the Rancher’s Bank of Val Verde. After you return to Ord give Poggin these orders. Keep the gang quiet. You, Poggin, Kane, Fletcher, Panhandle Smith, and Boldt to be in on the secret and the job. Nobody else. You’ll leave Ord on the twenty-third, ride across country by the trail till you get within sight of Mercer. It’s a hundred miles from Bradford to Val Verde—about the same from Ord. Time your travel to get you near Val Verde on the morning of the twenty-sixth. You won’t have to more than trot your horses. At two o’clock in the afternoon, sharp, ride into town and up to the Rancher’s Bank. Val Verde’s a pretty big town. Never been any holdups there. Town feels safe. Make it a clean, fast, daylight job. That’s all. Have you got the details?”

Knell did not even ask for the dates again.

“Suppose Poggin or me might be detained?” he asked.

Longstreth bent a dark glance upon his lieutenant.

“You never can tell what’ll come off,” continued Knell. “I’ll do my best.”

“The minute you see Poggin tell him. A job on hand steadies him. And I say again—look to it that nothing happens. Either you or Poggin carry the job through. But I want both of you in it. Break for the hills, and when you get up in the rocks where you can hide your tracks head for Mount Ord. When all’s quiet again I’ll join you here. That’s all. Call in the boys.”

Like a swift shadow and as noiseless Duane stole across the level toward the dark wall of rock. Every nerve was a strung wire. For a little while his mind was cluttered and clogged with whirling thoughts, from which, like a flashing scroll, unrolled the long, baffling order of action. The game was now in his hands. He must cross Mount Ord at night. The feat was improbable, but it might be done. He must ride into Bradford, forty miles from the foothills before eight o’clock next morning. He must telegraph MacNelly to be in Val Verde on the twenty-fifth. He must ride back to Ord, to intercept Knell, face him be denounced, kill him, and while the iron was hot strike hard to win Poggin’s half-won interest as he had wholly won Fletcher’s. Failing that last, he must let the outlaws alone to bide their time in Ord, to be free to ride on to their new job in Val Verde. In the mean time he must plan to arrest Longstreth. It was a magnificent outline, incredible, alluring, unfathomable in its nameless certainty. He felt like fate. He seemed to be the iron consequences falling upon these doomed outlaws.

Under the wall the shadows were black, only the tips of trees and crags showing, yet he went straight to the trail. It was merely a grayness between borders of black. He climbed and never stopped. It did not seem steep. His feet might have had eyes. He surmounted the wall, and, looking down into the ebony gulf pierced by one point of light, he lifted a menacing arm and shook it. Then he strode on and did not falter till he reached the huge shelving cliffs. Here he lost the trail; there was none; but he remembered the shapes, the points, the notches of rock above. Before he reached the ruins of splintered ramparts and jumbles of broken walls the moon topped the eastern slope of the mountain, and the mystifying blackness he had dreaded changed to magic silver light. It seemed as light as day, only soft, mellow, and the air held a transparent sheen. He ran up the bare ridges and down the smooth slopes, and, like a goat, jumped from rock to rock. In this light he knew his way and lost no time looking for a trail. He crossed the divide and then had all downhill before him. Swiftly he descended, almost always sure of his memory of the landmarks. He did not remember having studied them in the ascent, yet here they were, even in changed light, familiar to his sight. What he had once seen was pictured on his mind. And, true as a deer striking for home, he reached the canon where he had left his horse.

Bullet was quickly and easily found. Duane threw on the saddle and pack, cinched them tight, and resumed his descent. The worst was now to come. Bare downward steps in rock, sliding, weathered slopes, narrow black gullies, a thousand openings in a maze of broken stone—these Duane had to descend in fast time, leading a giant of a horse. Bullet cracked the loose fragments, sent them rolling, slid on the scaly slopes, plunged down the steps, followed like a faithful dog at Duane’s heels.

Hours passed as moments. Duane was equal to his great opportunity. But he could not quell that self in him which reached back over the lapse of lonely, searing years and found the boy in him. He who had