Range Ghost (8 page)

Again it was Slade’s amazingly keen hearing that saved them. It was but the faintest whisper of metallic sound, a key turning slowly in the lock of the back door, but it was a thunderclap warning to El Halcon’s ears. His arm shot out and hurled Sheriff, chair, and lamp to the floor. Black darkness fell like a thrown blanket even as Slade went half way across the room in a sideways leap, both guns blazing as the back door banged open. Answering shots flamed the darkness. Slugs whizzed past, thudded into the wall. One grazed the back of his left hand.

Then he heard a queer gurgling cry followed by the thud of something falling. He fired twice at the sound, shifting position as he pulled trigger. There were no answering reports. He hesitated a moment, straining his ears, then glided forward, guns ready for action. Outside was a clatter of hoofs, fading into the distance.

The sheriff was roaring profanity and surging to his feet. “Get a light going,” Slade called to him, his gaze riveted on a shadowy shape lying just inside the door. Carter started to obey, fell over the smashed chair and swore weirdly. Again he scrambled to his feet and a moment later a second lamp flared, its glow falling on a dead man on the floor, blood still pulsing from his bullet-slashed throat.

Slade reloaded his guns before addressing the raving sheriff. “Guess we’d better send word to the bartender,”
he said, peering at the corpse’s contorted face. “This is another of the three who braced me in the Deuces Up.”

“You sure?” demanded Carter.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Slade replied.

“Well, that’s just fine!” said the sheriff. “Now if you can just get a chance to line sights with the other sidewinder! How in blazes did you catch on so fast?”

“Heard the key turning in the lock,” Slade explained. “Where’d they get a key? No trouble to make one for these old locks, perhaps from a wax impression, if you know how, and evidently they know how.” He dragged the body to where the others lay, placed it beside them, removed the key from the outside of the door and closed and locked it.

“Can hold an inquest over him tomorrow with the other two,” he said. “Let’s see what’s in his pockets.”

“Just another pretty good haul for the county treasury,” he observed a little later. Nothing else of significance.” Turning the pockets inside out, he carefully examined the seams.

“Thought so,” he said. “This hellion has been out on the desert—alkali dust in the pocket seams. One of the widelooping bunch, all right, and added confirmation that they do run the cows across the desert.”

“Is there anything you don’t notice!” marveled the sheriff.

“Plenty,” Slade answered, “but this was fairly obvious.”

“Dadblast it, looks like no place is safe anymore!” snorted Carter.

“And it might be a good notion for you to sort of avoid my company,” Slade said. “I don’t think they
are after you personally, but as you told Jerry Norman, flying lead plays no favorites.”

“Like the blankety-blank so-and-so I will!” the sheriff bawled indignantly. “Only next time give me a chance to get in on the fun, instead of hoggin’ it all yourself.”

“Didn’t have time to notify you,” Slade replied cheerfully. “Figured you were better on the floor with the light out.”

“Like to busted my neck over that blankety-blank chair,” Carter growled, giving the remains a kick.

Voices sounded outside, then a tentative knock on the front door. Standing to one side, Slade opened to admit two men, both of whom the sheriff called by name.

“Did you hear it, Sheriff?” asked the one addressed as Bruff. “We thought we heard shootin’ over this way.”

“Guess you did,” replied Carter, “A gent ambled in the back door without an invite and caught himself a dose of lead pizening.”

The two men stared. “You mean he tried to gun the sheriff’s office?” he asked incredulously.

“Sure ’peared that way,” said Carter. “Anyhow him and one or two more sure burned a heap of powder. Look at the wall over there, and there’s blood on Slade’s hand. Take a look at that devil, maybe you’ve seen him before.”

The pair studied the body, then shook their heads. “Never saw him before, or the other two hellions either,” said Bruff.

“Now I
am
going to call it a night,” declared the sheriff. “And I need two snorts, not just one. Outside! Outside! And let’s head for the Trail End.”

When they reached the saloon, Slade and the
sheriff occupied a table, the latter ordering a double snort, Slade a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Bruff and his companion hustled to the bar and began talking excitedly to associates there. Soon the table was surrounded by the curious demanding details. The sheriff supplied them.

High indignation was expressed over the attempt at snake-blooded murder, and Slade warmly praised for frustrating it.

“And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if one of those blabbermouths was the hellion who ordered it done,” Carter observed cynically when they were alone. “Blast it! I’m looking sideways at everybody!”

“We are sort of in the same corral,” Slade replied, with a smile. “I don’t know which way to look; appears I’m getting exactly nowhere.”

“Oh, you’re doing all right,” Carter said. “You’re thinning ’em out, and that helps. Just a matter of time till you have the whole nest of scorpions on the run.”

Slade hoped the sheriff was right, but personally he was not inclined to view the matter in so thoroughly an optimistic light; he felt that he had made but little real progress. His plan to bring the outlaws to him had worked out, to an extent, but so far he had only been able to knock off a few rather incompetent hired hands. The main problem still confronted him, for he had not the slightest idea of who was the brains of the outfit; the hellion was keeping well in the background. And until his identity was definitely established and he was eliminated, the problem remained unsolved.

Getting John Fletcher and Clyde Brent together was something, and so was the frustrating of the widelooping try, but only incidental to his paramount
objective. Well, maybe he’d get a break, they usually seemed to come, sooner or later, and he was firmly convinced that right would triumph in the end. He went to bed and slept soundly.

The inquest on the three dead outlaws was held the following afternoon, Doc Beard, the coroner, presiding. The jury’s verdict was laconic and typically cow country. Slade was complimented on doing a good chore but advised not to let any of the varmints escape, next time. Sheriff Carter bought the Court and the jury a drink.

“Now what?” asked Carter, glancing expectantly at the Ranger.

“Now,” Slade replied, “I’m going to wander about town a bit and see if I can learn anything. Somebody might drop a word that would be significant.”

“Or do something significant,” Carter grunted. “Watch your step.”

Promising to do so, Slade began his amble. He visited place after place of various sorts, listened to scraps of conversation, studied faces, talked with acquaintances and learned—nothing. Finally he leaned against a convenient post, rolled a cigarette and stood gazing across the sheet of water now known as Amarillo Lake.

Amarillo, then called Ragtown, had its beginning in a collection of buffalo-hide huts that were occupied by buffalo hunters, bone pickers, and railroad builders. Lumber was costly and had to be brought from a distance. Buffalo-hides were plentiful, convenient, and cheap. Even the hotel had walls, partitions, and a roof made of buffalo-hides. They were somewhat odoriferous and as they aged, they became quite transparent, so that lights inside revealed
some startling secrets; there was little privacy in Ragtown, which did not particularly bother the rambunctious inhabitants. Only the saloons were decently domiciled of lumber freighted from a distance.

Then a well-heeled and ambitious gentleman by the name of Sanborn had an idea and proceeded to put it into effect. He had faith in the settlement’s future and exercised that faith by laying out a town site southeast of Ragtown, at a point where the railroad tracks curved around the body of water then known as Wild Horse Lake. Apparently with a poetic leaning, Mr. Sanborn named his town Oneida, an Indian dialect word meaning star. However, it would seem the stars were not favorable to Mr. Sanborn’s project. The rains came, the lake scrambled over its banks, and Mr. Sanborn found his stock yards, railroad station, and other buildings placidly standing in four feet of water.

Mr. Sanborn said things that were not nice and moved his town away from there, farther from the blankety-blank lake. It was rumored that he first contemplated renaming his settlement Jinx Town, but somebody happened to mention the yellow amaryllis flowers that blanket the prairie with gold in the springtime. Mr. Sanborn, still poetic, was intrigued and renamed his town Amarillo.

It would appear the flowers were more friendly than the stars and the new town prospered. Out of gratitude to the flowery cups of gold, Mr. Sanborn painted his buildings a bright yellow.

Mr. Sanborn’s faith in his town was soon justified. Amarillo was a going concern, and going stronger all the time.

Surveying the terrain, Walt Slade concluded that while Mr. Sanborn was without doubt an excellent
promoter, planner, and builder, he was no great shakes as a geologist. Even a rudimentary knowledge of that science would have told him that where he first laid out his town, the lake had been before and would assuredly pay a return visit. Perhaps some oldtimers like Colonel Goodnight might have forewarned him, but the oldtimers did not particularly favor the erection of the town, so they held their peace. Let Mr. Sanborn learn the hard way.

Slade was slightly inclined to envy Mr. Sanborn, who had successfully solved his problem, for the moment at least, and, so to speak, was riding the crest of the wave. Oh, well, what one could do, so could another. He was humming gaily under his breath as he headed for the Trail End and something to eat.

However, he was in a more serious mood when, several hours later—slightly after full dark, to be exact, he got the rig on Shadow and rode west by north.

Well out of Amarillo, he drew rein and for some time studied the back trail. Satisfied that he was not being followed, he rode on. Nearing the Canadian Valley, he turned due west and rode steadily hour after hour. He crossed Keith Norman’s XT range and knew he was on Tobar Shaw’s holding, the Bradded H.

The old Hartsook spread was long from north to south but narrow east to west, reaching to the edge of the desert and the New Mexico Territorial Line.

With the dying moon drifting westward he sighted the desert in the distance, glittering in the silvery glow. He continued until he reached a straggle of brush near the desert’s edge. Here he turned south until he came to a little stream that flowed from the rangeland to soon lose itself in the thirsty sands. Drawing rein, he got the rig off Shadow and turned
the big black loose to graze. Then he rolled up in his blanket and with his saddle for a pillow was soon fast asleep.

With the first tremulous rose in the east that heralded the dawn he was awake. Over a small fire of dry wood he cooked his breakfast—fried eggs and bacon and a bucket of coffee, which, with a bunch of bread, made a satisfying meal for a hungry man. Shadow did very well with a helpin’ of oats from a saddle pouch.

After smoking a cigarette, Slade boiled another bucket of coffee, with which he filled a canteen. Two more canteens were filled with water for Shadow.

“Now we’re all set to take a chance on that burned-over section of hell,” he told the horse. “Unless my memory fails me, and I don’t think it does, there are a couple more small creeks within the next few miles to the south, both flowing into the desert and sinking into the sands. That water must go somewhere and unless it penetrates deep into the earth, which I consider improbable in this geological terrain, it very likely reaches the surface again, although probably in a manner not easy to find. Well, our first chore is over here on this side of the desert, so let’s go, horse, and keep your eyes peeled.”

Mounting, he rode very slowly along the straggle of brush that edged the desert, surveying every inch of the ground with the greatest care. What he sought was very apt to be pretty well hidden from the casual observer, but he was confident that he would find it. If he didn’t, his whole theory fell to the ground and he’d have to try and figure something else.

With the sun mounting higher, he rode on, passing
one small creek, then another. He had covered a few miles but knew he was still on Tobar Shaw’s Bradded H range when he found it, neatly concealed but discernible to sharp eyes that knew what to look for, like those of the Indians for whose guidance it was placed.

Upright in the ground amid the brush was the bleached shoulder bone of a huge buffalo. The enormous fan-shaped bone was about eighteen inches long and nearly a foot wide at the larger end. On the smooth white surface pictures were daubed in red, yellow and green mineral paint. They showed an Indian wigwam or
tepi
, beside which stood several Indians, the small pictures surprisingly accurate as to detail. One appeared to be cooking over a fire. Another was drinking from a horn cup. Two more were approaching the camp from the east, and scattered about were several head of cattle.

To Walt Slade the message was as clear as it had been to those who were guided by it many years before. Where the camp was made, far out on the desert, there was water. Just where, the message did not show—which was to be expected. But to those who, unfamiliar with the area, came later, it was “writing” as plain as any utilized by white men. As plain as the ancient Egyptians’ hieroglyphics, who also employed pictures to convey their thoughts to others.

For a long time, Slade studied the pictures, hoping to hit on some clue that would indicate the exact location of the water, but failed to do so. The best he could hope for was the general direction in which it lay. He had a very good idea how to determine that.

Squatting down, he sighted carefully over the top of the blade, raised his eyes to the shadowy hills far,
far to the west, back to the bone again, and got his bearings, the course he should follow, in relation to certain landmarks supplied by the hill formation. Straightening up, he gazed westward over the pitiless waste of sand and alkali now shimmering with heat. He knew well what that desolation could do, bewildering the brain and choking the throat, deceiving the hapless wanderer with mirages of rippling streams and lakes where none existed until he succumbed to gabbling delirium and death. That was the desert, and did he not find water somewhere near the middle of it, he might well never live to reach those distant hills.

However, his horse was strong, well fed and rested, and Slade was not unfamiliar with the dangers and hardships of a desert. Would be safer to wait until the comparative cool of night, but that would greatly lessen his chances of hitting on the hidden water which was his goal. He decided to risk it. If he had misread the implied direction of the desert signboard, the blade bone, he could perish miserably, for there was nothing else to guide him. The desert was trackless. Always as the dark closed down, a wind would rise, shifting the sands, quickly erasing any hoofprints of horses or cattle passing across its surface. But he believed the bone dependable. Anyhow, he’d gamble on it being so.

The desert was white, with the awful whiteness of dessication and death, glaring under the sun, flinging forth its warning and its threat, as desolate and uninviting a region as El Halcon had ever viewed, as solemn and quiet and as alien to man as the star-studded midnight sky, grim, relentless, waiting.

And yet, it was not without a beauty all its own—the terrible beauty of the wastelands with their utter silence and their utter
peace, ageless, everlasting, cradled in the lap of eternity, setting at naught the futile strivings and the petty ambitions of mankind. Slade sensed this as he mounted and sent Shadow forward.

Soon he was out on the true desert and almost instantly the heat seemed to double, triple, quadruple. It poured down from the blazing sun overhead, beat upward from the burning sands beneath, like unto the breath of a furnace. Slade felt as if it were sucking the very blood out of his veins.

However, one can get used to most anything, in a degree, and after that first devil’s blast, the effect was modified. He narrowed his eyes to the glare, rendered dazzling by the hot air that danced over the surface of the desert as over a red-hot stove, breathed slowly and deeply and relaxed. And after a disgusted snort or two, Shadow appeared to make out very well.

The desert was not totally flat. Here and there were low sand dunes. Nor was it utterly devoid of vegetation. Occasional straggles of mesquite broke the white monotony, its tremendous root system evidently able to suck up enough moisture in time of rain to allow it to exist. And as he forged on and on, he encountered infrequent dry washes, through which water must have flowed during heavy downpours. These interested him, for they appeared to substantiate, slightly, the theory he had formed as to the existence, if it did exist, of the hidden water to which the Indian signboard pointed.

From time to time he took a sip of his coffee, now heated to about the temperature of a man’s blood. Each time he dismounted and poured water into his cupped hands for Shadow, enough for a couple of
swallows. Shadow sucked up the fluid greedily and asked for more, but his rider vetoed the request.

“May have to make last what we’ve got to the other side of this scorched griddle, or back the way we came, whichever seems advisable,” he warned. “Besides, too much can make you sick, as you know well as I do.”

Shadow snorted general disagreement to the jobation which did not seem to impress him much, but let it go at that.

The sun crossed the zenith and slid down the western sky, and El Halcon began to grow anxious. He reckoned he was just about midway the desert, and he didn’t like the look of the southwestern sky, which hinted at wind, and wind raising the sand and alkali in blinding clouds could be deadly. The hills seemed no nearer than when he started out in their direction.

“We should hit it soon, if we’re going to hit it at all,” he muttered. “This is getting a mite serious.”

It was, for the blazing heat and the eternal glare were beginning to have their effect. His tongue was swelling, his eyes seemed filmed, and there was a singing in his ears—warning signs that heat prostration or sunstroke might well be in the offing, and not too far off, either.

Then he saw something that quickened his pulses and cleared his befogged mind. Directly ahead and no great distance away was a long and wide dry wash along the edges of which grew a more abundant than average stand of mesquite. And without apparent reason, Shadow quickened his pace a little.

“Do you smell it, feller?” Slade asked. “If you do, it’s more than I can.”

The sides of the wash, which was much narrower
at the bottom than at the top, sloped downward at a fairly steep angle, but he discovered a place where sure-footed Shadow could negotiate the descent.

Once at the bottom of the wash, things improved a bit, for there were places where the rushing water of flood times had hollowed out the lower banks until wide overhangs provided a grateful shade.

Under one he dismounted, loosened the cinches a bit and gave the horse a little more of the precious water. Then he sat down with his back against the bank and rolled and smoked a cigarette, after a couple of sips from his coffee canteen.

He smoked slowly, resting, relaxing until his pulses were back to normal and his eyes had cleared. Pinching out the butt and casting it aside, he examined the bottom of the wash. It was of hard-packed sand, much firmer than that of the surrounding desert, a phenomenon the discovery of which filled him with satisfaction.

“Horse,” he said, “I believe it’s going to work out. I once before encountered something similar. Yes, I believe we’ll hit it. Let’s see, now.”

Moving to the edge of the slope he studied the ground with great care. His feeling of satisfaction increased when he found, hugging the ground, a film of green, a scattering of tiny plants of the algae family, related to pond scum, plants that could not exist without moisture—which meant the existence of water they could tap.

But where was the water? Nowhere was there a drop in sight, only the endless, weird expanse of sand and alkali. Slade straightened up, walked to where Shadow stood looking expectant, tightened the cinches and mounted.

“Now, feller, it’s up to you,” he said. “A bunch of
cows could do it faster and easier, but I believe you can handle the chore.”

Moving out onto the bottom of the wash, he headed the horse down it for a little distance, turned him and made a return trip. Shadow stepped out briskly, almost eagerly, it seemed, apparently knowing just what was expected of him and how to do it.

Back and forth he plodded, back and forth, back and forth. Slowly the hard-packed sand began to sink under the steady beat of his hoofs, until he was moving in a narrow shallow trench. The pitiless sun poured down its burning rays. They flashed back from the sands. But Shadow never hesitated, back and forth, back and forth. Now the hard-packed sand was growing a trifle mushy. A few more minutes and little sparkles were oozing up into the trench, back and forth, back and forth. Now the gallant horse was pounding his hoofs through a film of what was undoubtedly water, back and forth, back and forth! Now the water was over his hoofs. Once released, it surged upward swiftly until it was ankle deep. A little more and Slade called a halt. The trench was filled to the brim with clear, sparkling, and cool water.

“Help yourself,” he invited.

Shadow plunged his nose in and drank and drank. Slade dismounted and had a long swig himself. Then, while Shadow desisted for a spell, before drinking some more, he filled the water canteens to the brim, drank the last of his coffee and replaced it with water. Stoppering the canteens, he tucked them into the saddle pouches.

“Come, feller,” he said. Shadow followed him to the shade of the overhang. Slade emptied the remainder of the oats onto the ground, drew a couple of slices
of bread with bacon between them, and man and horse enjoyed a satisfying meal.

“Where did the water come from?” El Halcon replied to a hypothetical question from Shadow. “Geologically speaking the explanation is quite simple. Down there under the sand is a cup-shaped ledge of rock, something in the nature of a trough, scoured out by the action of water untold ages ago, for all this section was once a great inland sea or lake. Rain water seeps through the sand into the rock trough. Of course it cannot permeate the stone, but it does hold up the hard-packed sand, the bottom of the layer being also impervious to water. Perhaps also there is water seepage from those small creeks we encountered over on the rangeland. There the water remains. Under the pounding of your hoofs, a portion of the sand layer sinks, the water filters through and reaches the surface. Before long it will sink again and no trace of it will be left. Long ago the Indians discovered it and figured how to obtain it. Somebody else also understands the geological formation and its possibilities. Who? That I don’t know, yet, and I wish I did. But it is a simple explanation of how a bunch of cows can be run across the desert to the New Mexico hills and market. The cattle are allowed to rest here under the overhang—I’ve already noticed very faint traces of hoof marks the wind-driven sand of evening hasn’t totally obliterated, under that further overhang, which is more shallow than this one. Didn’t pay much attention to them, didn’t even mention them to you, for I knew just what to look for already. Get the idea?”

Shadow snorted his understanding and nosed up the few remaining oats.

“Well, we found it, but I’m hanged if I know what to do with it,” his master added. “We could intercept a stolen herd here, but I’m not at all sure it would do much good. We’ve got to learn who is the head of the outfit, somebody who was either able to piece together old Indian legends or has the geological knowledge necessary to understand this unusual but by no means isolated phenomenon. Somebody who perhaps has in mind something more outstanding than widelooping and robbery which may but be the means to an end.”

Slowly the water sank back out of sight, and as it sank, the liquified sands rose. The wind-drift would finish the chore and soon there would be left no sign of Shadow’s industrious plodding. Slade watched the water vanish and remarked reflectively—

“There is a vast subterranean watershed beneath all this section. Some day folks will realize its potentialities and take advantage of them. Artesian wells will replace the primitive windmill and Amarillo and other towns will be relieved of water shortage. Okay, horse, I guess we’d better be moving in some direction.”

For a few minutes he debated the advisability of staying in the shade of the overhang until after nightfall. It would be far the wiser course, but he was anxious to get back to Amarillo as quickly as possible, even after studying the ominous southwest.

Down there were higher dunes, misty with distance, and from their crests flung forth long and broad streamers that glinted in the sun, like to the banners of an advancing army. That, Slade knew, meant wind, and getting caught in a wind storm out on the desert was nothing to joke about. However, he decided to risk it. Giving Shadow another drink, and
taking a couple of swallows himself, he mounted and turned east through the blaze of the sunshine, the sands whispering under his mount’s hoofs, the only sound to break the deathly silence of the wastelands.

“Yes,” he concluded for Shadow’s benefi t, who didn’t appear particularly interested, “some day there will be garden spots where now is only desolation, the desert lands will blossom and folks yet unborn will find prosperity and happiness. Worth working for, horse. Let’s go, the sun’s crawling west and it’ll be a bit cooler after a while, I hope.”