the Rustlers Of West Fork (1951) (2 page)

Sparr . . . devils!" "What about Jordan?

Is he all right? His family with him?"

Cassidy's voice hurried, for the man was dying fast.

If he understood the words he did not reply. The chances were that he never heard them at all, that already he was beyond hearing, beyond listening, beyond even thinking. The wheels in his brain were slowing down now, yet there was time for what he did remember. Hopalong saw his lips stir and fumble with the words, saw them in the vague light falling from the rectangle of a window. "Hadda laugh," his lips whispered. "All . . . knees . . . freckles!" The whisper trailed away and died with its owner. Hopalong got to his feet and thumbed shells into his guns. "That other one dead?" he asked.

The bartender was one of the men who had been bending over Shorty when Cassidy had come over to him.

He still wore his white apron, but he clutched a shotgun. "Answer me! Is the other one dead?"

"Yeah," someone spoke up, "he's dead. Right through the stomach! You could lay a half dollar over the two holes-at least where they went in." "There was another feller!" the bartender said. "What happened to him?" "He sloped. He'll carry a sore jaw along with the memory, though." Cassidy walked back to his horse, Topper. He swung into the saddle and turned the white gelding down the trail toward the ranch. Buck Peters would have questions to ask and he would want to know all about it.

Confound the luck! Rose wouldn't want Buck to start off on any wild-goose chase, but the least smell of gun smoke and the old man began champing on the bit like a fire horse! Hopalong grinned as he pictured him. Buck's reactions were too slow now, but he would admit it to no one, least of all Hopalong. Peters was at the table when Hopalong came in. Hopalong unbuttoned his shirt and placed the packets of money on the table, and Buck dabbed at his mouth with a red-checked napkin.

"Sure took your time! I was beginnin' to get worried."

"What you got to worry about, you old mosshorn?

Who does the work around here, anyway? You knew danged well I'd get this money an' bring it back, an' all you had to do was set here an' get fat waitin'. Rose feeds you too good, Buck.

You're losin' your figger."

Buck's face fired up. "My figger's my own business!" He glared suspiciously at Hopalong. "What happened? I can smell trouble writ all over you!" Dropping into a seat, Cassidy forked a slab of beef to his plate and accepted the hot coffee Rose poured for him. Then he told them briefly and quietly just what had happened. He left out nothing except the remarks on the subject of Dick Jordan. While Rose worried and Buck chafed at the bit and talked about outlaws, Hopalong's mind was already away from the table and far down the trail he was about to travel.

If anything had gone wrong, it would be a good thing that he was going out. Dick Jordan was a fine man, a big man, and hardhanded, but just, and noted always for hospitality. His ranch had been a favored stopping place, and no man had ever been turned from his door lacking food. Jordan himself had been a buffalo hunter turned trader. As a boy he had worked for a cattle buyer in the East, and finally he went back to that, but his great desire was to own a ranch. He soon had it, and the Circle J had always worked hand in glove with Peters's outfit in everything.

The dying outlaw had mentioned names. They came back to Hopalong's mind suddenly.

What were they again? Soper an' Sparr. Sparr!

Hopalong put his cup down so hard that some of the coffee slopped over into the saucer. Buck and Rose were staring at him. Sparr! "What bit you?"

Buck demanded, his eyes alert and shrewd. "You got an idear?"

"Me?" Hopalong demanded innocently. "About what?" "You know what I mean," Buck growled irritably. "I mean this here holdup! This Jordan business! If I know you, you just had a thought-not that it wouldn't feel mighty strange under that silver thatch so' yourn."

Carefully Hopalong lifted his cup and then poured the spilled coffee from the saucer back into the cup. This gave him time to assemble his thoughts a little, and he tried to be casual about the question. "Is Mesquite back yet?"

Buck's eyes brightened. "See?" he said to Rose. "I knowed it! He's got somethin' on his mind that smells of trouble! If he hadn't, he would never think of askin' about Mesquite at a time like this!" Cassidy forked another slab of beef onto his plate and piled mashed potatoes around it. "The kid's a top hand in any crowd. Look at the way he worked through the roundup. And who is any better with a rough string than him? He's as good with bad horses aSeaJohnny was. Maybe better!" Buck stared at Hopalong. "He's good with a gun too. Mean an' on the prod. I never in my life seen but one hombre as ready for trouble as he is!"

"Now who would that be?" Hopalong demanded innocently. "You, you wall-eyed galoot! You always did hunt trouble! Most folks could ride through a town without anything happenin', but not you. You go into a place filled with old-maid schoolmarms an' right away trouble busts loose an' splashes all over everybody!"

"This here trip," Hopalong lied cheerfully, "looks like the quietest sort of ride. Dick Jordan may have trouble from time to time, but you know Dick. I'll take your money out there an' deliver it safe."

The thought that had come to him as he ate was far from a pleasant one. The name Sparr had at last struck a responsive chord in his brain. Of course there could be many Sparrs. Soper he had never heard of.

But there was one Sparr of whom he knew, and none of what he knew was good. Like Jordan himself, Avery Sparr had been a buffalo hunter. From buffalo hunting, he had graduated to town marshal of a tough Western town. Indiscriminate killings won him quick removal from that job and he had drifted West. From Ellsworth, to Abilene, to Dodge, to Ogallala, to Cimarron and Bloomfield, and in each one there had been gun battles or killings.

A couple of the known ones had been outright murder, and there were some others of which the same had been suspected.

His surly nature and ready guns earned him no friends and many enemies.

Then Sparr had dropped from sight. There had been rumors of him around mining camps in Nevada and Montana, and it was said he had fled Calgary after killing a mounted policeman there. If this was the Sparr the dying outlaw had mentioned, he was a ruthless killer.

Hopalong could not imagine such a man on Jordan's ranch.

Dick was not a man to be frightened of a six-gun reputation, nor were the hands he was accustomed to have around him. Probably he was stewing over nothing.

"Daylight will be the time," Hopalong said at last. "I aim to take it easy this trip and not put in any long rides. There will be some rough country to get over, and I want to make it all by daylight."

Buck Peters stared sourly at his friend. "Ain't sure but what I should saddle up an' ride along," he suggested tentatively, avoiding his wife's eyes. "That's a mighty long ride, Hoppy, and could be the Apaches are off the reservation again."

Cassidy chuckled. "What you think I need, a nursemaid? You stay back here an' run this show.

I'll get this money to Dick, stay a few days to rest up, then be back here before you know I'm gone.

I need a ride anyway. I'm goin' stale with settin' around."

He got up and stretched. "Thanks, Rose.

I sure did enjoy that supper. Last home cooldn' I'll be gettin' for some time, I expect."

He turned toward the door, then stopped.

"Say, Buck, you got that last letter of Pam's around anywheres? I'd like a look at it. Buck Peters's suspicions were not dead. He eyed Hopalong darkly. "Yeah," he said; "it's in my desk. I'll get it for you." He got up and lumbered into the office. "What you want that for? The town you want is Horse Springs. It's a stage stop an' cowtown."

"I know the town. I was there once. All I want to see is that letter. Seems to me I remember Pam sayin' somethin' about where to go if I came out there." "Yeah," Buck admitted grudgingly, "there was something like that." He found the letter at last, and handed it over. Hopalong had seen the letter but once before, and had been told all that was in it. Accordingly, when he glanced at it he had done just thatglanced. Now, with thoroughly aroused suspicions, he looked at it with new eyes.

Instantly he felt his pulse jump.

He read the letter through slowly, and then returned to the part that referred to him.

This was of two paragraphs, and the writing was different, somehow, as though strained.

Remind Hopalong of the games he used to teach me. There was one especially that I used to like to play.

I wish he would think of this as he reads my letter. Dad often refers to that situation in Dry Canyon when Hopalong joined him. It would be wonderful to see Hoppy again now, feeling like that.

Cassidy looked up at Buck's inquiring eyes. All his resolutions about keeping Buck from knowing went by the board, forgotten in his exasperation.

"Buck, we're a couple o' fools! The day this letter came you mentioned it to me, and you said she reminded me of the Dry Canyon affair. When I looked at this letter I was thinkin' about that gelding of mine, down sick with the colic, an' I never paid it no attention."

"What's wrong?" Buck demanded.

Slowly Hopalong read the passage aloud, and then he swore. "Don't you see? She mentions that business in Dry Canyon, an' says she wants to see me again, feelin' like that!"

Rose looked from one to the other. "Dry Canyon? What does that mean?" "Mean?" Buck was genuinely worried now. "Why, four rustlers had Dick Jordan cornered down in Dry Canyon.

He was helpless, an' they were aimin' to kill him.

Then Hopalong showed up. They turned on him, an' Hoppy downed two of them an' the other two throwed up their hands."

"But what is that to worry about?" she protested.

"It's in the past. 11 "Yeah, but she wants to see me again like that! I think they are in trouble, an' need help!"

"Why wouldn't she say so then?" Buck protested.

"Maybe somebody made her write the letter,"

Hopalong said, "but remember what she said about the games I used to teach her? Well, one of those games was a code game. We used to see what messages we could write by using the first letter of each word as the secret message. Now wait a minute." He studied the letter with care, and then he said, "What did you make of this part?"

Buck stared at it. "That? Couldn't make sense.

Figgered the kid had us mixed up with somebody else she knowed."

Hopalong scowled and read aloud.

"How ever, Long Pete Carroll of Mesa Escabrosa, head of PPY, never did come out Better call Rod Ed- wards for us. Lew Brake was through a year ago. He left Pabled that mustang here, but finally came after him.

"Now take just the first letters. H-e-Irp C-o-M-E h-o-PPY. "See?"

Hopalong looked up. "Help, come Hoppy, she says. This next part doesn't make sense because she's tryin' to make the letter sound right. She's got the first two letters of "better" underlined because she wants to use "em both. Same thing with the next word. Figgerin" in the same way, what do you get?

"Be Careful." Then later she says "Help" again."

"Mighty lousy code!" Buck sniffed.

"Aw, it was just a kid's game I figgered out!"

Hopalong pro- 16 tested. "Tried to make it easy for her. Never figgered she'd use it like this."

"When you leavin'?" Buck asked thoughtfully.

"If they do need help, you better go mighty quick."

"At daybreak," Hopalong Cassidy said quietly; "an' you can wish me luck."

Chapter
2

GAMBLERS
DON'T GAMBLE"

On the third morning Hopalong abandoned the trail before reaching the banks of the San Isidro and walked Topper down to the stream through a maze of rocks. He had no definite reason in mind except the instinctive one of a man on a dangerous mission. He wished to leave no sign, no evidence of his passage. The main trail, while not well traveled, would be marked by more than one set of hoofprints, and his own would merge well enough with them.

To his right bulked the towering mass of Horseshoe Mesa, and off to the south were the rocky parapets of Johnson Mesa. Beyond the pass opening before him lay the wide plains through which flowed the unruly Canadian River. While his horse drank, he dismounted and filled his canteen from a tiny trickle of water running down from among the rocks. This spring was undoubtedly known to the Apaches but he saw no evidence of anyone having been near it. He scowled thoughtfully. All morning he had been filled with uncertainty and foreboding, his eyes continually straying from the trail to study the country through which he rode.

Without any definite reason, Cassidy had the feeling that all was not well. It was not the utter and complete loneliness of the trail, for this was an empty country at best, nor was it the weather, for the air was warm and balmy, the desert still green and lovely and not yet faded by many summer suns. It was something else, some scarcely to be defined feeling in the air or in his bones.

Somewhere on the trail ahead of him was Bizco, yet it was not the outlaw who worried him. Rather, it was the Apaches. That the Indians were supposedly on their reservation made no difference, for a dozen times in the past they had returned to raiding. Of late there had been rumors heard even in Twin Rivers about the restlessness of the younger braves and their constant irritation with the treatment received from the Indian agents. This was their country. All this range into which he was now riding had been an Apache stronghold, and no warriors ever lived more ready to fight for their land. More than once their war parties had defied the army, raided ranches, stolen horses, killed army personnel, and then vanished like gusts of wind into the desert.