Название: Clattering Hoofs
Автор: William MacLeod Raine
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
isbn: 9781479441945
isbn:
“We’re not going to be killed.” Ranger’s voice was cool and resolute. “We’re going to get a few of these murderous devils. They never could shoot straight.”
The sound of Ranger’s rifle echoed back and forth between the banks of the wash loud as the roar of a cannon. One of the Mexicans pitched headlong from his horse. Those behind him pulled up hurriedly and broke for cover to right and left.
“Good work, John,” encouraged Hart. “Number one rubbed out. We’ll be all right yet. They’ll hear the firing at Blunt’s and some of the boys will come moseying this way to help us.” He caught a glimpse of a head peering above a hummock and blazed away at it.
4. Sloan Interrupts
THE INTERVENTION OF LOPEZ’ RAIDERS CAME TO CAPE Sloan as a chance for escape to be seized at once. A man hard and resolute, under other circumstances he would have stayed with the cattlemen to help stand off the attack of the bandits. But he saw no percentage in remaining, since if he survived the battle there would still be the likelihood of being hanged later.
He swung to the saddle from which the wounded man had fallen and made off at a right angle through the brush. His captors were too busy looking after their own safety to pay any attention to him. Though he put the horse to a gallop, he rode crouched, his body close to the back of his mount, in the hope of using the mesquite as a screen between him and the outlaws. It was a comfort to see Hays’ rifle close at hand in the scabbard beside his leg.
Life on the frontier, lived recklessly, had made of Sloan a hard-bitten realist. If possible, he meant to make a clean getaway. First, he had to avoid being shot down by the raiders, and afterward to make a wide detour of the Blunt ranch in order not to be stopped by any of those hunting the Scarface depredators. In spite of his keen watchfulness against the immediate danger, he felt a sardonic amusement at the development of the situation. The foray of one band of rustlers had imperiled him; that of a much more malignant one had brought him rescue.
A stranger to the chaparral would have found difficulty in picking a way through the dense growth, but Sloan wound in and out without once pulling to a walk the cowpony he was astride. The yucca struck at his legs with points of steel. Strong spines of the cholla and the prickly pear seemed to be clutching for him. But he was so expert a brush rider that he could miss the needles by a hair’s breadth without slackening his pace.
Back of him he heard the firing of the guns drumming defiance. They told him that the first charge had been broken and that for the time at least the battle had settled down to a siege. Later Lopez’ men would probably get tired of that and try another attack in force unless a rescue party from the ranch interfered with them.
The noise of the explosions sounded fainter as the distance between him and the wash increased. He had been traveling back into a hill country, but after a time he pulled up to decide on a course. By now he must be well south of the Blunt place and could swing around it if he kept to the brush. There was no longer any danger of pursuit by the Mexicans. Whether they had seen him at all he did not know. If so, they had let him go and concentrated on the men in the wash. He guessed that after finding that they could not rub out Ranger’s party without loss they might drive the cattle away, not stopping to exterminate the owners. Sloan had heard that though Lopez was ruthless he liked to run as little risk as possible.
There was no longer any need of haste. The young man moved down into the flats, holding the buckskin to a walk. Technically he had become a horse thief, but that did not seem important at the moment. When he did not need the animal any longer he could turn it loose and it would return to the home ranch. The rifle he would keep, at least until he had reached a place of safety.
The sun had slid down close to the jagged horizon line. Inside of two hours darkness would sift down over the land. After that he would be in little danger. During the night he could get forty miles away from here. His plan had been to stay, for reasons he did not yet want to make public. But until he had cleared up this matter of the rustling that would be madness. Even before this mischance, he had known that every hour he spent here would be perilous.
He came to a road that cut through the mesquite, not a main-traveled one. It was narrow, and in places young brush had grown up in it. The wheel tracks were faint. Upon it the wilderness brush was encroaching. Grease-wood and ocatillo reached out across it and whipped at the flanks of his horse.
As he came into the road he heard the creaking of wheels and at once drew back into the chaparral where he would not be seen. A buggy came around the bend, driven by a boy of about fourteen. There was a hole in the lad’s straw hat and through it a tuft of red hair had pushed into the open. Beside him sat a girl several years older.
Cape Sloan had read of golden girls, but he had never before seen one that fitted the mental picture he had formed. This one had honey-colored hair twisted around her head in strands. Her eyes were deep sky blue, and her cheeks had a soft peach bloom. A slant of sunlight was pouring straight at her, as if a stage had been set to throw her young beauty into relief. She was laughing, and he glimpsed a double row of shining ivory teeth. Though slenderly modeled, there was promise of strength in her straightbacked supple body.
The buggy dipped into a draw and after it had disappeared Sloan took the road again and followed. Before he had gone fifty yards he heard a jangle of voices, a whoop of jeering laughter, and a boyish treble raised in frightened protest. Trouble of some sort, he decided, and was sure of it when the scream of a girl reached him.
Swiftly he rode to the top of the rise and looked down. He saw four men surrounding the buggy. The girl was in the arms of one of them, flung across the saddle in front of him.
“We take you to Pablo, señorita,” one of them called to her. “Maybe he hold you for a nice fat ransom. Or maybe——”
He finished the sentence with a ribald laugh. There was cruel gloating in the sound of it. Sloan knew that these men were not of the kindly smiling Mexicans who made a picturesque background to this desert land. They were members of the band of Pablo Lopez, the dregs of the wild turbulent borderland.
Sloan touched his mount with the spur and charged down the slope. He knew it was a mad business, but gave that no thought. During the two or three seconds while the horse pounded down the slope his mind moved in swift stabbing flashes. The boy’s head lay against the back of the seat. He had probably been pistol-whipped. That was a game two could play—if he ever got the chance.
One of the bandits turned, shouted a startled warning, and fired wildly at the man on the galloping horse. Another bullet whistled past the ears of Sloan. A third outlaw fired just as Sloan dragged his mount to a halt.
The rifle in Sloan’s hands swung up and crashed down on the head of the man who had first seen him. The rider went out of the saddle as slack as a pole-axed bullock. A second raider spurred his pony against the cyclonic stranger. A knife flashed in the sun. The head and body of Sloan swerved, but too late to escape entirely. A red hot flame ripped through his shoulder. He drew back the Winchester and fired it from his hip.
An agonized expression distorted the face of the attacker and the knife dropped from his hand to the sand. Widestretched fingers caught at his stomach. The muscles of his back collapsed and he slid head first to the ground.
Cape Sloan lifted his voice in a shout. “Come on, fellows. We’ve got ’em.”
The remaining two bandits wanted no more of this. One flung a hurried СКАЧАТЬ