THE BORDER TRAIL.
The pilot car on the Benson trail stopped as a Mexican stepped in the
glare of the headlights and waved it down. The evil-faced little driver
leaned out over the wheel.
"Come on," he snarled, "get a move on you. Whatinell do you think, that
we got all day? Hurry up, spig!"
The Mexican understood the tone and finished the last ten feet to the
car in a shuffling trot.
"_Señor!_" he chattered. "Back! _Vuelva Vd. pronto--muchos hombres
delante! Rangeros!_"
"Get out of the way," answered the driver. "Tell Pedro O K," and the
big car turned around, almost running over the Mexican, who for once in
his life, jumped with the swiftness of a jack-rabbit. As he stood for
a moment in the shadow of the mesquite, he muttered: "_Adios--diablos
Americanos_."
The car swayed desperately from side to side.
"What the hell, now?" asked the young, reckless-eyed man sitting beside
him. "Do you reckon they are out for us, Mike?"
"Don't know and don't give a damn," snapped the driver, his eyes on the
road. "It's up to us to pass the word, and up to Monckton to do the
figuring. Keep still and let me drive, the boys are close behind us and
coming fast."
A few minutes went by and then, as they rounded a curve, the headlights
of two cars picked them up.
"There they are," said the man beside Mike. "We're in plenty of--what
the hell are you doin', you crazy Irish--"
Mike had swung the car off the trail and was on the alkali of the
desert. "Get to your rod, quick," he shouted. "Border Patrol! They're
ambushin' us!"
The young man laughed and stood up, facing back in the swaying car,
drawing a .45 Colt automatic. "Keep goin', Mike, old bull-buster," he
grinned, his gun beginning to spit out a steel-jacketed answer to the
streaks of red coming from the two cars now on the right rear.
"Stick and slug, Kid," shouted the man at the wheel. "It's catchin'
before hangin'."
Whatever he was, this man Mike at the wheel had plenty of cold nerve.
He drove that car blind, headlights out, through the desert at
seventy-five and eighty miles an hour. The _thud-thud-thud_ of bullets
hitting the car didn't even make him wince. The Kid emptied his gun,
snapped the magazine out, brought another out of his side pocket,
slipped it in, raised his gun. They went up a little rise, swooped down
again, and suddenly were in the clear.
Mike swung sharply to the left and the Kid sat down heavily. "Hope I
can hit that damn trail again in time to turn the boys," Mike snarled.
"It's a tip-off sure as shootin'."
"How'd you know they weren't our bunch?" asked the Kid.
"Because they didn't dim their lights when we flashed 'em. Sa-a-ay, how
come you don't know that, Kid?"
"I never been out riding on this side before. Monckton brought me up
from Tepoca. I been on the receivin' end down there and before that I
was on the old Shark, transportin'. Hey, you're on the trail now, boy."
"I know it," grunted Mike, as he turned down the trail. "They ought to
be along here right now. Maybe-so the shootin' turned 'em."
* * * * *
"There they are! Something anyway," said the Kid, a minute later.
"Look--over to the right of the road. What the hell? All lights out!"
The big car came to a brake-burning stop alongside of two others, just
off the trail. Its headlights disclosed a scene of recent death, quick
and merciless.
On the sand near the cars lay the bodies of four Chinese, sprawled out
in different directions and attitudes, as if shot down while running.
In the car nearest the trail was the body of a white man, slumped in
the front seat. Over the wheel, his head resting on that man's body,
lay another. In the other car, the muzzle of a Browning sub-machine gun
showing between them, their bodies hanging out over the side, were two
more white men, both dead.
As the Kid said, "Oh, my God," Mike drew a long whistling breath and
reached for the gear shift. His hand froze on it as he felt a cold
round ring of steel press into his neck and the drawl of a soft,
deceptively mild old voice came to his ear. "Don't move, feller." Out
of the corner of his eye, Mike could see the Kid stiffen as he had
done, and he knew they were caught, like rats in a trap.
"You gents sit right still now," the old voice went on, "until my boys
get them popguns you-all call pistols."
They felt hands pawing over them, searching for and finding their guns,
then the voice again, "All right, son, turn on the lights and we'll see
who's come to call on us."
The lights of the other two cars went on and Mike and the Kid saw
around them the grim, tanned faces of the best shots in the world, the
Arizona Rangers.
Old Ranger Captain Johnston, whose equally old ivory-handled
single-action Colt .41 had been against Mike's neck, stepped close to
the car.
"You gents are both under arrest," he said.
Mike laughed. "On what charge, rube?" He knew that he was in no danger
of being killed or even manhandled, now that he was disarmed and under
arrest. In a city, a question like that, with a word of derision
or scorn tacked on to the end of it, would have brought an instant
physical answer; but here in Arizona, he knew that while a ranger would
cheerfully kill him if he resisted, or disobeyed an order, he could say
what he wanted to. His warped brain did not or never could sense the
utter scorn and loathing that he and his kind inspired in the hearts
of the clean-living, hard-riding, straight-shooting outdoor men, whose
code of honor was as fine and clear as a Knight Templar's.
"Well, suh," drawled Johnston. "You-all are carryin' weapons, that's
one charge; unless you-all have a permit," and he paused skeptically.
"We haven't," grinned Mike; "go on, tell us some more. We're packin'
those rods to protect us against a lot of bad men that are hijackin'
around here. Fellers that you drug store cowboys and coppers can't seem
to get. That's easy; our mouthpiece will get us out an hour after you
throw us in the coop. You got nothin' on us but that, big boy. Let's
go."
"No hurry, feller," drawled Johnston. "Just step out of the car for a
minute while we look it over."
"Think we got some yellow-bellies in the flaps?" sneered Mike, but
doing as ordered, the Kid following him. "Look at all the hardware
hanging around these birds, Kid."
The Kid smiled. "May I reach in my pocket for a cigarette?" he asked
the ranger beside him. The Kid was a college man who had deliberately
chosen the path of adventure and "easy money."
"Yeah, boy," answered young Jimmie Earpe, who measured up to the rest
of the Earpes as a gunfighter, and went quite a little beyond, in
the estimation of many in Arizona. "Go on, reach for it; and listen,
feller, maybe-so you've got another gun planted. Bring that out, too.
I'll give you first shot, honest Injun--both you and this mangy little
coyote here that's been yappin'. Go on," he coaxed, "the rest of 'em
ain't lookin'. Get something in your hand."
The Kid laughed. "I'd be delighted to oblige you," he drawled, "but at
the moment I really only have some cigarettes in my pocket. Some other
time--any other time, in fact, that you and I may meet."
Mike's evil, wizened-up little face grew even more so, as the lean,
hard-bodied young ranger called him "a mangy little coyote."
"God made big men and God made little men," he snarled, "and Mr. Colt
.45 he made all men equal. Gimme a gun, you big false alarm, and let's
you and me step out in the light. I'll give you a chance to strut your
stuff, cops or no cops."
Earpe chuckled. "I reckon Capt'n Johnston would get right fussy at me,
if I did. You might try snatchin' at a gun."
"That's right, Jimmie," drawled Johnston, behind him. "These here
jaspers are prisoners. No gun playin' now, son. This here is business."
* * * * *
Later, Earpe, Chick Absolom, and Red River Thomas drove into Rosemont
with the prisoners, Captain Johnston and the rest of the rangers and
United States deputy marshals remaining at the scene of the killing.
The Kid leaned forward to where Earpe was sitting in the front seat,
half turned so that he could see them. "Your name is Earpe, isn't it?"
he asked, politely.
"Yes, suh," answered Earpe, "Jimmie Earpe--so's you won't be gettin' me
mixed up with Sam Earpe or William or Bud. Just ask for Jimmie Earpe
and you'll get me, feller."
"Thanks," murmured the Kid, "that's just what I intend to do, Mr.
Earpe."
"Dog-gone it," said Jimmie Earpe, plaintively, "and me on ranger
business."
There was no question but what Mike had told the truth saying that
he and the Kid only being in jail for an hour. It was hardly that
long before a big car roared into Rosemont and unloaded a quiet,
well-dressed attorney from Nogales, who produced the bonds necessary
and the car slipped swiftly out of Rosemont, this time with Mike and
the Kid in it.
"Well," said Captain Johnston, later, when he had come in and learned
that the two men were freed, "I didn't reckon we could hold 'em long.
I was sure hopin' that we could, though, until that Federal man that's
workin' with the district attorney got up here to look 'em over."
"How'd it come off, Wes?" asked ex-Ranger White, who had ridden line
with Johnston in the old days, before they both became rangers.
"Well, suh, there was a tip come from somewhere that Gomez was on the
road; and the Border Patrol boys and us reckoned we might box 'em
in. These gents we let go by us, not thinkin' they'd meet up with
the Patrol so soon. When the jaspers in the other two cars heard the
shootin', they stopped, and it looked like the Chinamen made a break of
some kind. When we got there, the shootin' was all over--the smugglers
was kinda destroyin' the evidence, Wes, looks like to me. Anyway, those
four hombres was just startin' away when we climbed 'em."
"Any of the boys get hurt?"
"Well, suh, that's a right, funny thing. They had 'em one of those
little machine guns and when that hombre usin' it cut loose, he sure
gave Billy Yancey a right good hair cut; took hat and hair right off
him. Shotgun Collins got him one in the arm, and Sam Morgan drew him a
right bad wound in the chest from one of them little automatics."
"Dog-gone," said Wes, enviously, "I shore wish I was there. Then what,
Bud?"
"Why, that's all, Wes. Them four jaspers called it a day, right after."