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[Illustration: He had been shot through the body and was dead. His
rifle lay across a rock trained carefully on the trail.]
THE KILLER
BY
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
AUTHOR OF
THE BLAZED TRAIL,
THE RIVERMAN,
ARIZONA NIGHTS, ETC.
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
COPYRIGHT 1919, 1920, BY THE RED BOOK CORPORATION
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE KILLER 3
THE ROAD AGENT 135
THE TIDE 157
CLIMBING FOR GOATS 189
MOISTURE, A TRACE 211
THE RANCH 229
THE KILLER
CHAPTER I
I want to state right at the start that I am writing this story twenty
years after it happened solely because my wife and Señor Buck Johnson
insist on it. Myself, I don't think it a good yarn. It hasn't any love
story in it; and there isn't any plot. Things just happened, one thing
after the other. There ought to be a yarn in it somehow, and I suppose
if a fellow wanted to lie a little he could make a tail-twister out of
it. Anyway, here goes; and if you don't like it, you know you can quit
at any stage of the game.
It happened when I was a kid and didn't know any better than to do such
things. They dared me to go up to Hooper's ranch and stay all night; and
as I had no information on either the ranch or its owner, I saddled up
and went. It was only twelve miles from our Box Springs ranch--a nice
easy ride. I should explain that heretofore I had ridden the Gila end of
our range, which is so far away that only vague rumours of Hooper had
ever reached me at all. He was reputed a tough old devil with horrid
habits; but that meant little to me. The tougher and horrider they came,
the better they suited me--so I thought. Just to make everything
entirely clear I will add that this was in the year of 1897 and the Soda
Springs valley in Arizona.
By these two facts you old timers will gather the setting of my tale.
Indian days over; "nester" days with frame houses and vegetable patches
not yet here. Still a few guns packed for business purposes; Mexican
border handy; no railroad in to Tombstone yet; cattle rustlers lingering
in the Galiuros; train hold-ups and homicide yet prevalent but frowned
upon; favourite tipple whiskey toddy with sugar; but the old fortified
ranches all gone; longhorns crowded out by shorthorn blaze-head
Herefords or near-Herefords; some indignation against Alfred Henry
Lewis's _Wolfville_ as a base libel; and, also but, no gasoline wagons
or pumps, no white collars, no tourists pervading the desert, and the
Injins still wearing blankets and overalls at their reservations instead
of bead work on the railway platforms when the Overland goes through. In
other words, we were wild and wooly, but sincerely didn't know it.
While I was saddling up to go take my dare, old Jed Parker came and
leaned himself up against the snubbing post of the corral. He watched me
for a while, and I kept quiet, knowing well enough that he had something
to say.
"Know Hooper?" he asked.
"I've seen him driving by," said I.
I had: a little humped, insignificant figure with close-cropped white
hair beneath a huge hat. He drove all hunched up. His buckboard was a
rattletrap, old, insulting challenge to every little stone in the road;
but there was nothing the matter with the horses or their harness. We
never held much with grooming in Arizona, but these beasts shone like
bronze. Good sizeable horses, clean built--well, I better not get
started talking horse! They're the reason I had never really sized up
the old man the few times I'd passed him.
"Well, he's a tough bird," said Jed.
"Looks like a harmless old cuss--but mean," says I.
"About this trip," said Jed, after I'd saddled and coiled my
rope--"don't, and say you did."
I didn't answer this, but led my horse to the gate.
"Well, don't say as how I didn't tell you all about it," said Jed, going
back to the bunk house.
Miserable old coot! I suppose he thought he _had_ told me all about it!
Jed was always too loquacious!
But I hadn't racked along more than two miles before a man cantered up
who was perfectly able to express himself. He was one of our outfit and
was known as Windy Bill. Nuff said!
"Hear you're goin' up to stay the night at Hooper's," said he. "Know
Hooper?"
"No, I don't," said I, "are you another of these Sunbirds with glad
news?"
"Know about Hooper's boomerang?"
"Boomerang!" I replied, "what's that?"
"That's what they call it. You know how of course we all let each
other's strays water at our troughs in this country, and send 'em back
to their own range at round up."
"Brother, you interest me," said I, "and would you mind informing me
further how you tell the dear little cows apart?"
"Well, old Hooper don't, that's all," went on Windy, without paying me
any attention. "He built him a chute leading to the water corrals, and
half way down the chute he built a gate that would swing across it and
open a hole into a dry corral. And he had a high platform with a handle
that ran the gate. When any cattle but those of his own brands came
along, he had a man swing the gate and they landed up into the dry
corral. By and by he let them out on the range again."
"Without water?"
"Sure! And of course back they came into the chute. And so on. Till they
died, or we came along and drove them back home."
"Windy," said I, "you're stuffing me full of tacks."
"I've seen little calves lyin' in heaps against the fence like drifts of
tumbleweed," said Windy, soberly; and then added, without apparent
passion, "The old----!"
Looking at Windy's face, I knew these words for truth.
"He's a bad _hombre_," resumed Windy Bill after a moment. "He never does
no actual killing himself, but he's got a bad lot of oilers[A] there,
especially an old one named Andreas and another one called Ramon, and
all he has to do is to lift one eye at a man he don't like and that man
is as good as dead--one time or another."
This was going it pretty strong, and I grinned at Windy Bill.
"All right," said Windy, "I'm just telling you."
"Well, what's the matter with you fellows down here?" I challenged. "How
is it he's lasted so long? Why hasn't someone shot him? Are you all
afraid of him or his Mexicans?"
"No, it ain't that, exactly. I don't know. He drives by all alone, and
he don't pack no gun ever, and he's sort of runty--and--I do'no _why_ he
ain't been shot, but he ain't. And if I was you, I'd stick home."
Windy amused but did not greatly persuade me. By this time I was fairly
conversant with the cowboy's sense of humour. Nothing would have tickled
them more than to bluff me out of a harmless excursion by means of
scareful tales. Shortly Windy Bill turned off to examine a distant bunch
of cattle; and so I rode on alone.
It was coming on toward evening. Against the eastern mountains were
floating tinted mists; and the cañons were a deep purple. The cattle
were moving slowly so that here and there a nimbus of dust caught and
reflected the late sunlight into gamboge yellows and mauves. The magic
time was near when the fierce, implacable day-genius of the desert would
fall asleep and the soft, gentle, beautiful star-eyed night-genius of
the desert would arise and move softly. My pony racked along in the
desert. The mass that represented Hooper's ranch drew imperceptibly
nearer. I made out the green of trees and the white of walls and
building.