PENELOPE SIGNS HER NAME
Yuma swept the poker table aside and sent it clattering and crashing
against the wall. The Lone Ranger had no chance to deny the accusation
the man from Arizona hurled. Anything he said would have fallen on
unhearing ears. Yuma ignored his guns and, lowering his head, charged
like an infuriated bull, sweeping down the aisle between the bunks and
gathering power and speed as he advanced.
The masked man had no chance to dodge, no place to dodge to. He was
trapped between the bunks on each side of the narrow space down which
the cowboy rushed. His gun half-drawn, he dropped it back in leather.
Nothing but a death slug would stop Yuma. He was blind to any threat of
shooting.
Then Yuma struck with the force of a battering ram. The Lone Ranger
staggered back from the terrific impact of the heavy shoulder flush
against his chest. Intense pain stabbed his own bandaged shoulder, and
brilliant lights seemed to dance before his eyes. He barely saw the
huge, balled fist that Yuma swung to follow up his charge. Almost
without thought, the Lone Ranger turned his head quickly to roll it with
the punch and take a glancing blow instead of one that might have
smashed his jaw. He fell back several paces, fighting to stay on his
feet until his reeling senses could function coherently.
Yuma's face was livid. He swung again, bringing his left up almost from
the floor, but this time the masked man dodged the blow, then set
himself for defense. He could barely move his left arm. He thought the
wound must have been reopened by the awful onslaught. Yuma was reaching
out with both hands, trying to wrap his heavy arms around the lithe Lone
Ranger and crush him to the floor. The space was far too limited for
such maneuvering, so the masked man let his knees collapse and dropped
like a plummet while the adversary clutched at empty air. Then the Lone
Ranger shot up from his crouch as if his legs were coiled steel springs.
He brought his right fist up with the full whipcorded strength of his
good arm, augmented by the muscles of the legs. His aim was perfect and
his timing likewise. He felt his hard fist crash against the point of
Yuma's chin and saw the cowboy's head snap back.
Pain and fury made Yuma careless and too eager. While still off balance
from the blow that hurt, he tried to swing a roundhouse left. The Lone
Ranger stepped inside the arc of that tremendous swing and jabbed
another right to Yuma's nose, then chopped a hard blow to the
unprotected jaw.
Yuma, it appeared, could take terrific punishment. Those blows of the
Lone Ranger were short, but they were hard. Strong men had often dropped
before those jabs, but Yuma kept on fighting. His fists swung wildly
while he kept up a continual string of cursing threats.
The Lone Ranger's strength was nearly gone. He admired the ability of
Yuma to stand up beneath his rain of rights. He dared not use his left
and tear that shoulder wound still further.
"How long," he wondered, "in the name of Mercy, how long can he keep
this up?" He knew that any one of the wild blows, if it landed true,
would knock him out. Then his campaign would end before it got well
started.
Again, and still again, he drove his right fist flush against the big
man's face. Blood streamed from Yuma's nose, and a cut was opened over
his right eye. He gave ground now, backing toward the door of the
bunkhouse, while the Lone Ranger advanced.
How long it might have gone on is hard to say, but Yuma backed against
the upturned table, lost his balance, and went over backward. His head
smacked hard against the floor. For an instant Yuma tried to rise;
though totally unconscious, his stout fighter's heart fighting on. Then
his eyes rolled up and he went limp.
Breathing hard, almost gasping, the Lone Ranger crouched beside his
fallen enemy. He found that Yuma, though bumped hard, was probably not
seriously injured. He opened the door and sucked deep, satisfying drinks
of the cool night air until his breathing was more nearly normal and his
throbbing head stopped spinning. Then he turned once more to the
unconscious man.
"What a fighter," he thought admiringly. "What a man!"
But he must not linger here too long. There was still the all-important
business at the ranch house.
He saw a horse standing just outside the bunkhouse. There was a blanket
roll strapped behind the saddle, and saddlebags that bulged. He glanced
toward the ranch house, but saw no sign that anyone had heard the fight.
"Even if this isn't that man's horse," he decided, "it will have to do
for the time being."
He dragged the heavy form of the unconscious man to the side of the
horse and then, sparing his throbbing left arm as much as possible,
hoisted Yuma across the saddle in a highly uncomfortable position.
Yuma's head, shoulders, and arms drooped on one side, as the cowboy's
belly rested on the saddle and his legs balanced him on the other side.
The masked man used Yuma's own rope to tie him securely in place. The
man was going to prove something of a problem, but the Lone Ranger
wanted to keep him to question him at length when he recovered
consciousness.
Already the masked man had been widely side-tracked in his plan to call
on Bryant and Penny for a conference, but one of the qualities that
contributed to his later greatness was his ability to revise his plans
continually to suit changing conditions, or to reject plans altogether
and replace them by new ones.
He wanted Silver near him now, but the stallion was far across the level
stretch, concealed at the foot of the mountain.
"If anyone had been near enough to hear," he thought, "the sound of that
fight would certainly have brought them. I'll take a chance."
He whistled sharply, and heard a responsive whinny come back to him from
the darkness. He stood tense and guarded, waiting for anything his
whistle might have brought, but no one came. Pounding hoofs, however,
announced the approach of Silver as the stallion beat across the grass.
Still no sign of any other presence.
The Lone Ranger didn't know, then, that the solid timber walls of the
big rambling house where Penny and her cousins were faced by Sawtell and
his men were practically soundproof. The quality that made it impossible
for the masked man's whistle or the noise of the fight to be heard
inside the house likewise muffled the sounds in the house, so that the
masked man didn't hear the pleas and cries of Vince and Jeb Cavendish.
Leading Yuma's horse with its unconscious burden, the Lone Ranger moved
away from the lighted bunkhouse and met Silver in the darkness. He
fumbled in a pocket for a pencil, then scribbled a hurried message on
paper from a saddlebag and tied it to the pommel of his saddle.
He knew that some hard rider had already gone up the Thunder Mountain
trail. If it were in the cards for someone to find, talk with, and
perhaps release Rangoon, this would have already transpired, and
Tonto's mission would be finished.
"Now," he said softly to Silver, "go find Tonto."
He slapped the white horse firmly, repeating the name "Tonto." Silver
tossed his head and rushed away.
The masked man made another quick examination of his prisoner. He found
him still unconscious, but the pulse was steady, and the breathing
normal. Assured that nothing was seriously wrong, he led the loaded
horse to the ranch house, walked to one side of the building, and tossed
the reins about a post. Then, on soundless feet, he stepped upon the
porch. He felt in his pocket and found the silver bullet Penelope had
refused. It served to remind him that he owed the girl a debt that would
be hard to repay.
He must, he decided, catch Bryant by surprise before the old man could
shout for help; must speak quickly, reassure the man and make him listen
to the purpose of the call. He opened the outer door without a sound,
and then heard Penny's voice.
The girl sat between Lonergan and Lombard at a round table near the
fireplace. Sawtell was in another chair a little distant, keeping one
eye on a red-hot poker in the coals, the other on two bound men on the
floor. Vince was whimpering like a beaten cur, while Penny looked at him
with disgust evident in her face.
"I won't never ferget this, Cousin Penny, honest tuh God I won't," said
Vince. "As sure as hell yer savin' us from havin' our eyes burned out
with that poker."
"I haven't signed this agreement yet," the girl replied.
"But yuh will, you've got tuh, yuh know blamed well that Uncle Bryant is
waitin' fer Sawtell tuh take it to him in Red Oak. Hurry up an' sign
it."
Lonergan dipped a pen in a bottle of ink and held it toward the girl.
"Here you are," he said suavely, as he pointed to a line at the bottom
of a long page of close writing. "Sign right there beneath the others
and then we'll sign as witnesses."
Penelope took the pen and tapped the un-inked end meditatively against
her small, even teeth.
"Just let me get everything straight," she said. "In the first place, if
Uncle Bryant doesn't want to leave his property to us, he doesn't need
to. He can make a will, can't he?"
Lonergan nodded and glanced at Sawtell.
"Tell her," the bland-faced man suggested.
Lonergan went into a lengthy discourse on the legality of wills that
left estates to others than the blood relations, and told how there had
been times in courts of law when those wills had been contested.
"Bryant's one desire," he went on, "is to leave his outfit to someone
and have no question about the will being valid. He wants all four
nephews and you to sign to the effect that you relinquish all claims
whatsoever to the Basin property for a consideration not described."
Lonergan didn't make it as simple as he might have done. He seemed to
gloat in the opportunity to air his knowledge of legal phrases and quote
from his experiences as a lawyer in the East.
"Doesn't it," asked Penny, "make some difference when the signature is
secured by threat of torture?"
Lonergan smiled, "Of course."
"If I don't sign you'll use that red-hot iron on Vince and Jeb."
"That would be hard to prove," suggested Lonergan.
Sawtell broke in impatiently.
"Hurry up and sign--we can't wait all night."
"One thing more," said Penny. "What about Wallie, and Mort?"
"Bryant'll get their names signed when we take that paper to town."
Penny still hesitated. She knew everything was topsy-turvy. There were
lies and liars on every side; no one could be trusted. She wondered why
all the cries hadn't brought old Gimlet from the kitchen. She almost
wished that she had left when Yuma wanted her to go with him.
"Look," said Penny suddenly. "I've been listening to what you've said.
Now suppose you listen to me for just a minute. I'm going to sign this
paper, simply because it won't make a particle of difference to me. If
anything happened to Uncle Bryant, I'd want no part of this ranch as
long as the place is infested with vermin."
Lonergan showed resentment at this statement, and leaned forward to
speak, but a glance at Sawtell changed his mind. The smooth-faced killer
held up a silencing hand. Lonergan relaxed.
Penelope looked at Vince.
"You," she said hotly, "turn my stomach! I know very well that you and
Mort have been scheming all along. You helped Rangoon kill those Texas
Rangers. You're as much to blame for Becky's murder as Mort. You told
him he had to shut her up."
Vince looked wide-eyed at his cousin as she went on.
"You're nothing but a little squirt without spunk enough to even _look_
like a man, let alone _act_ like one. You've been whimpering like a
whipped cur, trying to arouse a lot of sympathy with your crocodile
tears. Well, I knew all along that you were faking. Now don't you feel
like a jackass?"
As Penelope warmed to the subject, all the bitterness of the past weeks
found outlet in her lashing words.
"Maybe this is Uncle Bryant's desire. If so, it's all right with me, but
I'm going to find out what's possessed him to turn on me. If it _isn't_
his idea, _I'll find that out, too_."
She turned toward Jeb. "As for you, I'm sorry for you. You're a
worthless dreamer. You might have been an artist or a writer or a poet,
if you hadn't been too lazy to get some education. As it is you're not
worth a plugged dime to anyone, least of all to these crooks. As soon as
they're satisfied that you can't help them, they'll kill you." Jeb
squirmed uneasily in his ropes. "You're _little_ men, both of you, and
so are your brothers."
The girl jabbed the pen into the ink and rapidly signed her name to the
paper.
"You can have your paper all signed as you want it," she said, almost
trembling with the white heat of her rage. "Take it to Bryant, if that's
what you're going to do, and tell him that as long as those kids are
upstairs, without anyone to take care of them, a six-in-hand can't drag
me from here, and as soon as Wallie brings that woman he promised to,
there isn't any power on earth can _keep_ me here."
She thrust the paper, signed, toward Sawtell. "Here you are, and have
fun while you can, because pretty soon someone is going to ask a lot of
questions about six murdered Texas Rangers."
"I'll take that," a new voice said. All eyes turned toward the door. A
tall man with lean hips and broad shoulders stood there; a man whose hat
was white, whose face was masked.
"Who the hell are you?" barked Lonergan.
The masked man stepped forward, reaching for the paper.
"I'll be damned before you--" started Lombard, as he rose from his
chair. A gun appeared as if by magic in the tall masked man's right
hand. Lombard fell back before the weapon's threat.
"Who is he?" "Whar'd he come from?" "How'd he git here?"
There was a chorus of amazed exclamations. There were threats: "Yuh
won't git away with this"; "Yuh better drop them guns afore we git mad";
"You won't leave this Basin alive." But no one made a move of
aggression. The Lone Ranger glanced quickly at the document, folded it,
and tucked it in the pocket of his shirt while his gun remained steady,
covering the room at large.
"I gathered from what I heard that Bryant Cavendish has gone to Red
Oak," he said. "If this paper is for him, none of you need worry,
because I'll take it to him."
The expression on Penelope's flushed face was a mixture of admiration
and resentment. She stared at the intruder, liking him instinctively in
spite of herself. She couldn't understand his part in the grim drama
that seemed to be unfolding on a circular stage while she stood in the
center.