Ranse Roush Pays
Jim Thursday knew that his sole chance of success lay in reaching the
fork of the cañons before the Indians. So far he had been lucky. Three
Apaches had gone to their happy hunting ground, and though both he and
Billie were wounded, his hurt at least did not interfere with accurate
rifle-fire. But it was not reasonable to expect such good fortune to
hold. In the party he was pursuing were four men, all of them used to
warfare in the open. Unless he could take them at a disadvantage he could
not by any possibility defeat them and rescue their captive.
His cinnamon pony took the rising ground at a steady gallop. Its stride
did not falter, though its breathing was labored. Occasionally the rider
touched its flank with the sharp rowel of a spur. The boy was a lover of
horses. He had ridden too many dry desert stretches, had too often kept
night watch over a sleeping herd, not to care for the faithful and
efficient animal that served him and was a companion to his loneliness.
Like many plainsmen he made of his mount a friend.
But he dared not spare his pony now. He must ride the heart out of the
gallant brute for the sake of that life he had come to save. And while he
urged it on, his hand patted the sweat-stained neck and his low voice
sympathized.
"You've got to go to it, old fellow, if it kills you," he said aloud. "We
got to save that girl for Billie, ain't we? We can't let those red devils
take her away, can we?"
It was a rough cattle trail he followed, strewn here with boulders and
there tilted down at breakneck angle of slippery shale. Sometimes it fell
abruptly into washes and more than once rose so sharply that a heather
cat could scarce have clambered up. But Thursday flung his horse
recklessly at the path, taking chances of a fall that might end the mad
race. He could not wait to pick a way. His one hope lay in speed, in
reaching the fork before the enemy. He sacrificed everything to that.
From the top of a sharp pitch he looked down into the twin cañon of
Escondido. A sharp bend cut off the view to the left, so that he could
see for only seventy-five or a hundred yards. But his glance followed the
gulch up for half a mile and found no sign of life. He was in time.
Swiftly he made his preparations. First he led the exhausted horse back
to a clump of young cottonwoods and tied it safely. From its place beside
the saddle he took the muley gun and with the rifle in his other hand he
limped swiftly back to the trail. Every step was torture, but he could
not stop to think of that now. His quick eye picked a perfect spot for an
ambush where a great rock leaned against another at the edge of the
bluff. Between the two was a narrow opening through which he could
command the bend in the trail below. To enlarge this he scooped out the
dirt with his fingers then reloaded the rifle and thrust it into the
crevice. The sawed-off shotgun lay close to his hand.
Till now he had found no time to get nervous, but as the minutes passed
he began to tremble violently and to whimper. In spite of his experience
he was only a boy and until to-day had never killed a man.
"Doggone it, if I ain't done gone an' got buck fever," he reproached
himself. "I reckon it's because Billie Prince ain't here that I'm so
scairt. I wisht I had a drink, so as I'd be right when the old muley gun
gits to barkin'."
A faint sound, almost indistinguishable, echoed up the gulch to him.
Miraculously his nervousness vanished. Every nerve was keyed up, every
muscle tense, but he was cool as water in a mountain stream.
The sound repeated itself, a faint tinkle of gravel rolling from a trail
beneath the hoof of a horse. At the last moment Thursday changed his mind
and substituted the shotgun for the rifle.
"Old muley she spatters all over the State of Texas. I might git two at
once," he muttered.
The light, distant murmur of voices reached him. His trained ear told him
just how far away the speakers were.
An Apache rounded the bend, a tall, slender young brave wearing only a
low-cut breech-cloth and a pair of moccasins. Around his waist was
strapped a belt full of cartridges and from it projected the handle of a
long Mexican knife. The brown body of the youth was lithe and graceful as
that of a panther. He was smiling over his shoulder at the next rider in
line, a heavy-set, squat figure on a round-bellied pinto. That smile was
to go out presently like the flame of a blown candle. A third Mescalero
followed. Like that of the others, his coarse, black hair fell to the
shoulders, free except for a band that encircled the forehead.
Still the boy did not fire. He waited till the last of the party
appeared, a man in fringed buckskin breeches and hickory shirt riding
pillion behind a young woman. Both of these were white.
The sawed-off gun of Thursday covered the second rider carefully. Before
the sound of the shot boomed down the gorge the Apache was lifted from
the bare back of the pony. The heavy charge of buckshot had riddled him
through and through.
Instantly the slim, young brave in the lead dug his heels into the flank
of his pony, swung low to the far side so that only a leg was visible,
and flew arrow-straight up the cañon for safety. Thursday let him go.
Twice his rifle rang out. At that distance it was impossible for a good
shot to miss. One bullet passed through the head of the third Mescalero.
The other brought down the pony upon which the whites were riding.
The fall of the horse flung the girl free, but the foot of her captor was
caught between the saddle and the ground. Thursday drew a bead on him
while he lay there helpless, but some impulse of mercy held his hand. The
man was that creature accursed in the border land, a renegade who has
turned his face against his own race and must to prove his sincerity to
the tribe out-Apache an Apache at cruelty. Still, he was white after
all--and Jim Thursday was only eighteen.
Rifle in hand the boy clambered down the jagged rock wall to the dry
river-bed below. The foot of his high-heeled boot was soggy with blood,
but for the present he had to ignore the pain messages that throbbed to
his brain. The business on hand would not wait.
While Thursday was still slipping down from one outcropping ledge of rock
to another, a plunge of the wounded horse freed the renegade. The man
scrambled to his feet and ran shakily for the shelter of a boulder. In
his hurry to reach cover he did not stop to get the rifle that had been
flung a few yards from him when he fell.
The boy caught one glimpse of that evil, fear-racked face. The blood
flushed his veins with a surge of triumph. He was filled with the savage,
primitive exultation of the head-hunter. For four years he had slept on
the trail of this man and had at last found him. The scout had fought the
Apaches impersonally, without rancor, because a call had come to him that
he could not ignore. But now the lust of blood was on him. He had become
that cold, implacable thing known throughout the West as a "killer."
The merciless caution that dictates the methods of a killer animated his
movements now. Across the gulch, nearly one hundred and fifty yards from
him, the renegade lay crouched. A hunched shoulder was just visible.
Thursday edged carefully along the ledge. He felt for holds with his hand
and feet, for not once did his gaze lift from that patch of hickory
shirt. The eyes of the boy had narrowed to slits of deadly light. He was
wary as a hungry wolf and as dangerous. That the girl had disappeared
around the bend he did not know. His brain functioned for just one
purpose--to get the enemy with whom he had come at last to grips.
As the boy crept along the rock face for a better view of his victim, the
minutes fled. Five of them--ten--a quarter of an hour passed. The
renegade lay motionless. Perhaps he hoped that his location was unknown.
The man-hunter on the ledge flung a bullet against the protecting
boulder. His laugh of cruel derision drifted across the cañon.
"Run to earth at last, Ranse Roush!" he shouted, "I swore I'd camp on
your trail till I got you--you an' the rest of yore poison tribe."
From the trapped wretch quavered back a protest.
"Goddlemighty, I ain't done nothin' to you-all. Lemme explain."
"Before you do any explainin' mebbe you'd better guess who it is that's
goin' to send yore cowardly soul to hell inside of five minutes."
"If you're some kin to that gal on the hawss with me, why, I'll tell you
the honest-to-God truth. I was aimin' to save her from the 'Paches when I
got a chanct. Come on down an' let's we-uns talk it over reasonable."
The boy laughed again, but there was something very far from mirth in the
sound of that chill laughter. "If you won't guess I'll have to tell you
Ever hear of the Clantons, Ranse Roush? I'm one of 'em. Now you know what
chance you got to talk yoreself out of this thing."
"I--I'm glad to meet up with you-all. I got to admit that the Roush clan
is dirt mean. Tha's why I broke away from 'em. Tha's why I come out here.
You Clantons is all right. I never did go in for this bushwhackin' with
Dave an' Hugh. I never--"
"You're a born liar like the rest of yore wolf tribe. You come out here
because the country got too hot to hold you after what you did to 'Lindy
Clanton. I might 'a' knowed I'd find you with the 'Paches. You allus was
low-mixed Injun." The boy had fallen into the hill vernacular to which he
had been born. He was once more a tribal feudist of the border land.
"I swear I hadn't a thing to do with that," the man cried eagerly. "You
shore done got that wrong. Dave an' Hugh done that. They're a bad lot.
When I found out about 'Lindy Clanton I quarreled with 'em an' we-all
split up company. Tha's the way of it."
"You're ce'tainly in bad luck then," the boy shouted back tauntingly.
"For I aim to stomp you out like I would a copperhead." Very distinctly
he added his explanation. "I'm 'Lindy Clanton's brother."
Roush begged for his life. He groveled in the dust. He promised to
reform, to leave the country, to do anything that was asked of him.
"Go ahead. It's meat an' drink to me to hear a Roush whine. I got all day
to this job, but I aim to do it thorough," jeered Clanton.
A bullet flattened itself against the rock wall ten feet below the boy.
In despair the man was shooting wildly with his revolver. He knew there
was no use in pleading, that his day of judgment had come.
Young Clanton laughed in mockery. "Try again, Roush. You ain't quite got
the range."
The man made a bolt for the bend in the cañon a hundred yards away.
Instantly the rifle leaped to the shoulder of the boy.
"Right in front of you, Roush," he prophesied.
The bullet kicked up the dust at the feet of the running man. The nerve
of Roush failed him and he took cover again behind a scrub live-oak. A
memory had flashed to him of the day when he had seen a thirteen-year-old
boy named Jim Clanton win a turkey shoot against the best marksmen of
the hill country.
The army Colt spit out once more at the boy on the ledge. Before the echo
had died away the boom of an explosion filled the cañon. Roush pitched
forward on his face.
Jim Clanton lowered his rifle with an exclamation. His face was a picture
of amazement. Some one had stolen his vengeance from him by a hair's
breadth.
Two men came round the bend on horseback. Behind them rode a girl. She
was mounted on the barebacked pinto of the Indian Clanton had killed
with the shotgun.
The boy clambered down to the bed of the gulch and limped toward them.
The color had ebbed from his lips. At every step a pain shot through his
leg. But in spite of his growing weakness anger blazed in the light-blue
eyes.
"I waited four years to git him. I kept the trail hot from Tucson to
Vegas an' back to Santone. An' now, doggone it, when my finger was on the
trigger an' the coyote as good as dead, you cut in an' shoot the
daylights out of him. By gum, it ain't fair!"
The older man looked at him in astonishment. "But he is only a child,
Polly! Cela me passe!"
"Mebbe I am only a kid," the boy retorted resentfully. "But I reckon I'm
man enough to handle any Roush that ever lived. I wasn't askin' for help
from you-uns that I heerd tell of."
The younger man laughed. He was six or seven years older than the girl,
who could not have been more than seventeen. Both of them bore a marked
likeness to the middle-aged man who had spoken. Jim guessed that this was
the Roubideau family of whom Billie Prince had told him.
"Just out of the cradle, by Christmas, and he's killed four 'Paches
inside of an hour an' treed a renegade to boot," said young Roubideau.
"I'd call it a day's work, kid, for it sure beats all records ever I knew
hung up by one man."
The admiration of the young rancher was patent. He could not take his
eyes from the youthful phenomenon.
"He's wounded, father," the girl said in a low voice.
The boy looked at her and his anger died away. "Billie sent me up the
gulch when he was shot. He 'lowed it was up to me to git you back from
those devils, seein' as he couldn't go himself."
Polly nodded. She seemed to be the kind of girl that understands without
being told in detail.
Before Thursday could protect himself, Roubideau, senior, had seized him
in his arms, embraced him, and kissed first one cheek and then the other.
"Eh bien! But you are the brave boy! I count it honor to know you. My
little Polly, have you not save her? Ah! But I forget the introductions.
Myself, I am Pierre Roubideau, à tout propos at your service. My son
Jean. Pauline--what you call our babie."
"My real name is Jim Clanton," answered the boy. "I've been passin' by
that of 'Thursday' so that none of the Roush outfit would know I was in
the country till I met up face to face with 'em."
"Clanton! It is a name we shall remember in our prayers, n'est-ce pas,
Polly?" Pierre choked up and wrung fervently the hand of the youngster.
Clanton was both embarrassed and wary. He did not know at what moment
Roubideau would disgrace him by attempting another embrace. There was
something in the Frenchman's eye that told of an emotion not yet expended
fully.
"Oh, shucks; you make a heap of fuss about nothin'," he grumbled. "Didn't
I tell you it was Billie Prince sent me? An' say, I got a pill in my
foot. Kindness of one of them dad-gummed Mescaleros. I hate to walk on
that laig. I wish yore boy would go up on the bluff an' look after my
horse. I 'most rode it to death, I reckon, comin' up the cañon. An'
there's a sawed-off shotgun. He'll find it..."
For a few moments the ground had been going up and down in waves before
the eyes of the boy. Now he clutched at a stirrup leather for support,
but his fingers could not seem to find it. Before he could steady himself
the bed of the dry creek rose up and hit him in the head.