Suddenly there was a thump of boots over the sand, and Stubby arrived.
“It’s Keno, Music!” the boy cried.
Music bolstered his weapon and leaned down to help Marian Ellis to her feet.
“I’m powerful sorry, ma’am,” he apologized. “I never meant to hurt you. I just had to push you away. I’ll never do it ever again.”
Stubby ran on to the boulder.
“Hit him right between the eyes, Music!” the boy called back. “I saw him sneak out of the wagon when you come up. I knew it was you when I heard you whistling Suwannee River. I sneaked off from Uncle Joe and joined the train because I knew that Keno and Stick were plannin’ something bad… Do you hear me, Music?”
Music was paying no attention. Marian was in his arms. And he was telling her that he loved her and that he wanted her more than anything else in the world.
“Everybody in Saltville knows more about it than we do ourselves,” Music was saying. “I even heard it from Stick Wiley before he died. Yore father must know.”
“I told him myself,” she said. “I knew you’d come to help us.”
LONG SAM JUMPS THE DEVIL, by Lee Bond
For moments after he crawled to edge of the clearing and peered toward the circle of firelight, Long Sam Littlejohn wondered if he was having a nightmare. Certainly what he beheld was reminiscent of hair-raising pirate tales he had read in his youth.
There was the open grave, yawning black and evil in the flickering red light of the mesquite wood fire. On the brink stood three men, their wrists and ankles tightly bound. Across the pit were four other men, one of whom was dressed in dazzling white satin charro-style pants and jacket.
“El Diabolo Blanco, by thunder!” Long Sam whispered.
Long Sam shivered although the Texas night was sticky with humid heat. In two years time, that slim, white-clad hombre in the clearing had blazed a trail of crime through this thicket country that had every badge-man in the country faunching for his scalp. Yet no one had the slightest notion as to the cunning thief and killer’s real identity, for he vanished like a wraith into these towering jungles of tornillo, prickly pear and mesquite after each raid on town, ranch or stagecoach.
Some people claimed the bandit had a hideout south of the Rio Grande, on Mexican soil. Others contended that he was a local man, walking the streets of Foxfire or some other river community as a respected citizen when he did not don the gleaming white garments that had won him the name “El Diabolo Blanco.”
Yet these were only guesses made by harassed peace officers and an alarmed citizenry. Not a single clew had ever been found to the identity of the white-clad bandit or any of his murderous followers.
It suddenly occurred to Long Sam Littlejohn that he had learned more in the last few seconds than the law had learned in two whole years.
Over his head, the white-clad bandit had a hood-shaped satin mask with tiny eye holes. He wore white boots and crisscrossed white belts that supported the white holsters thonged to his thighs. The holsters held nickel-plated six-shooters with pearl grips. Long Sam couldn’t even guess at that white-robed killer’s identity.
But the three gun-hung, tough-visaged gents with El Diabolo Blanco were another story. Long Sam’s smoky eyes narrowed speculatively as he studied those three. They were Sisco Denton, Curly Hurd and Rick Veale, men whom Long Sam Littlejohn had known for years. All three worked for old Bart Rowland, whose Rocking R ranch covered miles of this thicket country. Slim, hawk-nosed, red-headed Sisco Denton was, in fact, ramrod of the whole vast Rocking R spread.
“Beats me,” Long Sam puzzled. “Old Bart Rowland is near busted, thanks to the way El Diabolo Blanco has whittled on his herds, and robbed his lumber pay roll carriers, and gutted his Foxfire Stockman’s Bank twice. And here’s some of Old Man Rowland’s own hired help, turnin’ out to be members of that Blanco hellion’s gang!”
Long Sam’s angular, bony-cheeked face screwed into a worried scowl that brought thin yellow brows lower over his smoke-colored eyes. He was a gaunt, unusually tall man, dressed in jetty black from boots to the flat-crowned Stetson that covered his thick yellow hair. Because of those black garments, he knew that he was not apt to be spotted in the shadows cast by the tornillo bushes above him.
He could, Sam realized soberly, slide back to the tough old roan horse he called Sleeper and go on about his own business without getting into any kind of mixup with El Diabolo Blanco. Outlawed and with a price posted for his own dead-or-alive capture, Long Sam reckoned that he was about the last hombre in Texas who ought to go butting into something that was a chore to be handled by the very law that hounded, hunted and, hated him.
But even as he lay there thinking, Long Sam knew he would not slip away and leave Diabolo alone. He reached down, slid a pair of black-butted six-shooters from their holsters at his bony thighs, and laid his thumbs over the knurled hammers.
El Diabolo Blanco, Sisco Denton, Curly Hurd and Rick Veale were in a huddle now. That Diabolo and the three Rocking R riders meant to murder the other three men in cold blood, Long Sam did not doubt.
“Wish to thunder I could see the faces of those three,” he muttered. “That husky, thick-necked jigger looks kinda like Bull Mooney, leader of them stock thieves over yonder in the Indian Nations. The scrawny cuss with the gray showin’ in his hair could be Gus Lynn, Bull Mooney’s right bower. But that stocky gent in the big overalls, hickory shirt and brogans, looks like a farmer. If I could figure some way to signal them three to jump down into that grave—”
Long Sam’s musing broke off when El Diabolo Blanco and his companions ended their whispered conference. The white-robed leader put his hooded face close to Sisco Denton’s ear. Long Sam could see the white cloth flutter from Blanco’s breath as the bandit talked. Sisco Denton nodded, then turned to look across the grave towards the three men. Short-legged, barrel-chested Curly Hurd and dumpy, round-paunched Rick Veale strolled casually over to the open grave. Long Sam could see them grinning at the three helpless men across the yawning pit as they drew and cocked their six-shooters.
“Mooney, you and Gus Lynn have pulled a prize boner,” Sisco Denton said harshly. “Blanco says the only thing he can do is see that you two, and that thing, there, you mistook for a clod-hoppin’ farmer, just up and disappear for good.”
“Bull Mooney and Gus Lynn, sure enough,” Long Sam whispered.
“Yeah, me and Gus made a mistake, all right, Denton,” Bull Mooney’s deep voice retorted. “That mistake was in even bringin’ them four saddlebags, yonder, with their forty thousand, cold cash, to you and that two-bit coward hidin’ under them white duds.”
* * * *
Diabolo Blanco leaned towards Sisco Denton, and the shimmering satin cloth over his face rippled as he talked.
“Blanco says to watch your tongue, Bull, or he’ll order you shot low so’s you feel it a long time before you fall into that grave.” Sisco Denton grinned coldly. “And if you think Blanco is just talkin’, go ahead and make some more remarks about him.”
“Listen, Denton,” scrawny Gus Lynn said sharply. “Me and Bull and some of the other boys from the Nations took that trail herd of blotch-branded cattle up to Kansas and sold it for your Blanco boss, there. We fetched you back forty thousand, cash dollars, in them saddlebags. We camped back yonder at Panther Spring, like you fellers told us to do. This gent who calls hisself Stub Smith drove up in a sorry-lookin’ wagon and wanted to camp at the spring, too. Me and Bull couldn’t run him off, not without makin’ him wonder why. When you four fellers showed up, you throwed guns on me and Bull and Smith, and sure aim to beef us, all three. What kind of a mistake does your Blanco boss claim