Ejecting the spent shells from his guns and replacing them with fresh cartridges, Slade walked forward and gazed down at hardlined countenances blotched and spotted by dissipation. Border scum of the worst sort.
“Now what is this all about?” he asked Shadow. “Did the hellions recognize me as El Halcón? Looks sort of that way, unless they were just a pair of mad-dog killers. Well, perhaps we’ll get the answer at Sanderson. Hope we find Sheriff Tom Crane in his office; he may know something. We’ll pack that poor devil over there to town with us—less than fifteen miles to go and you’ve packed bodies that way before, so don’t start fussing. Fellow looks like a Mexican, doesn’t he? A Mexican of all or nearly all Spanish blood. Not a bad-appearing jigger, quite different from these two devils. They’ll have to wait till the sheriff sends for them; three carcasses would be a mite too much for you, I’m afraid.”
“One’s bad enough,” Shadow’s snort seemed to say. “Let’s get going, I’m hungry.”
“Take it easy,” Slade replied. “I’m not quite finished yet.”
He turned out the two dead killers’ pockets, discovering nothing he considered significant, just the various trinkets usually carried by range riders, which the pair appeared to be. Had been, rather, for their hands showed no recent marks of rope or branding iron. Each divulged quite a bit of money, which he replaced.
“More than they ever saved from following a cow’s tail,” was his comment. “I’ve a notion we did a pretty good chore, here. Well, we’ll find out, perhaps in Sanderson. I hope so.”
He draped the body of the killers’ victim back of the cantle, securing it with his piggin string or short tie rope. Then with a last look at the two owlhoots, for he was very much of the opinion that they were owlhoots, he mounted and continued on his way through the eerily resounding gorge.
As he rode, Slade studied the canyon, endeavoring to ascertain the source of the really remarkable echo. Gradually he became convinced that most, if not all of the echoes, were thrown back by the west wall. This was interesting, for the two walls seemed identical in formation.
And as he drew nearer the south mouth of the gorge, the echoes dimmed, became muffled, then ceased altogether. Which was also interesting, he thought, seeing that the configuration of the walls was apparently no different from farther up the canyon.
“Very peculiar,” he observed to Shadow. “Now just what is the explanation, I wonder.”
Shadow either didn’t know or if he did he preferred to keep the knowledge to himself, seeing as the only reply he vouchsafed was a derisive snort.
“Just the same,” his rider insisted, “when I get the chance I’m going to do a little investigating.”
He rode on, his eyes thoughtful, puzzling over the unusual phenomenon. After a while he put the matter into the back of his mind for future reference and turned his thoughts to more immediate matters.
2
THE SUN was low in the west when, without suffering mishap, Slade reached the south mouth of the canyon. A mile farther on, he knew, was the east-west trail that led to Sanderson, the railroad town and his destination.
Striking the trail in due time, he rode west at a steady gait, Shadow making light of the double burden he was packing. Slade figured he had something less than a dozen miles still to go. He did not push the horse and it was well past dark when he saw the lights of Sanderson twinkling in the distance.
Sanderson is located in a deep canyon, one wall of which rises over the main street. It had been, and still was, a wild frontier town when Walt Slade rode toward it under the bonfire stars of Texas that seemed to almost brush the cliff tops. It was a repair and division point on the Southern Pacific, with large railroad shops and yards.
Sanderson, founded by “Uncle” Charlie Wilson in the 1880’s, had always been wild and wooly, but the arrival of the railroad brought more citizens, some of them not exactly desirable, more saloons, and more trouble. Outlaws roamed the mountains and canyons of the Big Bend country to the southwest and, among other dubious things, trafficked in “wet” herds stolen in Mexico and driven across the Rio Grande, often at the old Comanche Crossing. Nor were they reluctant when it came to rolling Texas cows across into mañana land, where there were buyers awaiting them. Stagecoaches and railroad trains were not exempt, nor were banks or other depositories for cash.
“Judge Roy Bean, Law West of the Pecos,” owned a saloon there for a time where, as in Langtry, his “own” town, he was wont to dispense justice with a law book in one hand and a six-shooter in the other.
Many of Sanderson’s citizens were as colorful as the town’s history. The Regan brothers, principals in the story of the “Lost Negro Mine,” perhaps the most famous of all the “lost” mines of Texas, had dwelt here for a while. A Negro who worked for them had been sent to round up some stray horses. He returned, not with the horses, but with his pockets full of rocks. The brothers cuffed him for disobedience and fired him, chasing him out of their camp, not realizing until he was gone that the rocks he had found were rich in gold ore. It was said that the Regans spent a fortune trying unsuccessfully to find the missing colored man.
This story and others passed through Walt Slade’s mind as he drew near the town. He was familiar with Sanderson and knew where to find the sheriff’s office. When he drew rein beside the building, he saw a light burning in the office. He dismounted and entered.
Grizzled old Sheriff Tom Crane glanced up from his desk, inquiringly, stared and jumped to his feet.
“Slade!” he exclaimed. “So McNelty sent me El Halcón, the notorious outlaw too smart to get caught! Well, this is better luck than I’d hoped for. How are you, Walt? Man! Am I glad to see you! Sit down, sit down. I’ve got a pot of coffee steaming. Imagine you’re hungry, but we’ll have a cup together before hunting something to eat.”
“Just a minute, Tom,” Slade replied as they shook hands. “I want to show you something my horse is packing.”
With the puzzled sheriff following, he led the way to where Shadow stood patiently waiting.
“For the love of Pete!” Crane exploded. “It’s a dead man, ain’t it?”
“He looks sort of that way to me,” Slade returned composedly. “Perhaps you know him.”
He raised the dead man’s head so Crane could peer at his face. The sheriff did so and uttered a startled exclamation.
“Heck and blazes! He is, was, rather, Rafael Vergara, Don Pancho Arista’s cart train manager, a sort of field man who contacted the buyers and shippers to the north and east. Walt, this is bad. It’s liable to mean big trouble, as if we didn’t have trouble enough already. He—”
“Wait,” Slade interrupted. “Let’s pack him into the office and then, after I’ve stabled my horse, you can tell me about it. Stable around the corner is still there, I imagine?”
“That’s right,” said the sheriff. “Old Tomas Cano still runs it; he’ll remember you. I’ll give you a hand with the carcass.”
“No need,” Slade replied. Deftly unroping the body, he lifted it with no apparent effort, carried it into the office, and laid it on the floor, straightening the limbs and folding the hands peacefully on the breast.
“Now for my cayuse,” he said.
“Okay,”