his way. He had covered perhaps ten miles of steady going when he reached a point where the trail curved through a bristle of tall and thick brush that extended for some distance. Shadow ambled on, his master lounging comfortably in the hull, his thoughts elsewhere so far as time and place were concerned.
He was jerked back to the present and his immediate surroundings by a sound unexpected and alien to the peaceful hush of the dying day—the hard, metallic clang of a rifle shot. It was followed by two more, evenly spaced.
“Now what the devil!” he wondered. Shadow snorted and pricked his ears. Slade listened intently for more shots. He heard none, but he heard something else that steadily loudened, a low drumming of fast hoofs beating the dusty surface of the trail.
“Sounds like some gent is in a hurry,” he muttered. He crowded Shadow close against the encroaching growth, which here was a mite thinner than ordinary. Best to give the unseen rider plenty of room, especially after that ominous burst of gunfire.
Louder and louder grew the hammering hoofs. Another moment and a foaming sorrel horse bulged around the bend and into sight. His rider lurched and swayed in the saddle, seemingly barely able to maintain his seat on the hull. And in a wavering hand he held a gun!
2
SLADE WENT sideways in his saddle as the muzzle of the gun jutted in his direction. It spurted smoke. The slug fanned his face. The sorrel shot past like a streak of goose grease. Slade swore a wrathful oath and reached for the butt of his Winchester snugged in the saddle boot under his thigh. Then he desisted, glaring at the lurching, reeling horseman as he careened around another bend and out of sight. Looked very much like he was wounded and had perhaps almost unseeingly thrown down on something he thought might block his headlong flight.
Also, to El Halcon’s keen ears came a second drumming of hoofs, more than one set, coming fast. It began to look like the nervous-trigger gentleman might be the object of a chase. Slade tensed for possible action. It quickly proved more than possible.
Around the bend swooped three more riders. The foremost gave a yelp of alarm, and they jerked their mounts to a slithering halt.
This time Slade went clear out of the saddle. As he hit the ground, a slug yelled through the space his body had occupied an instant before. Another kicked dirt into the air scant inches from his head.
Prone on the ground, Slade drew and shot with both hands. There was a yell of pain, and one of the riders dropped his gun and clutched at a blood-spouting arm. Another yell and the leg of a second flopped wildly out of the stirrup. Screeching curses, the trio whirled their horses and streaked back the way they had come. Slade lined sights with the third man’s back, then held his fire. The whole affair had been so absolutely loco as to defy explanation, and he did not wish to kill anybody unless he was forced to. He got to his feet, listened a moment to the hoofbeats dimming into the distance and dusted himself off, growling angrily to Shadow, who, knowing just what to do when lead started whistling, had leaped sideways into the brush.
“Okay, feller,” his master concluded, “you can come out. I don’t think there’ll be a second encore. What in blazes have we horned into?”
If Shadow knew, he didn’t admit it and satisfied himself with a derisive snort. Slade mounted, hesitated a moment. He would have liked to trail after the trio, but there was the first rider to consider. Little doubt but that he had stopped lead. Might be badly hurt and in need of assistance. Had looked like he would fall from his mount at any moment.
Turning Shadow, Slade rode back the way he had come. He rode warily, alert for anything else untoward, but the back trail remained peaceful. Finally he reached a point where he could see ahead for considerably more than a mile. The lone horseman was nowhere in sight.
Halting Shadow, Slade rolled a cigarette, lounged comfortably in the hull and considered the situation. Even at the rate he was traveling, the fellow would not have had time to reach the next bend in the trail. So he must have turned off somewhere into the brush. Appeared he was not so badly hurt, after all, and had no doubt gotten in the clear. Of course, he might be holed up somewhere awaiting his pursuers, but Slade thought that unlikely, and he had no intention of trying to find out; he’d heard enough blue whistlers singing songs to him for one day.
“Well, horse,” he remarked, “looks like Captain Jim was right, per usual, when he ’lowed there was a bunch of horned toads, raising the devil hereabouts and twisting his tail. That is, if today is a fair sample of the goings on. Yep, looks like we should be able to do a little business in the section, if we manage to stay in one piece long enough. Oh, well, needs must when the devil drives, as the saying goes, so let’s amble on our way if we hope to make Clint by not too far after dark. Should be hitting the cultivated lands before long; may learn something from somebody there. That is, if that ruckus had its inception that far northwest. We’ll just go and see.”
Shadow offered no objection, doubtless reflecting that oats were to be had at Clint to pleasingly supplement the strictly grass diet he’d been on for the past few days, and ambled on at a fairly fast pace.
Slade glanced at the westering sun. Only about a dozen miles to Clint, a shady town of adobe houses and folks who as a rule were peaceful and law-abiding. So much so, in fact, that the community was able to dispense with the services of a town marshal, relying on Trevis Serby, Sheriff of El Paso County, for any required law enforcement, abetted by Tomas Cardena, the plump and genial mayor whom Slade knew well.
That is, it used to be like that, but if the day’s happenings were a sample of present conditions in the section, even Clint might be pawin’ sand a mite. Be that as it may, there was opportunity at Clint to put on the nosebag and sleep in a comfortable bed, both of which had their attractions for a healthy young man who had been subsisting on scant rations of late and using the sky for a blanket.
A few more miles of steady going and they reached the beginning of the cultivated lands. Now the trail led between small farms, orchards and vineyards—a scene of pastoral peace and prosperity.
Workers in the fields raised their heads to gaze at the tall horseman, but nobody spoke to him. Slade gradually developed the conviction that he was undergoing a critical appraisal. Also, sensitive to expressions and gestures, he sensed an atmosphere of distinct hostility. Not necessarily directed at him personally, but toward what he might possibly represent. Quite different from what he had encountered when he last rode this way, a couple of years back. Began to look like any stranger was an object of suspicion.
Of course the section might have experienced considerable change in two years. It had always been subject to change. Time was when the population of the valley was almost wholly Mexican, but the steady flow of immigration from the east had changed that. Now Americans, especially Texas- Americans, were in the majority.
Even in comparatively recent years the section had known plenty of turbulence. At San Elizario, only three miles to the left of Clint, Judge Charles Howard, John McBride and John Atkinson, members of the very small American colony at the time, were shot to death before an adobe wall in the final tragedy of the famous Salt War.
Through the brush country, Slade had ridden very much on the alert, carefully studying the movements of birds on the wing and little animals in the growth, against a possible attempted drygulching by the trio of gunslingers, although he thought such an attempt unlikely. Two of the hellions were probably not feeling very good at the moment and had no doubt headed for some place where they could get patched up, possibly Clint
Now, however, in the region of cultivation, he relaxed somewhat; it was not a good terrain for an ambush.
Sunset flamed in a riot of color that drenched the
