“And if you never see him again it’ll be soon enough,” said the driver. “Clate, the big jigger is El Halcón.”
“What!”
“Gives you a bit of a start, eh? Figured it would. Yep, he’s El Halcón. I recognized him the minute I clapped eyes on him. I saw him once before, and once you see him you don’t forget him, especially if he happens to be looking over gunsights at the time.”
“Blount, are you sure?” Clate asked.
“Of course I’m sure!” Blount snorted. “You think I could make a mistake with him or that horse?”
Clate muttered profanity. “I wonder what the devil he’s doing here?” he growled.
“Hard to tell,” said Blount. “But wherever he shows up, trouble busts loose. You know his reputation for hornin’ in on the good things other folks have got started.”
Clate swore some more. “Well,” he declared viciously, “a bullet can stop him same as anybody else.”
“Uh-huh,” Blount agreed dryly, “but I’d advise you not to try it, at least not when he’s looking your way, and he seems to have eyes in the back of his head. Guess you’ve heard what folks say about him—the ‘singingest man in the whole Southwest, with the fastest gunhand.’ I figure both to be gospel truth.”
Clate swore again, with added fervor. “As if I didn’t have enough on my hands, running this infernal train and trying to keep you work dodgers outa ruckuses!” he growled. “Why is he here?”
“Maybe old Jaggers Dunn, who runs the blasted C. & P. Railroad, brought him in,” Blount suggested. “He’s sure got the look of a professional gun-slinger.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it,” said Clate. “Dunn is a salty old cuss, but he never struck me as the sort that’d hire a paid gun to do his fighting for him.”
Blount nodded. “And I gotta admit El Halcón don’t strike me as the hired gun type,” he admitted. “Sure wish I knew just what he is; nobody ever seems to be sure.” He turned on the cart seat and gazed south.
“He’s headed for the construction camp, I’ll bet a hatful of pesos,” he said. “At the rate he was going he’s liable to be just right to run into something there. And if he does, the devil only knows what he’ll pull off.”
“That’s what’s got me bothered most,” said Clate. “Well, anyhow, the Boss has gotta hear about this right away.”
“He’s liable to hear about it faster than we can tell him and not particularly enjoy the hearing,” was Blount’s consoling remark.
“Oh, shut up!” yelped Clate. “Get in line ahead of us and forget about the hellion for a while. Give me a chance to think.”
Blount, who apparently enjoyed getting the cart train boss riled, concealed a grin and obeyed.
TWO
THE SUN VANISHED behind the Chinatis in a splendor of scarlet and gold. The lovely blue dusk began sifting down from the hilltops and the heat diminished appreciably. Slade rode on, gazing expectantly to the south.
Low down appeared “echoes” of the stars blossoming in the darkening sky—the lights of the construction camp. Slade quickened Shadow’s gait a little. The black horse sniffing oats in the offing, made no objection. Slade relaxed comfortably in the saddle. “Another twenty minutes or so and we’ll make it,” he said.
Abruptly he straightened up, staring. The whole southern sky was ablaze with yellowish light. Moments later a rumbling boom reached the Ranger’s ears.
“What in blazes!” he wondered. “If that was a dynamite explosion, it sure wasn’t set properly, making all that light. Get going, horse, I’ve a notion something isn’t as it ought to be down there.”
Shadow lengthened his stride still more. Slade peered ahead. A little later his hand tightened on the bridle.
In the gloom ahead had materialized shapes, grotesque, unreal. They quickly resolved to five speeding horsemen. Slade’s eyes narrowed a trifle.
“I don’t know what this is all about, but I figure it’s a good notion to give those hurrying gents the right of way,” he muttered.
Not far from the trail was a big ocotillo brandishing its snaky arms. Slade swerved his mount and halted him in its shadow, which did not provide much concealment.
On came the riders. Now they were opposite where the Ranger sat his horse. He saw the white blur of faces turned in his direction, saw a sudden gleam of shifting metal. He was already sideways out of the saddle as a gun blaze and a slug yelled through the space his body had occupied an instant before.
Walt Slade didn’t take kindly to being shot at for no apparent good reason. He signified his dissent in no uncertain terms. Prone on the ground and in the deeper shadow, he whipped both guns from their sheaths and sent a stream of lead hissing in reply.
A yell of pain echoed the reports, and another. He saw one of the riders slump forward and grab the saddle horn to keep from falling. A second lurched sideways, recovered, sagging in the hull.
The bunch did not pause to try conclusions with him, hidden in the shadow as he was. They tore on up the trail, two of them reeling and swaying but keeping their seats.
Slade leaped to his feet, slid his heavy Winchester from the saddle boot, then changed his mind and resheathed the long gun. After all, the bunch might be but a band of trigger-nervous cowhands who had been startled by the apparition of the horseman lurking in the shadow of the big candlewood. This was a wild land, and such a one might well be suspect. He muttered wrathfully and glared after the vanishing riders.
Later he was to regret that he changed his mind and replaced the rifle without using it.
“Let’s go, horse,” he said as he forked Shadow. “This is beginning to turn out to be something of a night. Bet you we find more trouble at the camp—I’ve got a feeling.”
Twenty minutes later they reached the outskirts of the big construction camp, which was in an uproar, men shouting and cursing and bawling orders. A locomotive lay on its side, spouting steam from broken pipes. A big crane also lay slanted sideways, half in and half out of a hole hollowed in the ground near the tracks of a siding. A boxcar was roofless, another had been turned at right angles to the tracks. Still another was a mass of tangled wreckage strewn over the ground. Around this last was a swirl of activity. Just beyond it, spike mauls were thudding frantically as a crew laid a line of rails parrallel to the wreckage. On these rails stood another and heavier crane, with a hissing locomotive shoving it along as fast as the track layers could place the iron.
From where he sat his horse Slade could see over the heads of the crowd to where workmen were swarming like distrubed ants over the wreckage.
In the forefront, directing operations, was a broad-shouldered, stocky but powerfully built individual with craggy features, keen blue eyes and a glorious crinkly white mane sweeping back from his big, dome-like forehead. It was James G. “Jaggers” Dunn, the famous General Manager of the great C. & P. Railroad system. His voice boomed orders liberally spiced with
