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Copyright, © 1963, by Pyramid Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved
ONE
FLYING LEAD plays no favorites.
Ranger Walt Slade, he whom the peons of the Rio Grande River villages named El Halcón—The Hawk—ducked instinctively as the slug sang past overhead.
The second one came closer, fanning his face with its lethal breath. A third twitched at the sleeve of his shirt like an urgent hand.
That was enough! He whirled Shadow, his tall black horse on a dime and skalleyhooted into a convenient alley. He was turning his mount to face the main street when half a dozen riders stormed past, shooting back over their shoulders.
A shotgun let go with a thundering roar. One of the riders yelped a curse. Evidently a pellet from the double load of buckshot had nicked him. But he stayed in the hull and kept going.
The shotgun cut loose with another blast. A couple of six-guns chimed in blithely. Down the street charged a gray-mustached old jigger with a big nickel badge pinned to his shirt front and the still smoking sawed-off in his hand.
“And don’t come back!” he bawled after the retreating horsemen as they whisked around a corner and out of sight.
Glancing about, he saw Slade sitting his horse in the alley mouth.
“And where the devil did you come from?” he barked.
“I don’t ask you where you come from, though I think I’d have a right to after you singeing my whiskers with your blue whistlers,” Slade retorted. “What’s the idea, anyhow? Can’t a peaceable stranger ride into town without having to dodge hot lead?”
“You may be peaceable, but this blankety-blank-blank town sure ain’t,” the sheriff growled.
Glancing up the street, Slade felt that the remark was something in the nature of an understatement. Two men, cursing and limping, were being helped along the board sidewalk. A third was swabbing his bullet gashed cheek with a bloody handkerchief. A fourth cherished a blood-dripping hand.
The sheriff continued to regard Slade with scant favor, a scowl on his bad-tempered old face. Slade smiled, the flashing white smile of El Halcón, that men, and women, found irresistible. The sheriff tried to glower, but instead he grinned, a trifle crustily, perhaps, but he grinned.
“What you want here, son?” he asked in somewhat mollified tones.
“First,” Slade answered, “a place for my horse to put on the nosebag and take it easy for a spell.”
“Turn him around and you’ll come to a livery stable a hop and a skip down the alley,” the sheriff replied.
“Then a place where I can tie onto a surrounding, and somewhere to sleep,” Slade added.
“The Trail End saloon right across the street puts out a good surrounding of chuck, that is, if the kitchen ain’t shot up too much—a notion it ain’t.”
“What started the corpse-and-cartridge session?” Slade asked.
“Hanged if I know for sure,” the sheriff answered. “Those hellions who sifted sand out of town started it, I think. I ain’t got the lowdown from anybody yet. And in such rukuses, everybody always blames everybody else—‘I was plumb innocent, Sheriff. Was just mindin’ my own business when that sidewinder cut down on me. Why? Hanged if I know.’ That’s what I’ll get when I start asking questions. Did you get a good look at the hellions?” Slade shook his head.
“I’d just dived into the alley and hadn’t got my cayuse turned around yet,” he replied. “Didn’t see their faces at all except a sideways glimpse as they turned in their hulls to shoot back.”
“ ’Bout the same with me,” grunted the sheriff. “Well, they’re gone and I expect they won’t come back. Nobody cashed in, I gather, just a few punctures Doc Beard will take care of.”
He hesitated, studied Slade a moment. “You asked about a place to pound your ear, I believe,” he remarked. “Well, I won’t rec’mend the fleabags they call hotels or rooming houses, but I’ve a notion Clint Adams—he runs the livery stable—will have a vacant room over his stalls right now; he sleeps there. Tell Clint Sheriff Carter sent you and I’ve a notion he’ll take you in.”
“Thank you,” Slade answered. “That helps a lot. I like to sleep close to my horse.”
“So I expect,” the sheriff conceded dryly. “Be seeing you. I’ll amble over to the Trail End and see if I can learn anything—be darned surprised if I do.”
Before the sheriff was half way across the street, he demanded querulously, of himself, “Now who the blankety-blank is he? Just comes to me that while I figured on trying to learn a mite about him, I did all the talking and he didn’t say a darn thing.”
Which, had the sheriff known it, was a peculiarity that had puzzled and bewildered wiser men than himself. Walt Slade would talk freely and pleasantly, almost volubly at times; but he wouldn’t tell you anything.
Left to his own devices, Slade located the stable without difficulty. A husky individual with a blocky face and a truculent eye opened the door in answer to his knock. He gave Slade a glance, stared at Shadow.
“Bring him in! Bring him in!” he rumbled. Slade dismounted and did so.
“It’s okay, Shadow,” he said. The big black, who had flattened his ears when the keeper reached for the bridle iron, pricked them forward again.
“One-man horse, eh?” grunted that worthy. “That’s the right kind. He’ll get proper care, and be here when you want him.”
“Sheriff Carter said you might have a sleeping room for rent,” Slade observed. The keeper nodded.
“Brian Carter’s all right, but the horse is a better rec’mendation,” he said. “Yep, I’ve got a room open. First one at the head of the stairs; I sleep in the second. Key’s in the door, and here’s one to the front door. I don’t often give ’em out, but a feller who rides that horse must be okay.”
“Thank you,” Slade said as he accepted the key and picked up his saddle pouches and rifle.
“Don’t thank me, thank the horse,” Clint grunted.
“I have, more than once,” Slade smiled. “If it wasn’t for him, several times over, I wouldn’t be alive today.”
“Don’t doubt that,” Clint said, running a keen glance over the Ranger’s face and form.
He saw a tall man, more than six feet, with a breadth of shoulder that matched his height and a deep chest slimming down to a sinewy waist. Doubtless he found the sternly handsome countenance of his guest also arresting. The lines of a rather wide mouth relieved somewhat the tinge of fierceness evinced by the prominent hawk nose above and the powerful chin and jaw beneath.
The lean, deeply bronzed face was dominated by long, black-lashed eyes of very pale gray, cold, reckless eyes that nevertheless always seemed to have little devils of laughter dancing in their clear depths. But old Clint, a shrewd observer, felt that should occasion warrant, those devils, leaping to the fore, would be anything but laughing. His pushed-back
