The Bandit of Hell's Bend - Edgar Rice Burroughs (reading tree .txt) 📗

I shall say yes.”

He leaned toward her impulsively and put an arm about her, drawing her toward him with the evident intention of kissing her, but she pushed him away.

“Not yet, Hal,” she told him; “wait until I have said yes.”

A week later a group of boarders were lounging on the veranda of The Donovan House in Hendersville. It was almost supper time of a stage day and the stage had not yet arrived. Mack Harber, whose wound had given more trouble than the doctor had expected, was still there convalescing, and Mary Donovan was, as usual, standing in the doorway joining in the gossip and the banter.

“Bill ain’t niver late ‘less somethin’s wrong,” said Mrs. Donovan.

“Like as not he’s been held up again,” suggested Mack.

“I’d like to be sheriff o’ this yere county fer ‘bout a week,” stated Wildcat Bob.

“Sure, an’ phawt would ye be after doin’?” inquired Mary Donovan, acidly.

Wildcat Bob subsided, mumbling in his stained beard. For the moment he had forgotten that Mrs. Donovan was among those present.

“Here they come!” announced Mack.

With the clank of chain, the creaking of springs, and the rapid pounding of galloping hoofs the stage swung into the single street of Hendersville in a cloud of dust and with a final shrieking of protesting brakes pulled up before The Donovan House.

“Where’s Gum Smith?” demanded Bill Gatlin from the driver’s seat.

“Dunno. Held up agin?” asked one of the loungers.

“Yes,” snapped Gatlin.

Mack Harber had risen from his chair and advanced to the edge of the veranda.

“The Black Coyote?” he asked.

Gatlin nodded. “Where’s thet damn sheriff?” he demanded again.

“He ain’t here an’ he wouldn’t be no good if he was,” replied Wildcat Bob.

“We don’t need no sheriff fer what we oughter do,” announced Mack Harber, angrily.

“How’s thet?” asked Wildcat.

“You don’t need no sheriff fer a necktie party,” said Mack, grimly.

“No, but you gotta get yer man fust.”

“Thet’s plumb easy.”

“How come?” inquired Wildcat.

“We all know who The Black Coyote is,” stated Mack. “All we gotta do is get a rope an’ go get him. ” “Meanin’ get who?” insisted the little old man.

“Why, gosh all hemlock! you know as well as I do thet it’s Bull,” replied Mack.

“I dunno nothin’ o’ the kind, young feller,” said Wildcat Bob, “ner neither do you. Ef ye got proof of what ye say I’m with ye. Ef ye ain’t got proof I’m ag’in ye.”

“Don’t Bull always wear a black silk handkerchief?” demanded Mack. “Well, so does The Black Coyote, an’ they both got scars on their chins. There ain’t no doubt of it.”

“So ye want to string up Bull ‘cause he wears a black bandana and a scar, eh? Well, ye ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ o’ the kind while of Wildcat Bob can fan a gun. Git proof on him an’ I’ll be the fust to put a rope ‘round his neck, but ye got to git more proof than a black handkerchief.”

“Shure an’ fer onct yer right, ye ould blatherskite,” commended Mary Donovan. “Be after comin’ to yer suppers now the all of yese an’ fergit stringin’ up dacent young min like Bull. Shure an’ I don’t belave he iver hild up nothin’ at all, at all. He’s that nice to me whinever he’s here, wid his Mrs. Donovan, mum, this an’ his Mrs. Donovan, mum, that, an’ a-fetchin’ wood fer me, which the loikes o’ none o’ yese iver did. The viry idea ov him bein’ The Black Coyote-go on wid ye!”

“Well, we all know that Gregorio’s one of them, anyway-we might string him up,” insisted Mack.

“We don’t know that neither,” contradicted Wildcat; “but when it comes to stringin’ up Gregorio or any other greaser I’m with ye. Go out an’ git him,

Mack, an’ I’ll help ye string him up.”

A general grin ran around the table, for of all the known bad-men in the country the Mexican, Gregorio, was by far the worst. To have gone out looking for him and to have found him would have been equivalent to suicide for most men, and though there were many men in the county who would not have hesitated had necessity demanded, the fact remained that his hiding place was unknown and that that fact alone would have rendered an attempt to get him a failure.

“Thar’s only one way to git them, sonny,” continued Wildcat Bob, “an’ thet is to put a man on the stage with the bullion, ‘stid o’ a kid.”

Mack flushed. “You was there when they got me,” he fired back. “You was there with two big six-guns an’ what did you do-eh? What did you do?”

“I wasn’t hired to guard no bullion, an’ I wasn’t sittin’ on the box with no sawed-off shotgun ‘crost my knees, neither. I was a-ridin’ inside with a lady. What could I a-done?” He looked around at the others at the table for vindication.

“Ye couldn’t done nothin’ ye,*’ said Mary Donovan, “widout a quart o’ barbed-wire inside ye an’ some poor innocent tenderfoot to shoot the heels offen him.”

Wildcat Bob fidgeted uneasily and applied himself to his supper, pouring his tea into his saucer, blowing noisily upon it to cool it, and then sucking it through his whiskers with an accompanying sound not unlike snoring; but later he was both mollified and surprised by a second, generous helping of dessert.

When word of the latest holdup reached the Bar Y ranch it caused the usual flurry of profanity and speculation. It was brought by a belated puncher who had ridden in from the West ranch by way of Hendersville. The men were gathered at the evening meal and of a sudden a silence fell upon them as they realized, apparently simultaneously and for the first time, that there was a single absentee. The meal progressed in almost utter silence then until they had reached the pudding, when Bull walked in, dark and taciturn, and with the brief nod that was his usual greeting to his fellows. The meal continued in silence for a few minutes until the men who had finished began pushing back their plates preparatory to rising.

“I reckon you know the stage was held up again, Bull, an’ the bullion stolen,” remarked Hal Colby, selecting a toothpick from the glassful on the table.

“How should I know it?” asked Bull. “Ain’t I ben up Sinkhole Canyon all day? I ain’t seen no one since I left the ranch this morning.”

“Well, it was,” said Colby. “The same two slick gents done it, too.”

“Did they git much?” asked Bull.

“It was a big shipment,” said Colby. “It always is. They don’t never touch nothin’ else an’ they seem to know when we’re shippin’ more’n ordinary. Looks suspicious.”

“Did you just discover that?” inquired Bull.

“No, I discovered it a long time ago, an’ it may help me to find out who’s doin’ it.”

“Well, I wish you luck,” and Bull resumed his meal.

Colby, having finished, rose from the table and made his way to the house. In the cozy sitting room he found Diana at the piano, her fingers moving dreamily over the ivory keys.

“Some more bad news, Di,” he announced.

She turned wearily toward him. “What now?”

“The Black Coyote again-he got the bullion shipment.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“No,” he assured her.

“I am glad of that. The gold is nothing-I would rather lose it all than have one of the boys killed. I have told them all, just as Dad did, to take no chances. If they could get him without danger to themselves I should be glad, but I could not bear to have one of our boys hurt for all the gold in the mine.”

“I think The Black Coyote knows that,” he said, “and that’s what makes him so all-fired nervy. He’s one of our own men, Di-can’t you see it? He knows when the shipments are big an’ don’t never touch a little one, an’ he knows your Dad’s orders about not takin’ no chances.

“I’ve hated to think it, but there ain’t no other two ways about it-it’s one o’ our men-an’ I wouldn’t have to walk around the world to put my finger on him, neither.”

“I don’t believe it!” she cried. “I don’t believe that one of my men would do it.”

“You don’t want to believe it, that’s all. You know just as well as I do who’s doin’ it, down in the bottom of your heart. I don’t like to believe it no more’n you do, Di; but I ain’t blind an’ I hate to see you bein’ made a fool of an’ robbed into the bargain. I don’t believe you’d believe it, though, if I caught him in the act.”

“I think I know whom you suspect, Hal,” she replied, “but I am sure you are wrong.”

“Will you give me a chance to prove it?”

“How?”

“Send him up to the mine to guard the bullion until Mack gits well an’ then keep Mack off the job fer a month,” he explained. “I’ll bet my shirt thet either there ain’t no holdups fer a month or else they’s only one man pulls ‘em off instead o’ two. Will you do it?”

“It isn’t fair. I don’t even suspect him.”

“Everybody else does an’ thet makes it fair fer it gives him a chance to prove it if he ain’t guilty.”

“It wouldn’t prove anything, except that there were no holdups while he was on duty.”

“It would prove something to my mind if they started up again pretty soon after he was taken off the job,” he retorted.

“Well-it might, but I don’t think I’d ever believe it of him unless I saw him with my own eyes.”

“Pshaw! the trouble with you is you’re soft on him-you don’t care if your gold is stole if he gits it.”

She drew herself to her full height. “I do not care to discuss the matter further,” she said. “Good night!”

He grabbed his hat viciously from the piano and stamped toward the doorway. There he turned about and confronted her again for a parting shot before he strode out into the night.

“You don’t dare try it!” he flung at her. “You don’t dare!”

After he had gone she sat biting her lip half in anger and half in mortification, but after the brief tempest of emotion had subsided she commenced to question her own motives impartially. Was she afraid? Was it true that she did not dare? And long after she had gone to bed, and sleep would not come, she continued thus to catechize herself.

As Hal Colby burst into the bunkhouse and slammed the door behind him the sudden draft thus created nearly extinguished the single lamp that burned upon an improvised table at which four men sat at poker. Bull and Shorty, Texas Pete and one called Idaho sat in the game.

“I raise you ten dollars,” remarked Idaho, softly, as the lamp resumed functioning after emitting a thin, protesting spiral of black soot.

“I see that an’ raise you my pile,” said Bull, shoving several small stacks of silver toward the center of the table.

“How much you got there?” inquired Idaho, the others having dropped out.

Bull counted. “There’s your ten,” he said, “an’ here’s ten, fifteen, twentyfive-” He continued counting in a monotone. “Ninety-six,” he announced. “I raise you ninety-six dollars, Idaho.

“I ain’t got ninety-six dollars,” said Idaho. “I only got eight.”

“You got a saddle, ain’t you?” inquired Bull, sweetly.

“An’ a shirt,” suggested Texas Pete.

“My saddle’s worth three hundred an’ fifty dollars if it’s worth a cent,” proclaimed Idaho.

“No one ain’t never said it was worth a cent,” Shorty reminded him.

“I’ll cover it an’ call you,” announced Bull. “I don’t