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

reckon thet critter’s with Colby, do you?”

“Not by a long shot,” replied the cook. “He’d stick up fer Bull ef he massacreed the whole durn county. So’d Shorty an’ Idaho, but they ain’t none o’ ‘em here-they’s all down to Johnson’s to a dance.”

“Well,” said Wildcat Bob, “I done my best, which same ain’t no good. Ef I hed a hoss instead o’ a hunk o’ coyote fodder I’d try to git to the West Ranch in time, but I reckon they ain’t no chanct now. Howsumever I’ll do the best I kin. So-long!” and he was gone.

A half-hour later his horse fell dead a mile north of Hendersville while his rider was taking a short cut straight across country for the West Ranch. It was a warm and lurid Wildcat Bob who plodded through the dust of Hendersville’s lone thoroughfare and stopped at the veranda of The Donovan House some time later to be accosted by one of a group gathered there in semi-silent expectancy.

“The saints be praised!” exclaimed Mary Donovan. “Is it a banchee or is it not?”

“It’s worse,” said Bill Gatlin, the stage driver; “it’s Wildcat Bob-walkin’.”

“Did they git the poor b’y?” demanded Mary, whereat the little old gentleman burst forth anew with such a weird variety of oaths that Mr. Jefferson Wainright, Jr., could feel the hot flush that mounted to his ears fairly scorching his skin.

“Ef I ever gits a-hold o’ the blankety, blank, blank thet loaned me that blankety, blank, blank ewenecked, ring-boned, spavined excuse fer a cayuse I’ll cut his heart out,” announced Wildcat Bob in a high falsetto.

Finally Mary Donovan inveigled the facts from him. “Ye done well, Bob, thet ye did,” she assured him. “Shure an’ how was yese to know thet he wasn’t at the home ranch.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d care if they did hang a bandit and murderer,” declared Mr. Jefferson Wainright, Jr.

“Who in the hell told you to think, you durn dude?” screamed Wildcat Bob, reaching for his gun.

Mr. Wainright sought the greater safety of the office, tipping over his chair and almost upsetting Mary Donovan in his haste. “Don’t shoot!” he cried. “Don’t shoot! I meant no offense.”

Wildcat Bob would have followed him within, but Mary Donovan caught him around the waist and pushed him into a chair. “Be ca’m, Robert,” she soothed him.

As Diana arose to her feet after listening close to the ground for the second time she was assured by the increased loudness of the sounds she had heard that the lone rider was rapidly approaching from the northeast and in that direction she again led Captain, intending to mount once more as soon as she had reached what she considered a safe distance from the cabin and the hidden watchers encircling it. She had forged ahead for about five minutes when the way dipped into a shallow swale in which the sagebrush grew to greater size.

Here would be a good place to remount, and with this intention crystallized she wound downward among the scattered brush toward the bottom, when, rounding a particularly high bush, she came suddenly face to face with a man leading a horse.

“Stick ‘em up!” whispered the man in a low voice, presenting an evil-looking six-gun at the pit of her stomach.

“Oh, Bull!” she cried in low tones, for she would have known his voice among thousands.

“You?” he cried. “My gawd, Miss, what are you doin’ here?”

“They have come to lynch you, Bull,” she told him. “There are forty or fifty of them lying in the brush around your cabin now. They say that you held up the stage and killed Mack Harber today.”

“And you came to warn me?” His voice sounded far away, as though, groping for a truth he could not grasp, he spoke half to himself.

“You must go away, Bull,” she told him. “You must leave the country.”

He paid no attention to her words. “I seen a light flash fer a minute in the shack,” he said, “an’ so I reckoned I’d hev a look around before I come too close. Thet was why I was walkin’ when I hearn you.

I was just a-goin’ to leave Blazes here an’ go ahead an’ scout aroun’ a bit. Mount up now an’ I’ll take you home.”

“No,” she said, “you get away. I can get home all right-only I have to go to town. I’m stopping at Mary’s tonight.”

“I’ll ride with you,” he insisted.

She knew him well enough to know that he would never let her ride to town alone through the night and so she mounted as he did and together they followed the swale which ran in the general direction of Hendersville.

“You say you’re stoppin’ at Mary’s?” he asked.

“Just for tonight. I’m taking the stage for Aldea in the morning. I’m going to Kansas City to consult a lawyer. They are trying to take the property away from me, Bull,” and then she told him all that had transpired since yesterday.

“You don’t need a lawyer, Miss,” he told her. “What you need is a .two-gun man, only you don’t need him, ‘cause you got one already. You go back to the ranch an’ come mornin’ there won’t be airy dude or dudess to try to put their brand on nothin’ that belongs to you.”

“Oh, Bull, don’t you understand that you mustn’t do anything like that?” she cried. “It would only make things worse than they are now. Wong wanted to poison them.”

“Good of Wong!”. interjected Bull.

“But we can’t make murderers of ourselves just because they are wicked.”

“It ain’t murder to kill a rattle-snake,” he reminded her.

“But promise me that you won’t,” she urged.

“I wouldn’t do nothin’ you didn’t want done, Miss,” he said.

They were nearing town now and could see the lights plainly, shining through the windows and doorways. “You’d better go now, Bull,” she said.

“Not ‘til I get you in town safe,” he replied.

“But I’m safe now-it is only a little way, and I’m afraid they might get you if you came in.”

“Shucks, they won’t git me now thet I know they’re after me,” he replied. “Say, Miss,” he exclaimed suddenly, “you ain’t asked me ef it was me kilt Mack.”

She drew herself up proudly. “I’ll never ask you, Bull,” she said.

“But you wouldn’t hev come out to warn me ef you’d thought it,” he suggested.

She was silent for a moment, and then: “Yes, I would, Bull,” she said in a very little voice.

He shrugged his shoulders. “As I told Pete, ef I had done it or ef I hadn’t done it, I’d say I hadn’t, so what’s the use o’ wastin’ breath; but I shore appreciates what you’ve done, Miss.”

“And you will go away?” she asked.

“No,‘m, I’ll stay here. I reckon you need me, Miss, from what you’ve told me, so I’ll hang around a spell. I’ll ride over to the ranch o’ nights now an’ then. Ef you happen to hear a meadow-lark settin’ up late after dark you’ll know it’s me.”

“But I’m afraid they’ll get you, Bull, if you stay in the country. They’re terribly angry,” she warned, him.

“They won’t be so keen to find me after they’re sobered up a bit,” he said, with a smile. “Colby’s the only one thet’s got the nerve to go agin’ guns singlehanded.”

“I don’t see why he hates you so,” she said. “I used to think that he liked you.”

“Then all I got to say, Miss, is thet you must be plumb blind,” said Bull.

Diana was evidently not so blind as he thought her, for she flushed deliciously.

“Now you must turn back,” she said. They were almost in town.

“I will, because they mustn’t see you ridin’ in with me,” he replied.

She reined in her horse and held out her hand to him. “Good-bye, Bull,” she said.

He took her slim hand in his and pressed it strongly. “Good-bye-Diana!” said Bull.

She spoke to Captain and moved off toward the little town and the man sat there in the darkness watching her retreating form until it was hidden behind a corner of The Donovan House.