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

out o’ youa little lovin’ll do that. Git up an’ kiss me!”

“You unspeakable-THING! It would be an insult to a cur to call you that.”

Colby laughed good-naturedly. “Ef you’d ruther have a bandit, I might turn one,” he said, and again he laughed, this time at his own joke.

“If you are trying to suggest that I would prefer Bull, you are right. You may thank God that he is not here-but he will come-and you will pay.”

“Well, you ain’t got up and kissed me yet,” said Colby. “Do you want me to yank you up? You got a lot to learn an’ I’m the hombre what can learn you. I’ve hed a lot o’ experience-I’ve tamed ‘em before, as good as you. Tamed ‘em an’ made ‘em like it. If it cain’t be did one way it can another. Sometimes a quirt helps.” He struck his chaps with the lash of the one he carried. “Git up, you!” He seized her by the arm and jerked her roughly to her feet. Again she struck him, and this time the man struck back-a stinging blow across her shoulders with the quirt. “I’ll learn you!” he cried.

She tried to free herself, striking him repeatedly, but he held her off and lashed her cruelly, nor did he appear to care where the quirt fell.

The tumbling waters, engulfing Bull, rolled him over and over before, half-drowned, his powerful strokes succeeded in raising his head above the surface. He had had no conception of the tremendous strength of the current. He was but a bobbing bit of flotsam upon its surface. He could not stem it. He was helpless. The rope about his waist suddenly tautened and he was again dragged beneath the surface. He grasped it with his hands and tried to pull himself in toward shore, but the giant waters held him in their grip, dragging him downward, stronger by far than the strength of many men.

Suddenly the muddy flood spewed him to the surface once more-this time against the bank to which the opposite end of his rope was fastened and was dragging heavily upon its precarious anchor. He clutched at the slippery, red mud, clawing frantically for a hand-hold. The waters leaped upon him and beat him down, but still he fought on valiantly, not for his life but for the girl he loved, and at last he won, dragging himself slowly out upon the bank. Almost exhausted he rose, staggering, to his feet and looked back across the torrent at Blazes.

“It ain’t no use, boy,” he said, with a shake of his head. “I was a-goin’ to rope you an’ drag you acrost, but it cain’t be did. Now I reckon I’ll hev to hoof it.”

He sat down in the mud and pulled on his boots, gathered up his guns and belt, coiled his rope and turned his face southward. “Ef it takes a hundred years an’ I hev to foller him plumb to hell,” he muttered, “I’ll git him!”

Still spent and blowing from his tremendous exertions against the flood, he staggered on through the sticky clay and the blinding rain, his head bent down against the storm. It was hard work, but never once did a thought of surrender enter his mind. He would find a ranch house somewhere and get a horse-he might even come upon some range stock. He had his lariat and there was a bare chance that he might get close enough to an animal to rope it. But he must have a horse! He felt helpless-entirely impotent-without one.

Imagine yourself thrust into a cold and unfriendly world, if you are a man, without a pocket knife, a bunch of keys, a handkerchief, money, or a pair of shoes and you will be able to appreciate how a cowboy feels without a horse.

Thus, buffeted by the storm, he shouldered on until suddenly there loomed almost directly in his path the outlines of an adobe house. Fortune smiled upon him! Here he would find a horse! He stepped to the door and was about to knock when he heard the voice of a woman crying out in protestation and pain. Then he flung the door wide and stepped into the interior. Colby, holding Diana’s wrist, was twisting it in an excess of rage, for she had struck him and repulsed him until the last vestige of his thin veneer of manhood had fallen from him, leaving exposed the raw, primordial beast.

He saw Bull the instant that the latter opened the door and swinging the girl in front of him reached for a gun. Diana, too, saw the figure in the doorway. A great wave of joy swept through her, and then she saw Colby’s gun flash from its holster and knew that Bull could not shoot because of fear of hitting her; but she did not know Bull as well as she thought she knew him, and similarly was Colby deceived, for the man in the doorway fired from the hip the instant that Colby’s gun was raised. The weapon fell from nerveless fingers, the grasp upon Diana’s wrist relaxed, and Hal Colby pitched forward upon his face, a bullet hole between his eyes.

Diana swayed for an instant, dazed by the wonder of her deliverance, and then as Bull stepped toward her she went to meet him and put her arms about his neck.

“Bull!” It was half a sob. The man took her in his arms.

“Diana!” The word carried all the reverence of a benediction.

Raising her face from his shoulder she pushed him away a little. “Bull,” she said, “once you told me that you loved me. Tell me so again.”

“‘Love’ don’t tell half of it, girl,” he said, his voice husky with emotion.

“Oh, Bull,” she cried, “I have been such a fool. I love you! I have always loved you, but I did not know it until that night-the night they came after you at the West Ranch.”

“But you couldn’t love me, Diana, thinkin’ I was The Black Coyote!”

“I don’t care, Bull, what you are. All I care or know is that you are my man. We will go away together and start over again-will you, Bull, for my sake?”

And then he told her that he didn’t have to go away-told her who The Black Coyote had been.

“Why, he even planted one o’ the bullion sacks under my bed-roll at The West Ranch to prove I was the right hombre,” said Bull. “Saw a sack o’ dust I brung from Idaho, an’ he tried to make ‘em think it was yours. He used to send me off alone the days he was a-goin’ to hold up the stage, so’s when the time was ripe he could throw suspicion on me. He shore was a clever feller, Hal was.”

“But the day Mack was wounded?” she asked. “We saw you coming in from the north and there was blood on your shirt.”

“I got in a brush with Apaches up Cottonwood, me an’ Gregorio, an’ I got scratched. ‘Twasn’t nothin’.”

“And to think that all the time he was professing friendship for you he was trying to make me believe that you were The Black Coyote.,” cried Diana. “He was worse than Mr. Corson and I thought him about the wickedest man I had ever known.”

“We gotta think about gittin’ back an’ havin’ a friendly pow-wow with thet there Corson gent,” said Bull. “By golly, the sun’s out! Everything’s happy, Diana, now thet you’re safe.”

They walked to the doorway. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and now the fierce sun blazed down upon the steaming mud.

“Where’s your horses?” asked Bull.

“In a shed behind the house.”

“Good! We’ll start along. They’s a bridge twentyfive miles below here ef I ain’t mistaken. I think I know this here shack. I was down this way two year ago.”

“But what about him?” She nodded back toward the body of Colby.

“He kin rot here fer all I care,” said Bull, bitterly-” a-hurtin’ you! God, I wisht he had nine lives like a cat, so’s I could kill him a few more times.”

She closed the door behind them. “We’ll have to notify Gum Smith, so they can send down and bury him.”

“Gum Smith won’t never get the chanct,” he said.

They walked to the shed and he saddled the two horses, rested now and refreshed a little by the past hours of relief from -the heat, and after they had mounted and ridden halfway to the wash they saw the figures of two men upon the opposite bank.

“Texas Pete and Shorty,” he told her. They recognized the girl and Bull and whooped and shouted in the exuberance of youth and joy.

It was a hard ride to the bridge through the heavy mud, but it was made at last and then the four joined upon the same side and set out toward home, picking up Idaho en route, still weak, but able to sit on a horse.

It was two days later before they rode into the Bar Y ranch yard, where they were met with wild acclaim by Willie, Wong .and the men’s cook.

“Where’s Corson?” demanded Bull.

“The whole bunch has gone to town to close the deal. They was some hitch the other day. Wong said he heard ‘em talkin’. Corson wouldn’t take nothin’ but gold an’ Wainright had to send up to Aldea fer it. They say it’s comin’ in on today’s stage.”

“I’m goin’ to town,” announced Bull.

“So am I,” said Diana.

“We’ll all go,” said Shorty.

“Git us up some fresh horses, Willie,” said Texas Pete. Then he turned to Diana. “You ain’t said yit thet I ain’t foreman no more.” They both smiled.

“Not yet, Pete. I’ll have to talk it over with Bull,” said Diana.

Remounted, they galloped off toward Hendersville-all but Idaho. Him they left behind, much to his disgust, for he needed rest.

They reached town half an hour after the stage had pulled in and, entering The Donovan House, found Corson, Lillian Manill, the two Wainrights, together with the attorney from Aldea and Gum Smith.

At sight of Bull, Gum Smith leaped to his feet. “Yo-all’s undeh arrest!” he squealed.

“What fer?” asked Bull.

“Fer robbin’ the United States Mail, thet’s what fer.”

“Hold your horses, Gum,” admonished Bull, “I -ain’t quite ready fer you yet. I craves conversation with these here dudes fust.” He turned to the elder Wainright. “‘You was honin’ to pay a hundred and twentyfive thousand dollars to this here dude fer the Bar Y?’

“‘Tain’t none o’ yore business,” snapped Wainright.

Bull laid a hand upon the -butt of one of his guns. “Does I hev to run you out o’ Hendersville to git a civil answer?” he demanded.

Wainright paled. “I’ve paid already, an’ the Bar Y’s mine,” he answered surlily.

“You’ve ben stung. Them two’s crooks. The girl ain’t no relation to Miss Henders’ uncle an’ we got the papers to prove it. We got the will, too, thet this skunk tried to git hold of an’ destroy. Leastwise Miss Henders had ‘em, but she sent ‘em to Kansas City before Corson could git holt of ‘em. Texas Pete, here, took ‘em to Aldea. That’s why you didn’t find ‘em in the office, Corson, when you robbed the safe. Wong saw you and told us about it just before we left the ranch today. All you got was the copies she made. I don’t wonder you wanted gold from Wainright.”

“He’s lyin,” cried Corson to Wainright. “Do you believe what a fellow like he is says? Why, he’ll be in a federal penitentiary inside another month for robbing the mail. There isn’t a jury on earth would take his word for anything.”

“I ain’t there yit an’ no