Shadow on the Trail

CHAPTER TWO-2

“Simm!” whispered Wade, aghast.

“You’re still only a boy,” went on Bell, hurriedly. “I kinda feel responsible for you. The idee of gettin’ jailed never bothered me, ’cause I never will be. I’ll go with my boots on. But somehow it oughta be different for you. Your mother was a good woman. And Lil is a fine girl. You’ve had schoolin’, and you’re a darned handsome boy.… It occurred to me—for you to leave the gang—ride away—far away as Arizona that I’ve heard is so wonderful. . . . Turn honest, Wade! That’s been done before by outlaws far worse than you. Curb that gun-throwin’ instinct of yours. And go straight. I wish you would, Wade. It’d be a load off my mind.”

“Thanks, chief,” replied Wade with emotion, as he pressed the outlaw’s hand resting on his bed. “But no. I won’t do it.… Not while you’re alive!”

“Aw, I’m sorry. I was afraid you wouldn’t,” replied the chief, gloomily. “But Wade—if I should be—”

He broke off huskily. His dark face looked haggard in the dim firelight and his big eyes burned.

“Simm, is there any hope that you might do—what you ask me—after this big job?”

“Gawd no! That’s too late, even if I wanted to. But for you, boy.…”

“All right, Simm. If they get you—and not me—I promise.”

* * * *

Mercer was a good-sized town in central Texas, having one long main street, the middle block of which consisted of the important stores and saloons. Opposite the hotel on the corner stood the Mercer bank building, a new structure more imposing than the modest edifices that neighbored it.

The noon hour of this particular spring day appeared to be less affected than usual by the lazy siesta-loving habit of Texans, for there were pedestrians on the sidewalks and vehicles moving along between.

Four horsemen, riding close together, turned out of a side street a block down from the hotel almost precisely at the same moment that seven other riders appeared from an opposite direction. They trotted their horses toward each other.

“Boss, I shore don’t like the way them people air fadin’ off the street,” observed Arkansas.

“ ’Pears like Tex is leadin’ his gang a little fast,” added Pony Heston.

The four horsemen had reached a point almost opposite the hotel, diagonally across from which frowned the stone-faced bank, when Wade Holden seized Bell’s arm and hissed:

“Hold, chief! I saw sunshine glint on a rifle barrel in that open window above the bank!”

“I seen it, boss,” corroborated Arkansas, coolly. “We’re ambushed.”

“Blue! . . . Damn his treacherous soul!” growled Bell.

Wade’s keen gaze roved swiftly everywhere.

“Boss, make a break—quick!” advised Arkansas, sharply.

“But which way?” rasped Bell, wise too late.

Wade saw a man in his shirt sleeves appear at an open door. He was not a ranger, but probably a citizen too excited to wait for orders. He raised a rifle and fired. Wade heard the sickening thud of the bullet striking flesh. Bell was knocked clean out of his saddle. Arkansas snatched at the bridle of the rearing horse.

Swift as a flash Holden dropped out of his saddle. He leveled his gun at the fellow who was again aiming the rifle, froze with deadly precision and fired. That man pitched up an exploding rifle and fell out in the street. Other shots rang out with the pounding of hoofs. Bell was getting to his feet.

“Rustle, Wade,” shouted Arkansas. “Help him up!”

Wade boosted his chief into the saddle, then leaped into his own and whipped out two guns. Heston was galloping away swaying to and fro. A volley of shots burst from the upper story of the bank. Wild yells, thunder of hoofs, boom of guns accompanied the flight of Tex Corning’s horsemen, as they tore down the street in the opposite direction. Wade saw one saddle emptied. He wheeled his frightened mount after Arkansas who was supporting Bell in the saddle with one hand and firing his gun with the other. Wade took snap shots at the puffs of smoke from the open windows above the bank. The street was deserted. Rifles cracked from the hotel. Bullets whistled all around Wade, to strike up the dust on the street. Suddenly Arkansas plunged headlong out of his saddle, to slide into the gutter. His horse broke its gait. Wade sheathed the gun in his left hand and reached to support the reeling Bell. Then their horses turned the corner and stretched out for the open country.

“Simm, are you bad hurt?” called Wade, poignantly.

The robber shook his shaggy head in doubt. He had lost his sombrero, his hair hung damp over a pallid brow. With one hand he held to the pommel of the saddle; he had the other inside his coat clutched in his shirt.

Wade overcame his fears. What was a bullet wound to Simm Bell? Wade remembered when his chief had carried away three pellets of lead from a fight, one of which was still in him. Wade no longer heard shots. Only the rhythmic beat of swift hoofs! The country road stretched straight ahead, a lonely yellow lane between unfenced rangelands. If Simm could hang on they were safe. The ranger service had no horses that could run down these two racers, chosen and trained for the very work they were now doing so effectively.

Holden looked back. No pursuers in sight yet! But he knew there would be soon. He looked ahead. Miles—to the broken country of timber and brush.

Bell swayed heavily in the saddle. Wade held his arm to keep him from falling. The fleet horses were now running even, and at that gait would soon reach the cover ahead. If Simm could only hold out! Once in the woody hills Wade could evade pursuers and look to his chief’s wound. But his heart sank. Bell acted strange for a great robber who had laughed at posses and rangers for years. He was hard hit.

“Wade—I can’t—stick on,” he panted, hoarsely.

“Simm!—You must,” cried Holden, suddenly sick with dread. “Only to the woods! . . . It’s not far. Simm, remember what Mahaffey said.”

“No hope, boy. I’m done.… Go on—alone. Save yourself.”

Bell pulled at his bridle, slowing his horse. Wade had to follow suit, just managing by dint of effort to keep his chief from falling.

“We mustn’t stop!” cried Wade, tensely, looking back fearfully. “No riders in sight!”

“Got to.… It’s the end—boy.… Run for your life!”

“No,” flashed Wade, in frantic passion. He turned the horses off the road under a wide-spreading elm, and leaped off just in time to catch the lurching Bell. The chief sank under the tree to lean against it. His face was ashen white. There was dew on his brow and a terrible light in his eyes, a bloody froth on his lips.

“My God! . . . Simm!” burst out Wade, in terror.

“Shot clean through, boy…and I’ll go—with my boots on. . . . Who did it?—A ranger?”

“No. Some man in his shirt sleeves. I killed him, Simm!”

“That’s good.… I saw Arkansas fall—shot plumb center. . . . What happened to Heston?”

“He rode off hard hit.”

“And the rest—of the gang?”

“They turned back. I saw one saddle empty. They must have run into a hail of lead.”

“Ahuh.… Look, boy. Any riders in sight?”

Wade leaped up to peer down the road. A group of eight or ten horsemen had turned the bend.

“Yes! Rangers!” exclaimed Wade, stridently. “Coming slow. Tracking us. Two miles or more back.”

Bell opened his coat with his free hand. The other still clutched his shirt. Blood oozed out between his fingers. At the sight Wade uttered a loud cry and sank to his knees beside his friend. That bloody shirt, that clenched hand, meant only death. Wade could have shrieked in his misery. Prepared as he had been for this very thing, its presence was heart-rending and insupportable.

“Oh Simm! Simm!” he moaned. “If you’d only listened to me!”

“Too late, boy.… I’m sorry.… Here, take this.” And he handed a heavy leather wallet to Wade. “Never mind the gold…too heavy.” He thrust the wallet in Wade’s coat pocket. “Fork your hoss—and ride. Remember your promise.”

“No. I won’t leave you,” blazed Wade, leaping up to snatch his Winchester from the saddle sheath. The rangers were coming on, in plain sight. Soon they would see the two horses under the elm.

“Go, you wild boy! Do you want me to see—you killed? You can get away.”

“Simm, I can kill the whole bunch.”

“Suppose you did? You’d have—the ranger service after you. . . . You’d never—be safe.”

“I’m going to bore that —— Mahaffey. I see him now.”

Bell cursed Wade to leave him.

“I’ll stick, Simm,” replied Wade, coolly, as the numb misery left his breast. His fighting heart leaped.

“Wade!—You’ll force me—to tell you—somethin’.… And you’ll hate me.”

“Never!—But I reckon I’ll go before you, Simm, so keep your secret.”

The ranger posse was now less than half a mile away. In a moment surely they would see the horses and guess the situation. All Wade asked of fate was for them to keep on in a body. He had ten shots in his rifle. There would not be many rangers that would escape unscathed. But if they scattered to ride and surround the elm, then his hope would be futile. Then he saw that a stand of bushes down the road must hide the two horses from the rangers. And he calculated this cover would persist until the posse got within a hundred yards.

“Boy, you’re not—listenin’,” said Bell, huskily.

“Chief, there’s no more to say—except good-by,” replied Wade, darkly.

“Run, boy…for my sake!”

Wade shook his head, grimly gazing down the road. He was calculating distance. The rangers were coming at a jogtrot. Captain Mahaffey, square-shouldered and stalwart, his bronze face gleaming, rode beside a ranger who was bending from his saddle, his eyes glued to the horse tracks they were following. Ambush on an open road and level plain never occurred to them. They were going to ride right into death.

“Wade—won’t you obey—my last order?”

“No, chief, I won’t.”

“My wish—my prayer?”

Wade kept silent. He was afraid to look at Bell lest he weaken. There was something in the robber’s voice he had never heard before. Besides he wanted to be ready to shoot the instant the rangers came on from behind that line of brush.

“Simm, in less than a minute now Cap Mahaffey will be biting the dust,” said Wade piercingly.

“Boy, don’t kill him…don’t kill any ranger…that’s why I—lasted so long.”

“I’ll kill them all.… There’s eight of them, Simm.… Only another hundred steps!—Less. Not one has a rifle out. What a chance!—They got us, Simm, but at dear cost.”

“Lower that rifle!”

Wade heard but paid no attention to this, although a strange stifled cry from his dying chief tore at his heartstrings. Wade raised the rifle higher, his mind active and deadly. He gloated in his one gift, an instinctive and unerring skill with firearms. At that distance he could kill three or four of these rangers in less than half that many seconds—before they could swerve their horses. And a fiendish joy possessed him. Luck was on his side. If at his first shots they did not scatter like quail that would be the end of Mahaffey’s squad.

“Wade!”

It was not the inflection of command in Bell’s voice that struck through Wade. The rifle wavered half leveled. Mahaffey’s rangers rode out from behind the line of bushes.

“Wade, I’m—your real father.… Your mother loved me. . . . Jim Holden never knew.”

“Oh, God!” cried Wade, stricken to the soul. That had been the bond between him and this robber chief. A bolt shot back within his breast. He wheeled. He leaped back to kneel.

“My father! . . . Oh, why didn’t you tell me long ago?”

“I couldn’t, son. I’m glad—now.… Go!—Run for your life! Let me die—knowing—you got away—your promise—”

Bell’s words failed, but the look in his eyes was one Wade could not disobey. It wrung the words, “I’ll keep my promise” from him. He passed a swift shaking hand over Bell’s pallid face, and it appeared that with that first and last caress a beautiful light began to fade in the big wide eyes.

Shrill yells brought Wade erect. He shoved the rifle home in its sheath and in a single spring made the saddle. The spirited horse leaped as from a catapult. Above the yells and shots, Mahaffey’s stentorian voice pealed out:

“Ride the man down!”