CHAPTER IX
THE MINE FORTRESS
Judge Ransom watched with heavy heart, as Sam Hogg, at the head of the Frying Pan riders, and Tom Powers, with a hastily formed posse, rode away. He held no hope for their success. He felt that Snippets was lost. And he blamed himself. Though he believed he was ruined, financially and politically now, his thoughts were only for the girl. He condemned himself for not having taken better care of his sister’s child.
He paced the porch back and forth hour after hour. Better that ten thousand murderers escape the rope than that Snippets be harmed. Perhaps it was not yet too late. He might bargain Pete Cable’s life for Snippets’ safety. Obviously her kidnaping had been an effort to force him into doing that. He would treat with the enemy, bear the white flag of surrender at last, for the girl’s sake.
It was now close to lunch time; he might find Anderson at the Red Queen. Though that was the hangout of his enemies, the judge did not hesitate. He walked quickly down Main Street.
The loungers gaped with astonishment when the judge turned resolutely into the big saloon. He asked a question of the bartender and was told that Francisco Garcia might know when Anderson would return. The Toad was eating at a small table in the gambling room.
Head held high, the judge marched forward.
“I am told that you might tell me when Mr. Anderson will return,” the judge said.
The Toad’s protruding eyes fixed on the judge with a fishlike stare. Here was the man whom the Toad considered the cause of all his troubles. The big hand on the table closed convulsively. Slowly the Toad controlled his passion.
“What do you want him for?” he asked heavily.
The judge hesitated. “That must remain between him and me. But I must see him – at once.”
“So?” the swarthy Mexican rumbled. “Is it something to do with Pete Cable?”
The judge nodded.
“Then I will take you to him – I think I know where he is, and I think I know where your niece is.”
“You do? Thank Heaven for that,” the judge cried fervently.
“You would exchange Pete Cable for your niece?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“Then we must go quickly and stop them before they take her across the border.” The Toad looked crafty.
The judge shuddered. He knew the man before him was not to be trusted, but he must take the chance.
Ten minutes later, the two were bowling along in a buckboard, headed for the lava fields.
Tom Powers and his posse had followed Anderson, Ace Cutts and the others to the border of the lava fields, where Allen insisted they stop.
“Yuh got to walk yuhr hosses, an’ besides, two men could pick yuh-all off like chickens,” he explained.
A rider was sent to gather in Sam Hogg and his men; then Allen led the others in the direction of Kennedy’s ranch.
“Why for yuh goin’ there?” Tom Powers asked.
“To catch a gent called Cupid Dart.” Allen grinned at the sheriff’s astonishment.
“Yuh mean that Texas gunman?” Toothpick queried.
“Yea. The gent yuh saw learnin’ Spanish,” said Allen with a laugh.
“Not that dude, Mac Kennedy?” Toothpick was incredulous, and the others added their grunts of astonishment.
“That same. He ain’t a dude. Not any,” Allen told them.
They surrounded the ranch. Sam Hogg and his men joined them. Slowly they closed in upon the silent building as dusk was obscuring the land. But no firing greeted them. The building was empty; that wary bird, Cupid Dart, alias Mac Kennedy, had flown to safer parts.
“Musta made his get-away to the gang’s stronghold,” Allen commented.
He led the others up a narrow trail into the lava fields. Here, in a cuplike depression, they found the judge’s cows, as well as several hundred other stolen animals. All had been rebranded and were being held there until the new brands healed. Of the men guarding the cattle all had escaped. The place was totally deserted, and they prepared to make camp for the night.
It was then that Allen discovered Snippets was still with them; he thought she had gone on into town long before. He stared at her, open-mouthed.
“What yuh doin’ here?” he asked.
“No one told me to go anywhere else.” Snippets smiled demurely and mischievously.
“Yuh wanted to be along in the ruckus, kid?” Allen accused. “Yuh should’ve gone home an’ told folks you wus all right.”
Snippets hung her head meekly. She knew that he knew why she had lingered. She had wanted to remain by his side as long as possible.
A shelter of blankets was rigged for her; they could not send her home now before morning.
After the others were asleep, Allen slipped out alone and followed the outlaws’ trail for several miles. It climbed rapidly to the remains of an old mine shaft. Suddenly there loomed before him a low, one-story adobe house. He realized that he was looking at the real stronghold of the outlaws.
“Huh, they could stand off an army in that place,” he told himself after he had scouted about it. Quietly he returned and rejoined the campers.
With day they considered the possibility of an attack. Tom Powers, Sam Hogg, and Jim Allen looked over the situation carefully through strong glasses. All three decided that it would not only be costly in lives, but completely hopeless. The place had been built to serve as a fortress against the Apache, in the days when the mine had been worked. Over the crest of the hill there were several roofless buildings and a huge weather-stained derrick that had been used to hoist ore from the mine.
“Hello! There’s a gent with a white flag,” Tom Powers said, pointing.
The heavy metal-studded door of the adobe house had been opened a crack, and a man stood waving a white shirt. Sam Hogg arose from the concealment of the bushes behind which he had been crouching and waved his hat. The door opened wider, and Mac Kennedy, still holding the shirt, stepped out into the sunlight. He advanced twenty yards and beckoned the ex-Ranger forward.
“Makin’ believe he was a dude!” Tom Powers growled.
“Like I did pretendin’ to be a hobo,” Allen replied with a grin.
“Sam, don’t go to meet him. Make him come to you. I’ve heard stories about Cupid Dart – he’s treacherous as a snake,” the sheriff advised.
“Don’t worry none, Mr. Hogg. If he bats an eye, I’ll drop him,” Allen said confidently.
Sam Hogg advanced to meet Cupid Dart, and they talked for several minutes. When Sam returned to Powers and Allen, after the outlaw reentered the fortress, his face was white and drawn.
“There’s hell to pay!” he exclaimed. “They has the judge in there with ’em. And unless we gives up Pete Cable, they promises to hang him high and proper.”
“But we can’t do that, ’cause Pete Cable is now in the State Prison, an’ they wouldn’t give him to us, unless the judge signed an order,” Tom Powers sputtered.
“And the judge won’t sign nothin’,” Allen said.
“Yea. That damn fake dude tells me, the judge refuses flat. They want us to sorta persuade him,” Sam Hogg added.
“I figures yuh might as well try and persuade a mountain.” Allen shook his head. “Does he savvy we got Snippets?”
“Yep. He heard ’em talkin’ and knows we got her, otherwise they might have him sign the paper by using her,” Sam Hogg said.
“Damn ’em! If they touches the judge, we’ll stick here until we starves ’em out,” Powers declared wrathfully.
“Not any. Yuh savvy we are in Mexico? He tells me the soldiers is comin’ along, ’cause they sent for ’em. To-morrow they’ll dust in here and chase us away,” Sam Hogg explained.
The sheriff and the cattleman entered into a heated discussion of various plans to rescue the judge. Their men would follow them if they attacked, but the attack would be foredoomed to defeat. Allen, his face thoughtful, slipped away. At last the two brought their discussion to a close, for they realized they were wasting words.
There was nothing to do except wait until the Mexican soldiers arrived, then scurry back across the border.
CHAPTER X
A ROMAN BATTERING-RAM
It was noon. A molten sun looked down from a copper sky. The rocks reflected the terrific glare. What little shade there was brought no ease from the furnacelike heat. As one man expressed it: “You roast in the sun and stew in the shade.” The water was gone, and there would be no more until evening; the men’s suffering from thirst was intense. All thought themselves beaten.
“Reckon the judge is due to get his neck stretched,” Toothpick Jarrick confided dolorously to Silent Moore.
The two were sprawled behind a boulder in the thin shade cast by a cactus. The taciturn deputy thrust out his jaw and growled:
“We sticks just the same.”
Sam Hogg wormed his way between the blistering rocks and joined them. He nudged Toothpick and pointed up toward the valley wall behind them.
“What’s the Wolf doin’ up there? He’s been lookin’ through those glasses of his for an hour and shiftin’ his position constant. Yuh reckon he’s figurin’ up somethin’?” the cattleman asked eagerly.
Allen was lying flat on a high shelf of rock. They watched him for a time. Now he vanished. A little later they saw him again, fifty yards farther along the shelf. From the shelter of some brush he focused his glasses on the long adobe building. Toothpick was puzzled as to what Allen was studying. He decided that it must be the lone window that broke the surface of the western wall in the outlaws’ fortress. The window was little more than a porthole, about three feet by two. Toothpick knew that a real purpose lay behind all of Allen’s actions; that many of his surprising victories were the result of carefully thought-out plans. But what did the little outlaw hope to gain by studying that window? Allen closed his glasses and looked down at the three watching him. He waved his hand and wiggled out of sight.
“What’s he aimin’ to do?” Sam Hogg addressed Toothpick.
The lanky cow-puncher considered a moment and shook his head.
“I dunno. But the little hellion has sure got somethin’ in his head,” he said thoughtfully.
“If he’s aimin’ to go through that window, the gents in there will shoot him in two,” the cattleman protested.
“Sure would,” Silent agreed.
“I don’t know what he’s aimin’ to do, but I’m sayin’ positive, whatever it is, I’m backin’ his play,” Toothpick stated emphatically.
“Hey, Toothpick, come over here,” Allen called from his hidden perch.
Toothpick, followed by Sam Hogg, wiggled toward the depression from which he knew the voice came. A rifle cracked from within the adobe building, and Toothpick’s hat flew from his head. He flattened out and wiggled the faster. A few seconds later he slid down the side of the small basin to Allen. He was closely followed by Sam Hogg, who had retrieved the hat. Toothpick looked at it ruefully for a moment and poked his finger through the hole in the crown.
“Huh! That gent sure parted my hair.”
“Jim, yuh figured out a way we can get at them hombres?” Sam Hogg demanded.
“I ain’t sure she works,” Allen replied. “Yuh gather Tom Powers and yuhr brother over the hill by that ore wagon – if she works, I’ll come and tell yuh about it.”
The cattleman told himself that Allen deliberately tried to be mysterious. However, he went to collect his brother and Tom Powers.
Allen and Toothpick sought out Tad Hicks. The three passed along a deep gully to a ledge some ten feet high. Here Allen explained to them the first part of his plan and the part they were to play in it. A half hour later, when they approached the ore wagon, all three were grinning like schoolboys.
“Yuh two is sure baseball players – yuh tossed me at that mark and hit it every time,” Allen said to them.
Tad Hicks halted to explain to his bosom friends, Windy Sam and Kansas.
“The Wolf is goin’ to have us toss him through that window, an’ he makes us practice tossin’ him at a rock an’ keeps us doin’ it, until we hit it three time runnin’ with his head.”
Sheriff Tom Powers, the Hogg brothers, and several men of the posse listened in silence until Allen had finished telling his plan. For a moment its sheer audacity held them silent, then they shook their heads. The thing was impossible. Sam Hogg glanced wonderingly at Allen’s freckled, youthful face. He could discern nothing but the spirit of youthful adventure there, like that of a schoolboy planning to rob an orchard. He sighed and again shook his head. Courage such as Allen’s was too precious to be wasted. There wasn’t a chance in a thousand of success.
“Yuh can’t do it,” the sheriff objected.
“Hell, there’s thirteen men in there,” the little cattleman added.
“A darned unlucky number for them,” remarked Allen.
“And five of the best gun fighters on the border,” Toothpick pointed out.
“I ain’t aimin’ to wipe out all them gents. I’m aimin’ to sorta keep ’em busy, while you bust the door down,” Allen explained.
“You’re loco! Bust that door down? It would take an hour to do it,” Jim Hogg protested.
“Yuh ever see a Roman batterin’-ram?” Allen asked.
“Roman batterin’-ram?” the sheriff queried in return.
“He’s funnin’ us,” the storekeeper insisted.
But one glance at the little outlaw’s face convinced him Allen was serious.
“Waggle yuhr ears, gents, and I’ll learn yuh what erudition, as Toothpick calls it, does for an hombre.” Allen grinned at the tall cow-puncher, then told them of his scheme to break in the door.
“She sure works!” Sam Hogg cried, a few minutes later. He gave a whoop and sent his Stetson sailing into the air. Then all at once he grew silent and stared at Allen. A sinister thought had come to him.
“I figure we’ll get in, but they’ll shoot yuh to bits,” he said.
“Not any. I’m so darn small I ain’t easy to hit, an’ I’ll keep moving constantly,” Allen said cheerfully.
He stepped up to the ore wagon, which was just over the crest of the hill, and out of sight of those in the fortress.
“Yuh take the box off, take that boom off the derrick by the mouth of the mine and rig her up, and yuh’ll have a Roman batterin’-ram that’ll bust that there door to splinters,” he said.
Sam Hogg dashed off to bring in some of his men. Tom Powers went to the roofless tool house to see what he could find. He returned a little later with a couple of rusty picks, a battered saw, and an ax that had seen better days.
When the Frying Pan punchers arrived, they fell to work with a will. The box on the freight wagon was dumped off, and on the frame they lashed two cross bars. They had no nails, but plenty of rope which served the same purpose. After much cursing, sweating, and heaving, the arm of the derrick was pushed in between the crossbars. It then hung in such a way that it would swing back and forth. It was a little wabbly when finished, but, after an examination, both Tom Powers and Sam Hogg admitted it would serve its purpose.
It was close to five o’clock before the battering-ram was finished. The men scattered to seek rest in the shade. The deputation which had been sent for water and provisions arrived. Fires were built, and preparations made for the evening meal. The cow-punchers cast curious glances at Allen, as he sat and talked to Sam Hogg, Toothpick, and Snippets. They shook their heads, wonderingly.
“He ain’t got no chance of comin’ out of that place, unless he’s carried, yet look at him over there. The others who ain’t riskin’ nothin’ a-tall is plumb gloomy and gravelike, while he is happy as a kid,” pronounced one admirer.
The sun hung low over the western hills; then went down with a rush, and its farewell painted the sky in a thousand brilliant colors. Dusk softened the flaming canvas to soft pastels, and then darkness fell over them swiftly, like a velvet, all-concealing mantle.
The men talked in hushed whispers, cleaned and oiled their guns and paced up and down nervously.
It had been decided to make the attack at midnight; the men were impatient. Hogg and Toothpick wandered away, and Snippets and Allen were left alone before the fire. They chattered and laughed. He told her of that valley of his in the Painted Desert where he had other and younger gray horses.
“I got two colts up there – twins. Yuh never see their like. They ain’t nothin’ but legs and nerve. Do yuh know what they do – them little jaspers? Walk right into my house an’ help theirselves. I can’t cook me a dinner, they don’t eat it up. Huh, if I didn’t chase ’em out, they’d get in bed with me.”
He went on, painting that valley of his as a veritable paradise.
Snippets laughed. “Jim, I never know when you stop tellin’ the truth and start lying.”
Toothpick, Sam Hogg, and Tom Powers watched the two by the fire.
“Look at that runt,” Sam Hogg said. “Laughin’ his head off, an’ in an hour he’s goin’ to pull a stunt that he ain’t got a Chinaman’s chance in.”
“He’s sure got nerve,” Tom Powers agreed.
“He’s darned sure to cash in, an’ he’s laughin’.” Sam Hogg shook his head.
“That’s why he’s laughin’,” Toothpick said heavily.
“Yuh mean – ”
“I know the little cuss. He tole me once, if yuh sit in a game and is dealt two-spots, yuh can’t quit until the Lord cashes yuh in.”
“I dunno,” Tom Powers said thoughtfully. “If I’d been on the dodge for ten years, maybe I’d feel the same.”
“And the gal?” Sam Hogg asked.
“She knows,” Toothpick said. “She knows everything. She’s plumb bright. That day he gets throwed off the train she knows him pronto, and he has me fooled complete.”
“She’s in love with him an’ – ” Tom Powers left his sentence unfinished.
“Knows he’s goin’ to cash pronto an’ keeps laughin’,” Sam Hogg finished for him.
“She’s got nerve, even if she is only a gal,” Toothpick stated.
“It’s a shame. Ain’t there a chance of gettin’ the little cuss a pardon?” Tom Powers asked.
“Not any, an’ that’s positive. The United States wants him, an’ every State west of Mississippi has a price on him,” Toothpick replied.
“I’m tellin’ yuh he’ll get a pardon in Texas if he comes out of this,” Sam Hogg cried.
“Yea, if– ” Tom Powers said softly.
The two they watched continued their laughter.
“Tell me where this valley of yours is,” Snippets pleaded.
“Yuh start from Wilton in Arizona. Yuh follow the sun until yuh come to the Three Widows. They is Black Buttes what looks sorrowful. The trail goes up Paintbox Canyon. An’ when yuh can’t go no farther, yuh start climbing to the moon, and pretty soon yuh see it. It ain’t very big, but there’s surprising trees an’ grass an’ plumb gorgeous flowers, an’ there’s a house an’ hosses – regular man-eaters. An’ there’s a gal cooking pies fer ’em an’ – Shucks!” Allen interrupted his dreaming. “They’s everything yuh want, when yuh get to the moon.”
He leaped to his feet and looked down at her. Suddenly she seemed to have grown very small and childish. Her dark eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“Shucks, kid. I was usin’ plumb-loose language,” he said, with an effort at lightness. He turned abruptly and walked to the men beside the other fire. Snippets watched him; his shoulders sagged, as if they were drawn down by the weight of the two big guns he wore. But a few minutes later he was laughing again and making the others laugh with him.
The men examined their weapons and gathered about the battering-ram. It was pushed to the top of the crest. There, only a slight shove would be needed to send it rolling toward the fortress. Ropes were attached to the front axle, and mounted men held their ends.
“Yuh stays put, until I lights the match. Then yuh comes a-hoppin’ straight for the light. An’ Toothpick an’ Tad tosses Allen in through the window,” Sam Hogg explained.
The ex-Ranger had insisted that it was his right to give the signal. He was to creep down to the fortress, and his lighted match would mark the position of the door as well as give a signal.
He removed his boots and crept through the darkness toward the black blotch which was the fortress.
Allen, followed by Toothpick and Tad Hicks, walked past the fire beside which Snippets was sitting. The little outlaw did not speak to her, but as the firelight caught his eyes, she saw they glinted with yellow, and she knew the boy who had talked to her a short time before was gone. He had given way to the Wolf.
“Yuh remember, if yuh gents don’t toss me straight, the judge will sure enough stretch rope,” Allen warned.
Tad and Toothpick nodded. They knew that, not only would the judge be lost, but that, if Allen failed to clear the window at the first attempt, the gunmen within would make a sieve of him before he could struggle clear.