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  BULLETS FOR A RANGER

  BRADFORD SCOTT

  This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character herein and any person, living or dead; any such resemblance is purely coincidental.

  Copyright, © 1963, by Pyramid Publications, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved

  1

  A STORM WAS BLOWING in from Matagorda Bay, driving the gray waters of the Gulf before it in an endless procession of tossing, foam-capped waves. Overhead the cloud wrack writhed and tumbled. From time to time a wild white moon looked down through the rifts, glinted on the wave crests and touched the raving waters with silver fire. Birds scudded down the long slant of the sky like whirling leaves, seeking sanctuary. A great saddle-backed gull breasted the gale with steel-thewed pinions. A very master of the storm, he, harnessing the tempest to his own dark ends.

  Twigs and leaves spun through the tortured air. Dead branches showered down from the chaparral. A tree fell with a crash. The wind howled in triumph and whooped across the sands of the beach, swirling the lighter particles in blinding clouds. It was a wild night already, in the last gasp of twilight, and held every promise of becoming even wilder as the hours passed.

  Close to the water’s edge, where the arc of the bay swept around in a splendid curve, ran a trail. At the very apex of the curve stood a single dead tree, its naked branches swaying with a dry rattle. On one thick limb perched three dilapidated-looking crows sheltered from the blast of the wind by the ponderous trunk. With ruffled feathers, gleaming red eyes and drooping beaks, they appeared in a very bad temper indeed.

  Riding north on the trail was a tall and broad-shouldered man on a correspondingly tall black horse. As they neared the dead tree, a terrific gust howled in from the bay. There was a crackling, splitting sound, a rending crash and a resounding thud as the tree gave up the battle of a century with the wind and fell across the trail. The crows, their shelter gone, went away from there with wrathful squawks. One hurtling black projectile, screeching curses, whizzed by so close that it fairly grazed the black horse’s nose.

  The horse screamed angrily and snapped his milk-white teeth. Ranger Walt Slade, whom the Mexican peones of the Rio Grande river villages named El Halcón—The Hawk-rocked in the hull with laughter.

  “Take it easy, Shadow,” he chided his mount. “That fellow wasn’t after you; he was just trying to get in the clear. Lucky for us though, we weren’t a few yards farther on. If one of those branches had larruped us, we would have felt it.”

  The wrathful crow hurtled on, the wind buffeting him, his black feathers glinting in the moonlight that poured through a ragged rift in the cloud wrack. Straight for the shelter of a thicket some three hundred yards farther along the trail he scudded, his two companions screeching along behind him.

  But when he reached the thicket, the crow’s reaction was peculiar. Suddenly he braked with his wings, rocking backward on the axis of the spread pinions. The wind caught him, and he turned a complete somersault in the air. By a seeming miracle of agility he caught his balance, veered and went streaking away at an angle from the thicket. An instant later he and his speeding companions vanished into a second thicket several hundred yards farther on.

  Walt Slade stared after the vanished crows, his black brows drawing together.

  “Now what do you suppose set those jiggers off that way?” he asked Shadow. “Looks like they ran smack into something they didn’t like the looks of. Must be something holed up in that brush. But what? Takes considerable to scare off crows, and on a night like this a bird will take most any kind of a chance to get under cover. Such a wind is liable to smash him all to pieces against a limb or a tree trunk. But those black galoots took right back against the wind.”

  He glanced at the sky. “Going to cloud up that moon again in a few minutes,” he added. “Reckon we won’t take any chances; funny things been happening in this section of late, from all reports.”

  While the moonlight still streamed down, he veered the horse carefully around the welter of smashed branches blocking the trail. Just before the cloud wrack thickened, he regained the track and rode unconcernedly along it.

  But the instant the funnel of moonlight pouring through the rift snapped off like a searchlight beam, he swerved Shadow from the trail and rode due north across the sands to where a straggle of brush that encroached the beach began. The roar of the wind and the groaning of the trees effectually drowned the muffled beat of the horse’s irons on the sand.

  Walt Slade was trailing ghosts—rather a unique pastime for a Texas Ranger. But that, in the opinion of many of the section, was what it amounted to. And it was to do just that that Captain Jim McNelty, the famous Commander of the Border Battalion, had sent him to the Matagorda Bay country.

  “Men of steel!” snorted Captain Jim. “The old Spaniards in armor come back to life! Just a bunch of brush-poppin’ owlhoots, that’s what. Sheriff writes asking for a troop of Rangers to get things under control. A troop to chase ghosts! Yes, just a bunch of owlhoots playing on ignorance and superstition. Skalleyhoot down there, Walt, and run ’em into the bay. If you see a real ghost and get scared, send word back and I’ll come down myself. Get goin’!”

  Slade chuckled at the thought of Captain Jim’s tirade, but he did not underestimate the seriousness of the situation. Ignorance and superstition are made to order for the unscrupulous and crafty who know how to make the most of those attributes. Ordinary wide-loopers in wet slickers and dripping “J.B.’s—” that was doubtless the answer. But sheep and cattle had been stolen and men murdered, which required a different “answer.”

  For several hundred yards Slade rode north; then he veered to the east. Another hundred yards and he pulled Shadow to a halt in the shelter of a clump of chaparral and dismounted.

  “You take it easy here for a spell,” he told the horse. “I figure that thicket can stand a mite of investigating, and from here on I’ll do better on foot. If there is somebody holed up there for some reason or other, doubtless an off-color one, they’d be sure to hear you clumping along. Stay put, and keep quiet.”

  Confident that Shadow would do both, he stole forward to the edge of the thicket farthest from the trail, slowing to a crawl as he neared the first fringe of growth. It was a ticklish business, that slow stalk through the gloom, with always the threat of the moonlight pouring down again to reveal him to any chance watcher. He figured that anybody concealed in the growth would be keeping an eye on the trail, but of that he couldn’t be certain. With a sigh of relief he reached the bristle of chaparral and slid into it. Slowly, cautiously, he glided forward, testing the ground ahead at each step, noiselessly moving branches aside. Objects were eerie and unreal in the faint light that seeped through the cloud bank. As he penetrated deeper into the growth, the dark became absolute. Another score of yards, however, and the brush began to thin. Slade knew he must be close to where the tangle of branches edged the trail. He doubled his caution, straining his ears to catch any sound rising above the turmoil of the storm, peering with narrowed eyes to note the slightest movement amid the shadows. His instinct, developed over years of training, told him that no great distance away there was life, doubtlessly malevolent life. He halted, every sense at hair-trigger alert.

  For some time he stood perfectly still, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. Finally he took another cautious step forward, planting his reaching foot on what appeared to be firm earth but was in reality the hard crusted rim of a badger hole. The rim crumbled under his weight and he lurched forward, completely off balance. Instinctively he clutched for support, gripped a welter of dry branches and saved himself from falling; but the branches broke in his grasp with a prodigious snapping and crackling. And at that moment th
e treacherous cloud wrack curled up like torn paper, letting through a flood of silvery moonlight. The whole scene became bright as day.

  Walt Slade saw, facing him, the moonlight shining on the startled forms of two men apparently clad in medieval armor. The moonlight glinted on what looked like plates of steel protecting their chests. It shone on burnished round headpieces that also seemed to be of steel. But it also glinted on the barrels of anything but medieval forty-fives. The barrels jerked up as Slade went for his guns. The air rocked and quivered to the reports. Even in that hectic moment Slade was astounded by what sounded like a clang of metal striking metal.

  Through the streams of orange fire and the fog of smoke gushing toward him, Slade saw one of the “men of steel” slew sideways and crash into a tangle of growth. He felt the wind of a passing bullet, heard the screech of another, which nicked his ear. Then two guns roared as one. Slade saw the dry-gulcher hurtle back, steady himself, fire again as the Ranger pulled trigger. A choking cry came from the dry-gulcher as he went down.

  But Walt Slade neither saw the fall nor heard the death cry. For at that instant the world about him exploded in scorching flame and blazing light through which rushed a cloud of utter blackness to wrap him fold on clammy fold. Three motionless forms lay amid the brush as the clouds thickened and blotted out the scene of death.

  2

  WHEN HE FINALLY regained something resembling consciousness, Slade knew he must have been completely out for some time. His face was caked with dried blood which had flowed from a bullet gash at the hairline above his left temple; his clothes were soaked by rain that had fallen. His limbs were stiff and he was cold. Fortunately, however, the night was warm, and a bit of movement would quickly remedy that condition. There seemed to be a great hammer beating with clanging strokes in his head. Waves of pain flowed before his eyes as he moved, and for a long moment he was deathly sick.

  Recovering somewhat, he propped himself on a shaking elbow. Overhead the sky was almost clear, although the wind still howled in intermittent gusts. Summoning his strength, he lurched to his feet to stand weaving and staggering. The effort reopened the wound, and blood trickled down his face. He wiped it away with a trembling hand and glared wildly about.

  Nowhere nearby was there any sign of movement. The tossing waves of the bay were silvered by the moonlight, and far out on the turbulent water showed a crawling gleam of light, evidently from a ship breasting the waves.

  “And she’d better stay out there,” he muttered, apropos of the passing vessel. “Get too close and some contrary current is liable to beach her, and she’d be pounded to pieces in no time.”

  Dismissing the ship, which could doubtless take care of itself, from his thoughts, he turned his attention to his more immediate surroundings. Shadowy amid the broken growth straggling the sand, he could just make out the sprawled bodies of the two dry-gulchers. He was anxious to examine them, but they’d have to wait.

  With fingers that still trembled, he explored the bullet crease. He was reassured in finding no evidence of fracture, a conclusion bolstered by the free flow of blood. Concussion might be another matter, but he did not think he had suffered any. Just the same, the blasted thing must be taken care of, and without delay.

  Stumbling and lurching, he made his way to where Shadow was waiting in patient disgust. He fumbled a jar of antiseptic ointment and a roll of bandage from his saddle pouch. After smearing the wound with the ointment, he padded it heavily and managed to bandage the pad into place. The activity warmed him, and he decided he was feeling a mite better despite the hammer blows inside his head, which were lessening to a degree.

  “Okay, feller, now for you,” he told the horse, and proceeded to loosen the cinches and flip the bit free so that the animal could graze in comfort on the sparse grass, which Shadow immediately proceeded to do. The task completed, Slade turned to search out a resting spot for himself. As he did so, his attention was attracted by a glow in the northeast, miles distant, steadily brightening against the sky. It quickly resolved to a flicker of flame tossing and billowing in the wind. He knew it was a beacon atop a hill to notify the coming ship that it was safe to veer nearer the land into a channel that would lead it to port.

  Still feeling far from good, Slade sat down with his back against a tree trunk, fished out his waterproof pouch of tobacco and papers and rolled a cigarette, his hands still shaking slightly. The blasted slug had hit him one devil of a wallop.

  “Guess I’m lucky at that, though,” he told Shadow. “Another inch to the right and I wouldn’t be here talking to you about it.”

  He smoked the cigarette slowly, down to a short butt, which he pinched out and cast aside. Feeling somewhat better, he got to his feet.

  “Now for a look at those gents in ‘armor,’” he said. He was very curious about the bizarre costume the pair affected and wanted to know just what it was that bore such a remarkable resemblance to what the iron men of Spain wore some centuries ago. He strode to the edge of the growth, from where he could see the bodies sprawled on the sand. Pausing, he glanced around, started forward again and halted in mid-stride.

  To the east the moonlit trail was visible for nearly a mile. Riding the trail and steadily drawing nearer the thicket were seven or eight horsemen. As they approached, Slade saw that the moonlight reflected from burnished headpieces and whatever the devil it was that covered their breasts.

  “More of the same brand!” he growled, eyeing the approaching riders.

  Just what would be best to do, he wondered. Quite likely they were coming to look for the two who had holed up in the thicket. They wouldn’t have any trouble spotting the bodies from the trail. But would they perhaps search the growth for a clue as to what had happened to them? That was a very serious question from the Ranger’s point of view. He was in no shape to take on odds of eight to one. And he certainly didn’t feel like being the quarry in a grueling chase. He had every faith in Shadow’s speed and endurance, but even the best of horses needs a guiding hand that is sure, and at the moment his hand was far from sure. The sensible thing was to stay holed up in the growth and hope for the best. He moved back a little to where he could see but not be seen, and waited.

  The approaching horsemen were looming large now, and as the wind lulled for a moment, Slade could hear the click of the speeding irons. A moment later, as they drew abreast of the thicket, an angry shout sounded and another. A gust of oaths followed as there was no answer to the hail. The horses clattered to a halt; several of the riders dismounted. Slade waited. There came a yelp of discovery, then a torrent of curses. The others dismounted hurriedly, and the whole bunch grouped around the two bodies. Strident voices bawled incoherent questions liberally sprinkled with appalling profanity. Slade’s hands dropped to his gun butts as several turned toward the thicket.

  However, they did not move in his direction. Instead, they hurried toward the far end of the thicket, to the east. A moment later there was another shout of discovery. Two saddled and bridled horses were led into view. The babble of voices rose to an incoherent uproar.

  “Dead! Drilled dead center!”

  “Who did it? What happened?”

  “Who the blankety-blank-blank knows who did it or what happened! They’re dead, ain’t they? Been dead quite a while, too! No wonder there wasn’t any blaze!”

  “What a night this has been! A nice haul gone to the blankety-blank-blank!”

  “Shut up! Rope ’em to the saddles and let’s get out of here. I don’t like this business.”

  Such were the solid peaks above the clouds of indecipherable bumbling. A few minutes later the band mounted and stormed west, the two bodies flopping grotesquely across the saddles of the lead horses, their “armor” reflecting derisive gleams of moonlight.

  Little less bewildered than the mysterious night riders, Walt Slade gazed after them until they dwindled from sight. He shook his aching head and returned to Shadow. The whole blasted affair just didn’t make sense. Well, he was in
no shape to try to think things out. And he had a twenty-mile ride ahead of him.

  Not tonight! He doubted if he could stay in the hull for half that distance. So he got the rig off Shadow and gave him a rubdown, after a fashion. His blanket, rolled inside his slicker, was dry. He spread it on the ground, and with his damp saddle for a pillow was almost instantly asleep.

  With the full light of dawn he was awake. Aside from a sore head and a sense of frustration, he was about his normal self again. Also he was hungry, a good sign. That could be taken care of. From his saddle pouches he drew forth a slab of bacon, a hunch of bread, some eggs carefully wrapped against breakage, and coffee, along with a small skillet and a little flat bucket. He recalled that only a couple of hundred yards west of his misadventure with the crows there was a trickle of water running down to the bay. So, very soon coffee was bubbling in the bucket, bacon and eggs sizzling in the skillet—all a man needed to banish the pangs of hunger.

  After eating and cleaning up, he enjoyed a leisurely smoke, then took stock of his surroundings.

  The thicket grew on the crest of a rise that was in the nature of a broad sand dune, the waters of the bay, now blue and placid, washing the base of its gentle slope some seventy feet lower down. There appeared to be nothing outstanding about the spot except that it afforded a good view for some distance across the bay, also along the trail to the east where it began to curve northward, following the contours of the bay.

  He walked east to where the horses of the two night riders had been tethered. Here he discovered a big heap of twigs and dry branches. Looked like the band had planned to light a fire and cook a meal, the chore being assigned to the pair holed up in the thicket.

  But why at such an isolated spot exposed to the full fury of the wind? The whole business just didn’t seem to make sense. Of course, there were sheep and cattle ranches farther west, and it seemed that wide-looping of both cows and woollies had been plaguing the section. And a mile or so to the west was a sheltered cove where a small vessel could put in safely when the weather was not too bad. Would have been risky last night, however.