Bullets for a Ranger_A Walt Slade Western Page 8

  “I hope so,” Lopez chuckled. “I find life interesting, but no doubt the hereafter will also be interesting. I think I will last for a while, though, that is if the outlaws will just give me a little peace, That, however, I am confident is on the way. As the herders say, now that El Halcón is here, there is nothing to worry about.”

  Shortly before noon, an excited vaquero who rode for Alfredo Telo paused at the ranchhouse.

  “A ship was wrecked over where the bad water begins,” he reported. “She is partly sunken and wedged between two reefs close to the shore. The crew, I fear, are lost, for I saw nobody on or near the vessel. She must have been driven ashore by last night’s storm.”

  Don Miguel uttered a horrified exclamation.

  Slade asked, “Is she breaking up?”

  The vaquero shook his head. “Not yet,” he replied, “but when the tide turns, doubtless she will, or if the wind rises again.”

  Slade turned to Lopez. “Suppose we ride over there for a look,” he suggested. “Might be possible to do something for somebody. Strange that no survivors were seen, for she must have struck close to the shore.”

  “Let us go,” said Lopez.

  They quickly got the rigs on their horses and rode east at a fast pace.

  “I never knew such a thing to happen before,” said Lopez. “On stormy nights, the beacons are always lighted to guide vessels to the safety of the channel beyond the bad water. No ship puts in close to shore until the beacon is seen. They stand well off the dangerous coast and do not attempt to draw near until the signal beckons them. Then they steer for it, knowing it the harbinger of safety.”

  “Always the chance of human error,” Slade replied. “Skipper might have been unfamiliar with the coast and become confused. Perhaps we will be able to learn just what happened.”

  In due time they sighted the vessel. As the vaquero had said, she was firmly wedged between two reefs and, with the tide out, was quite close to shore. There was a great hole in the bow, at and below the water line, but otherwise she looked stanch enough, and Slade was of the opinion that it would be some time before she broke up.

  She was a small schooner of the kind often seen along the Gulf Coast. The fore topmast was broken off at the fids and lay, a welter of cordage and canvas, across the deck. The mainmast still stood but appeared wobbly.

  Opposite the wreck they pulled to a halt and sat gazing at the battered schooner. There was no sign of life aboard.

  “Strange!” Slade suddenly exclaimed. Don Miguel glanced at him questioningly.

  “She is fitted for two lifeboats, and they’re both still in the davits,” Slade explained. “That really is strange. When the order to abandon ship came, as it surely must have when she struck, what did the crew do–jump overboard?”

  “Hmmm! Does look funny,” conceded Lopez. “Think they’re still aboard? Maybe asleep?”

  “They’d hardly be asleep under such circumstances,” Slade replied, with a smile.

  “Maybe knocked unconscious when she struck and still out,” hazarded Lopez.

  “That is also unlikely,” Slade answered. He measured the distance to the vessel’s side with his eyes.

  “Don Miguel,” he said, “the water is not too deep for the horses to wade, and strange to say, there is a wide strip of placid water beyond the bow. I believe at the bow, which is very low in the water, we can stand in the saddles and get aboard. I’d like to have a look around.”

  They put the horses to the water, and when they reached the ship’s side, it was not much more than belly-deep on the animals. Slade stood in the saddle and managed to get a grip on the rail. He swung himself onto the slanting deck, reached down and gave Lopez a hand. In a moment the other was standing beside him.

  “Captain’s cabin should be aft,” Slade said, glancing around the deserted deck. “Let’s have a look at that first.”

  Without difficulty they reached the cabin, descended two steps and found the floor awash with a foot of water. It was a typical mariner’s abode—chairs and a table bolted to the floor, a wide bunk, sea chest and other furnishings. The water was dotted with papers half-submerged, soaked and blurred. In one corner, bolted to deck and bulkhead, was a big iron safe. The door stood open, and a glance showed Slade that the combination knob had been knocked off, presumably with a sledgehammer.

  “Now what the devil?” he muttered, staring at the damaged strongbox, which to all appearances had been rifled of its contents.

  “Looks like somebody other than the captain opened that safe,” Don Miguel observed dryly.

  “Yes, it certainly does,” Slade agreed. “Now what’s the answer to this one?”

  “Perhaps the crew mutinied, killed and robbed the captain and abandoned ship,” Lopez hazarded.

  “Possibly,” Slade conceded, without comment.

  “Me-ee-ow!” sounded plaintively from across the cabin.

  11

  SLADE TURNED, staring. On the bunk, which was clear of the water, stood a cat, a very disgusted looking cat who apparently was not at all intrigued with the position in which it found itself. Slade sloshed across to the bunk and rubbed its ears. The cat purred happily, arched its back and butted its head against his palm.

  “Here’s another queer one,” he said. “Sailors are almost universally very superstitious about the ship’s cat, almost as superstitious as herders where ‘men of steel’ are concerned. They would be loath to abandon one, feeling that the act would surely bring them bad luck. The most callous deepwater man would hesitate to do so. Yet here we find this little critter by itself on a deserted ship. If the sailors swam or waded ashore —they assuredly didn’t use the boats—they would almost certainly have taken their cat with them. And—blast it!—I still keep wondering why the ship would put in to shore close enough to be caught by one of those currents and hurled onto the rocks. The whole affair just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Perhaps it’s the ship that’s been packing off the stolen sheep and cattle—it figured to put in at a cove and somehow missed its bearings,” Lopez guessed.

  Slade shook his head. “I thought of that and gave her sides a careful once-over as we rode up to her,” he replied. “There are no indications of a hinged section that could be let down to form a loading gangplank for sheep or cows. Here, you look after the cat and I’ll try and salvage some of those papers floating around—might learn something from them.”

  Lopez sat down on the bunk, drew his feet up out of the water and cuddled the cat, which appeared much better satisfied now that it had human company. Slade fished papers out of the water, groping for those that had sunk, and studied the almost illegible writing.

  “I’ve got part of her manifest,” he said at length. “’Pears her cargo is, or was, hides and tallow. But I’ll wager she was packing something else in that safe, something more compact and more valuable.”

  “Money?” asked Lopez.

  “Quite likely, or its equivalent in some form,” Slade agreed. “Anyhow, something valuable enough to induce somebody to smash open that safe and clean it, tossing papers and everything else aside until they located what they were after.”

  Outside sounded a loud whinny. Slade raised his head.

  “It’s Shadow telling us the tide’s turned and the water’s rising,” he said. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here. I want a quick look into the forecastle before we leave.”

  He scooped up the cat and led the way to the outside and down the slanting deck to the crew’s quarters beyond the foremast, in which the water was deeper. He took a quick, allembracing glance around, paused a moment, then returned to where Lopez waited.

  “Another funny one,” he said. “In there are eleven duffelbags, the packs in which sailors carry their belongings. They are neatly stacked in place and not opened. If possible, a sailor would take his duffelbag along, or at least open it to remove something of particular value. Eleven bags. Eleven would be a reasonable number of crewmen for a ship this size. Things are gett
ing more loco all the time. Come on, let’s go”

  Cradling the cat in one arm, he let himself down over the rail, teetered on the hull for a moment and slid down, gripping Shadow’s barrel with his legs, until his feet were in the stirrups. He reached up to help Lopez descend. Together they headed for the shore, the horses snorting their disgust, for the water was now almost up to their withers.

  On the shore, Slade drew rein and sat gazing back at the ship for a moment, then turned his head to glance west.

  “Now what?” asked Lopez.

  “I just thought of something,” Slade replied, shifting the cat to a more comfortable position. “I want to have a look at the mesa a mile or so back, where we had the wring with the men of steel.”

  Upon reaching the mesa, Slade slowed Shadow to a walk. Abruptly, near the east slope, he drew rein and sat staring at a wide blackened spot formed by a huge heap of ashes and partly burned tree branches. He gave a low whistle.

  “I thought so,” he said. “Don Miguel, we’re heading for town and the sheriff.”

  “Why?” asked the mystified Lopez.

  “Because we have something to report to him,” Slade said slowly. “Don Miguel—”

  “Oh, blast it, stop Don-ing me,” Lopez exclaimed impatiently. “Call me Mig, like all my friends do. Now what were you going to say?”

  “All right, Mig,” Slade smiled, although he was in no mood for mirth. “That ship did not mistakenly get off its course and get caught by the currents. It was deliberately wrecked.”

  “Wrecked!” exclaimed Lopez. “How do you know?”

  “The night I had my first wring with the men of steel, when I downed a pair of them and got my head nicked, I saw a big heap of twigs and dry branches and other fuel,” Slade replied. “I wondered what it was for but concluded that the bunch planned to make a fire and cook. I was wrong. That night I also saw a ship standing well off shore. And I saw the beacon flare atop a rise far to the east, the beacon that was to guide the ship to the safety of the channel. That night the devils planned to light a false beacon down here this side of the bad water and far from the safe channel. The fire here was intended to lure the ship in closer to the shore, where those vicious currents would catch her and slam her on the rocks. Because I downed the pair who were to handle the chore, the fire wasn’t lighted and the ship was saved. Last night was a different story. Last night the false beacon was lighted, the ship moved in closer, expecting to find the channel, and was wrecked. Why? That remains to be learned. Robbery of some sort, of course. Somebody knew the “Compostella”—that was the name I read on the manifest papers, I believe—was packing something of value, money or something else. So they wrecked her and, I’m very much afraid, murdered the captain and the crew and cast their bodies into the water, where the outgoing tide would carry them away. Understand now?”

  “Yes, I reckon I do,” Lopez said, with a shudder. “The snake-blooded scoundrels.”

  “They’re all of that,” Slade agreed. “I’m beginning to remember things now. I recall one of the second bunch that came along after I’d regained consciousness saying, ‘No wonder there wasn’t any blaze.’ And another said, ‘A nice haul gone to the devil!’ I had no notion what they meant, then, but now I understand it. I told Sheriff Ross that they would very likely be branching out. Well, they are, with a vengeance, in a way I did not suspect. All right, cat, get comfortable. You’ve got a long ride ahead of you. Yes, I know you’re hungry. So am I. But we’ll have to wait till we get to town to put on the nosebag. That is, unless you’d care to nibble a little grass. No? Okay, you’ll have to make the best of it for a while.”

  He snuggled the furry mariner against his breast, where it promptly went to sleep.

  It was well past dark when they reached Port Lavaca. First they paused at the Post Hole to turn the cat over to Frog-lip Fogarty, who took it to the kitchen for a surroundin’. Then they cared for their horses and went in search of the sheriff.

  They found him in his office, just about ready to close up shop for the day. Slade gave him an account of the wreck and what he suspected.

  “Try and find out what you can about that ship,” he concluded. “Having her name, you should be able to glean some information relative to her registry, where she sailed from and so forth.”

  “Ah, Lord!” groaned the sheriff. “Sooner or later I will have to grow fins. Say, what you grinning about? I don’t see anything funny.”

  “I was thinking,” Slade said with a chuckle, “that it’s fortunate I’m not superstitious, like the herders. Otherwise I’d be inclined to believe somebody did come down from the clouds and went back up into them.”

  “Now what the devil do you mean by that?” Ross demanded irritably.

  “Just this,” Slade replied. “The ground down there is very soft for quite a distance in every direction, we had a heavy rain last night, and yet there wasn’t a hoofprint, a boot print, or any other kind of a print anywhere in the vicinity of where the ship was grounded. Nobody approached the wreck from the shore, or left it by way of the shore, either.”

  “By the water, then,” growled the sheriff.

  “So it would seem,” Slade conceded. “But to all appearances it would be impossible for a boat to live in that maelstrom. So unless there is some condition there that I so far have been unable to fathom, that is a very unsatisfactory answer, and no real solution of the mystery.”

  “Oh, the devil!” snorted Ross. “Let’s go get something to eat and a drink or two; I need both.”

  At the Post Hole they found that Frog-lip had already fallen in love with the cat.

  “Fine little beast,” he declared. “Ate a pound of chopped beef, drank a saucer of milk and scratched the cook on the ankle. Then went to sleep on a sack of oats. He’s got a home.”

  “Well, looks like we accomplished something,” chuckled Lopez. “Another poor relation to be looked after. I’ll pay for his keep, Frog-lip.”

  “Ain’t a boarder,” said Frog-lip. “Didn’t I tell you he’s got a home!”

  “So that load’s off my shoulders,” Lopez said, with a grin. “Better take out adoption papers, Frog-lip, so everything will be legal. All right, send us a waiter; we’re all three as hungry as the cat was.”

  “And I’ll send over a drink, on the cat,” said Frog-lip. He ambled off.

  The food soon arrived, and the hungry men got busy, with very little conversation until final cups of coffee were brought and they relaxed in full-fed comfort with cigarettes.

  “There’s Doc Price and Eldon Parr!” Ross suddenly exclaimed. He waved and beckoned.

  Price and Parr turned and approached the table. A waiter brought extra chairs, and they sat down.

  “How are you, Mr. Slade, any new adventures since I last saw you?” Parr asked.

  Ross immediately broke in with an account of the wreck. Parr listened intently and shook his big head.

  “Lamentable,” he said. “It seems that a wave of lawlessness is sweeping the deestrict. Things used to be quite peaceable.”

  Walt Slade’s eyes narrowed the merest trifle, but his only comment was a nod.

  “Let a blasted owlhoot bunch move into a section, and all hell busts loose,” growled the sheriff. “There won’t be any more peace till the hellions eat lead or stretch rope.”

  “Well, some of them have eaten lead, thanks to Walt,” said Lopez. “If he’ll just stick around with us, I’ve a notion the whole bunch will be cleaned out before long. By the way, Walt, riding back to my place with me in the morning?”

  “I think I’ll ride over to Phil Waring’s spread in the morning,” Slade replied. “I promised him I would. Expect to head for your place day after tomorrow, though. I’m curious about that ship, and Neale may learn something relative to her tomorrow, so I might as well stick around here another day. I’ll be back from Waring’s holding by dark. I understand it’s only a couple of hours’ ride to his casa.”

  “That’s right,” said Ross. “Just follow
the northwest trail and you can’t miss it—runs right past his house.”

  Eldon Parr’s expression did not change when Phil Waring’s name was mentioned, but Slade thought the hard glitter in the pale depths of his eyes intensified.

  The conversation drifted into other channels, and general range matters were discussed for a while. Eldon Parr beckoned a waiter and ordered a round of drinks. He emptied his glass and stood up.

  “Have to be leaving you, gentlemen,” he said. “A busy day ahead of me tomorrow. Got a shipment of woollies in today, from my place over east.” With a nod he left the saloon.

  “Neale, do you happen to know where Parr originated?” Slade asked.

  “Born and brought up in east Texas, Neches River country, I believe he said,” Ross replied. “Talks sort of educated, don’t you think?”

  “He does,” Slade said briefly.

  Doc Price glanced at the clock. “I’m going, too,” he said. “Stay at my place tonight, Walt?”

  “Be glad to,” Slade accepted. “I’m ready for bed. Be seeing you in a day or two, Mig. I’ll drop in at the office late tomorrow, Neale, and find out if you’ve learned anything.”

  12

  BEING QUITE WEARY after the day’s hectic events, Slade slept rather late. It was midmorning when he got the rig on Shadow and headed for Phil Waring’s place, riding north by west. After a while he turned and gazed back at the huddle of buildings on the low bluff. With an engineer’s knowledge of geological formations and the peculiarities of tides and currents, he knew that so far as its present status was concerned, the port town was doomed. Slowly but surely the tides and currents were choking the channel and destroying the deepwater facilities. The whole coastline would change. Where were now dangerous reefs and shoals would be placid water, and vice versa. Later, land developments would very probably restore the town to its former prosperity, but that would be some time in the future. He rode on, pondering the inscrutable eccentricities of the sea.

  Soon he was passing over excellent pasture. Here, he knew, was open range, so called—state lands which the cowmen of the section looked upon as their own. For an hour and slightly more he continued until he knew that, according to what Sheriff Ross had told him, he was on Phil Waring’s W Diamond holding. Now there was a range of low rises to the north, some six or seven hundred yards distant. They were heavily brush-grown with what appeared to be a gradual trend to the northwest. And directly ahead he sighted a singular equipage.