Hashknife and the Fantom Riders Read online

  Something moved in a jumble of brush and rocks, but the distance was a good four hundred yards. It moved again, and this time Hashknife could sec that it was a man. He appeared to be moving very slowly, and was evidently trying to work his way higher in order to get a better view beyond the corral fence.

  Hashknife estimated the distance and set his sights. It was a long shot and a small target, as the man did not expose much of his anatomy at a time.

  The old gun kicked viciously and emitted a cloud of smoke; while its report clattered like artillery, as it echoed from the surrounding hills.

  Hashknife ducked low under the smoke and saw the bullet strike. It threw up a cloud of dust about a foot below where the target had been.

  “Next time, brother,” promised Hashknife, as he shoved in another cartridge.

  But the next moment a bullet splattered into the bank behind him, causing him to hug the ground tightly. Another struck to his left, another to his right. The man was trying to find out his location.

  Another bullet ricocheted off a rock behind him, while the next one threw sand in his face.

  Hashknife snorted loudly, kicked himself loose from that location and rolled back down the hill, where he scuttled up the draw a little and got behind a big rock.

  “That danged old smoke-wagon sure advertised my location,” he panted aloud. “Anyway, I scared him so that he wasn’t exactly sure just where I was.”

  He stayed flat on the ground and re covered his breath, while an occasional bullet searched along the corral fence, but did no damage. He knew that the man had not seen him take cover so he felt reasonably safe.

  But inaction soon palled upon him and he looked around for a good place to try for again. Just to the left of the corral was a jumble of broken rock and a clump of greasewood, which would make a fine breastworks. It was about a hundred feet away, but Hashknife took the chance and ran for it. He fell in behind the grease-wood, without a shot being fired.

  “That’s danged funny,” he told himself. “What’s happened to m’ friend with the .30-30?”

  There was no question but what the man could have seen him make the run. He studied the spot where the man had been, but there was nothing there as far as he could see.

  “Gotta make him start somethin’,” he told a lone magpie, which had stopped on a tall post and was chattering angrily over something.

  Hashknife drew his feet under him, gripped the rifle tightly and ran for the corner of the barn like a rabbit hunting a hole. But there was no response from the man on the hill. He crawled in through a broken window and secured a saddle-blanket, which he hung on a pitchfork and tried to draw a shot by extending it slightly past the corner of the barn.

  Then he walked deliberately into the open and headed for the house. But no shots were fired at him.

  “Somethin’ chased him away, I reckon,” he decided, as he went back into the house.

  Lorna and Jimmy met him at the door while Sleepy yelled weakly for details of the slaughter.

  “I shot at him once and scared him away,” laughed Hashknife.

  “Don’t lie to a cripple,” wailed Sleepy.

  “Well, he just quit shootin’ then,” grinned Hashknife. “Somethin’ scared him away, and I’m going to see if I can find out what it was. I’ll be back this evenin’.”

  “I’m goin’ to get up tomorrow,” declared Sleepy hopefully, looking at the old squaw.

  “I ain’t sick, am I, mother?”

  “You pretty good. Get up bimeby.”

  “Yuh betcha. I can ride and shoot as good as ever and I’m danged if I’m goin’ to let you have all the fun.”

  Hashknife laughed teasingly.

  “Sleepy, I sure had fun. That son-of-a-gun seen the smoke from this old rifle and he sure salivated everythin’ in range. Powee-e-e-e! Bullets everywhere, and me down in a little swale, with m’ stummick wrapped around my vertebray. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

  Sleepy swore softly at anybody lucky enough to have fun like that, and Hashknife went swiftly down to the barn and saddled his horse. Jimmy, the half-breed, had put up the horse the night before. Hashknife still kept the Sharps rifle, and rode away with it across the fork of his saddle.

  He pointed straight into the hills to the spot where the man had been hiding. The downpour of rain the night before had softened the ground a little, and Hashknife was able to find where the man’s heels had dug into the dirt.

  He trailed the man to the top of the hogback, but there he was forced to give up the scent. Greasewood and tall sage grew in profusion on this hog-back, and the man had evidently taken advantage of it, as the last tracks that Hashknife had found were pointing up the slope.

  He mounted again and followed the ridge, watching closely. He rode around the heads of several brushy coulées and was about to head back toward the road, when he spied a rider crossing the coulée below him. Hashknife dropped off his horse and watched closely. The rider went slowly up the side of the hill, going cautiously and scanning the country carefully.

  “Poco Saunders,” muttered Hashknife, as he adjusted his sights carefully. “Poco, yo’re coyote bait right now.”

  But something in Poco’s actions caused him to hold his fire. He was leaning down from his saddle, as if searching for something on the ground. He rode ahead a short distance and from his actions it seemed that he was following a trail.

  Hashknife squatted low in the brush and watched him reach the ridge and disappear over the other side.

  “Now that’s a queer actin’ jasper,” Hashknife told his horse. “Mebbe we better see what’s ailin’ him.”

  He circled the head of the coulée and picked up Poco’s horse-tracks. He waited a while and finally he saw Poco far down the next coulée, heading along the side of it, still looking down.

  Hashknife looked closely down at the horse-tracks and discovered that two horses had passed that way.

  “Poco’s trailin’ somebody, and I’m trailin’ him,” he laughed. “Kinda like button, button, who’s got the button.”

  He gave Poco plenty of time to get out of sight before he took up the trail again, which kept bearing toward the road. Finally he reached the top of the hill, where he could look down at the road, but the trail did not lead directly down.

  He could see where Poco had started down, lost the trail and had come back to the top again. The trail led along the top for possibly an eighth of a mile, as if the rider had been looking over the country below, and headed down a heavily wooded coulée, which opened into a little swale down near the road.

  At the lower end of the open swale was a clump of old cottonwoods, and it was near these that the trail practically ended. Here were the marks of footprints, as if the horse had stood there several minutes.

  “Heard somebody comin’ along the road,” decided Hashknife, as he went on down to the road, where all the footprints jumbled into those of the regular country traffic.

  Hashknife noted that he had struck the road just below where the road forked to the Circle Cross ranch; so he swung to the east and rode slowly through the hills to the ranch.

  He wondered what Poco was doing in the hills and who he was trailing.

  “Was Poco doin’ the shootin’?” he wondered. “Did somebody scare him and was he trailin’ this other party to see what they were up to? Or did Poco happen in, hear the shots and start trailin’ the shooter?”

  As far as he could see, Poco carried no rifle; but at that distance it would not be possible to see whether there might be one in a scabbard on the saddle.

  “Anyway,” he decided as he rode in at the ranch, “the shooter got scared and pulled out. They may be goshawful bad, but they can be scared, that’s a cinch.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  HE PUT up his horse and went up to the house, where he found Buck Avery eating breakfast. Buck looked unkempt and appeared to be still shaky from drink.

  “’Lo, Hartley,” he grunted, helping himself to more black coffee. “They tell me yore friend
got shot yesterday. How’s he gittin’ along?”

  “Fine, Buck. Didn’t hurt him much, and he’ll be out right away.”

  “Tha’s good,” mumbled Buck. “Had yore breakfast?”

  “Yeah, long time ago.”

  “Time f’r another. Hey! Quong! Fry the gent some aigs.”

  “Yessah, lite away.”

  Hashknife did not object. He was always in the mood for ham and eggs, and it had been two hours or more since he had eaten.

  “Where’s Trainor?” asked Hashknife.

  “Gone t’ town with Lanpher. Poco went over to the Tomahawk t’ see how yore friend is. Didn’t yuh meet him?”

  Hashknife shook his head and attacked his eggs.

  “No. I came across the hills.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Buck gulped his coffee and began rolling a cigaret.

  “I’m off the hooch,” he declared. “I’ve seen a whole danged mee-nag-i-ree pee-radin’ around here the last two days. Caught me two vi’let colored elephants las’ evenin’, but they gnawed their way out of the corral.”

  He got up rather unsteadily and headed for the bunk-house. Hashknife laid aside his knife and fork. Something caused him to distrust Buck, although he could not see how Buck could have done all the deviltry. He sauntered out and went down to the barn, where he examined Buck’s horse, but there was nothing to show that the animal had been ridden that day. It was true that Buck could have removed all traces of travel; but the animal’s spirits did not fit in with a fifteen-mile trip.

  “If he rode yuh today, he didn’t ride yuh far,” declared Hashknife, and went outside where he sat down on an old lumber-pile and grew comfortable over his cigaret.

  Mrs. Lanpher came out on the porch of the ranch-house and Hashknife mentally compared her and her daughter to Mrs. Cassidy, the squaw, and Lorna.

  “Too much money and too much convention,” decided Hashknife. “They ain’t a danged bit natural. Still, they’re mothers, just the same—and this one’s got a boy in jail.”

  He sauntered up to the porch and was surprized to receive a cordial “good-morning” from Mrs. Lanpher.

  “Sure is a nice mornin’, ma’am,” admitted Hashknife, sitting down on the steps. “How’s all yore folks?”

  “Mr. Lanpher has gone to town with Mr. Trainor and Helen has a slight headache,” she replied.

  “What is the latest news from your friend who was hurt last night?”

  “Thank yuh kindly, ma’am; he’s doin’ fine. He got kinda ripped up a little, thasall.”

  “I am very glad to hear he is doing so well. I asked my husband to explain some of these things to me last night, and what he told me was surprizing, to say the least. Why the whole country must be in a turmoil. And nobody knows who is doing it all.”

  “No, ma’am, they sure don’t. Yore husband and Trainor are doin’ everythin’ they can, I reckon.”

  She nodded slowly, thoughtfully.

  “I know little about these things, but it seems that the loss in stock has been tremendous. But—” she stared across the gray hills and her lips twitched slightly— “I—I would not mind it—the money part of it—if my boy was back with us again.”

  “Yes’m, that part of it is kinda hard,” agreed Hashknife. “I’d sure like to help him, ma’am. But you’ve sure got to take him away from the range country, when he gets loose.

  “Yore boy is all right, ma’am; he’s fine, inside. But he got a lot of queer notions, don’tcha know it? Somebody told him that he was a good shot, and he immediate and soon proclaims himself a gunman and goes seekin’ a victim.

  “He got to likin’ whisky, too. It’s bad for kids, ma’am. Ben’s all right, and I don’t want yuh to think that I’m paintin’ him worse than I ought to. Yessir, he’s all right.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Hartley,” she said softly. “I feel that you know my boy well enough to express an opinion. We have been lax with him, I know. Mr. Lanpher was not at all discreet in the matter of his—er—feelings toward the half-breed girl. Of course it was absurd for Ben to think of such an alliance, but it might have been handled differently.”

  “Well,” Hashknife settled himself and began rolling a cigaret carefully. “Well, ma’am, there’s a lot worse things could happen to Ben. Half-breeds don’t make bad wives. I ’member that old Jake Dickson married one over in the Button Wilier country, and she stood for old Jake two years before she killed him in a friendly fight.

  “And there was old ‘Shep’ Hardy, over in the Skiwaumpus country. He married a breed girl. Everybody said that ho human could get along with old Shep for thirty days; but she was ca’m and patient with him—which no white woman would have been—and he annoyed her for darned near a year before she stole the ladder out of his prospect shaft and left him there, while she run away with a sheepherder. I tell yuh, they’re fine wives, if yuh give ’em a chance, ma’am.”

  “Horrors!” Mrs. Lanpher shuddered visibly.

  “Of course,” amended Hashknife, “he ain’t got her yet, and he may not be lucky enough to get her; but she’s a fine girl.”

  “But to think of Benjamin Lanpher marrying an Indian! Why, it would never do at all, don’t you see.”

  “She sure’s got ancestors,” grinned Hashknife. “I heard a feller braggin’ once about his ancestors comin’ over in the Mayflower. Called his family old-timers. He sure paraded his great-grandpas, until a dark-complected gent spoke up and said that his folks was pretty good sort of folks, until that darned boat showed up.

  “Come to find out, the dark-complected gent had a lot of Delaware Injun blood in him, and he proved to this Mayflower gent that his Injun ancestors were free as birds years before the Mayflower gent’s ancestors quit bein’ branded by their owners.”

  “I—I suppose that is true,” agreed Mrs. Lanpher, “but that does not lessen the fact that we do not want Ben to marry this girl.”

  “All right,” said Hashknife. “Neither do I, ma’am. Talkin’ seriously, I don’t like marriages of that kind. I’ve got a lot of respect for Injun blood, when it ain’t been tainted. Mixin’ Injun and white blood brings out the vices of both and the virtues of neither.

  “Lorna is a doggoned sweet little girl—too sweet for yore son—the way he’s been actin’. And I’m whisperin’ my objections to this, here marriage as much for her sake as for Ben. She’s got just as much right to be happy as he has, don’t cha see? I reckon we all dislike to see ’em get married. Even Trainor don’t like it.”

  “That is one of the reasons that Ben refused to stay here oh this ranch,” explained Mrs. Lanpher. “Mr. Trainor knew what Ben was doing, so he wrote to us about it Ben resented it greatly and left the ranch.”

  “That was too bad,” agreed Hashknife heartily.

  “You’ve known Trainor a long time, ain’t yuh, ma’am?”

  “Mr. Lanpher has.”

  “Ma’am, I am goin’ to ask yuh a personal question, if yuh don’t mind.”

  Mrs. Lanpher looked curiously at him.

  “A personal question?”

  “Yes’m; I was goin’ to ask yuh if yore daughter is goin’ to marry Trainor?”

  Mrs. Lanpher’s lips shut tightly, but she smiled a trifle as she shook her head.

  “No, I do not think so. Why do you ask that question?”

  “Just kinda curious, thasall.”

  “No.” Mrs. Lanpher shook her head and sighed deeply. “A year ago Helen was not of age, and Mr. Trainor wanted her to marry him. I refused, because I did not think that she knew her own mind in the matter. And more than that, Mr. Trainor is twice her age.

  “No doubt Mr. Trainor would make a good husband; but with her advantages I think she could do much better. I explained it fully to Mr. Trainor and he was gentleman enough to—well, not exactly agree with me—but to drop the matter.”

  “What did Mr. Lanpher think of it?” asked Hashknife.

  “Well, he was not at all diplomatic. He said it was absurd—and I think he told Mr. Tr
ainor just that.”

  Hashknife rubbed out his cigaret against the step and got to his feet. Poco Saunders was riding in through the main gate, heading for the barn. Hashknife turned to Mrs. Lanpher.

  “Ma’am, I didn’t mean to pry into yore family affairs, and I ask yore pardon. I’ll sure do all I can to open the jail for yore boy.”

  “Thank you so much,” she replied. “It was good to just have some one to talk to, and those family affairs are no secret.”

  Hashknife lifted his hat and went to the barn where Poco was unsaddling. He looked at Hashknife curiously, but said nothing as he hung up his saddle and came back to the door.

  “I been out to the Tomahawk,” volunteered Poco.

  “Yeah, I seen yuh,” replied Hashknife easily.

  “Yuh did?” Poco squinted reflectively, thoughtfully.

  “Yuh did?” He repeated the question. “Where?”

  “Back in the hills,” Hashknife was watching Poco closely, but he was relaxed, as he leaned against the door.

  “Back in the hills, eh?” Softly.

  “Uh-huh,” Hashknife took a deep breath and hooked his thumbs over his belt.

  “Poco Saunders, we’re goin’ to trade talk this time.”

  Poco looked up quickly, but there was no anger, no defiance in his dark eyes.

  “We’re goin’ to trade talk,” said Hashknife, “and yo’re goin’ to talk first, Poco.”

  Poco nodded slowly and a bitter smile flashed across his thin lips, as he said—

  “Where do I begin, Hartley?”

  “Start in with this mornin’, Poco.”

  “We got up early this mornin’, Hartley. After breakfast, me and Lanpher and Trainor started for town. Trainor’s got an idea of follerin’ the sheriff’s idea of makin’ up a big posse. We got almost to town and they got to talkin’ about Stevens gettin’ shot. Kinda wonderin’ how he is, yuh know, and they decided that I’m to ride back to the Tomahawk ranch and see how hings are goin’.

  “I’m to tell you that they’re goin’ to make up this big posse, and then I might as well go back to the ranch. Lanpher gets to kinda worryin’ about the women bein’ alone, and all that. I rides back and I’m almost to the—”