Kid Wolf of Texas Part 40

"Let me go, then," said the Texan.

"No!" gasped Robbins. "Yuh stay with Dave. I'm old, anyway. Promise yuh'll stick with him, no matter what happens to me!"

"I promise," said The Kid, and the two men shook hands.

Getting to the water hole and back again was a forlorn hope, but Robbins was past reasoning. Lurching through the door, he ran outside the hut and toward the tulles. Young Robbins cried after his father, and then covered his eyes.

There was a sudden crackling of revolver fire. Spurts of bluish smoke blossomed out from the high gra.s.s--half a score of them! Bill Robbins staggered on his feet, reeled on a few steps, and then fell. His body had been riddled.

Kid Wolf's touch was tender as he took the orphaned youth's hand in his own. But his voice, when he spoke, was like his eyes--hard as steel:

"Garvey will join him, Dave, or we will! And if we do, let's hope we'll meet it as bravely. I have a plan. If we escape, we must do it to-night. Can yo' stick it out till then?"

Young Robbins nodded. The death of his father had been a great shock to him, but he did not flinch. In that desperate hour, Kid Wolf knew that he no longer had a boy at his side, but a man!

How the day wore its way through to a close was ever afterward a mystery to them. Their throats were parched, and their eyes bloodshot.

To make matters worse, their horses, too, were suffering. Blizzard nickered softly from time to time, but quieted when Kid Wolf called to him through the wall.

Night brought some relief. Again the moon rose upon the tragic scene, and it grew cooler. Before the twilight had quite faded, Kid Wolf and Dave Robbins saw something that made them boil inwardly--the burial of Bill Robbins on Boot Hill!

Out of revolver range, a group of the bandits was filling up the grave.

Garvey had made half of his threat good. And he was biding his time to complete his boast. The Texan's grave still waited!

A thin bank of clouds rolled up to obscure somewhat the light of the moon. This was what Kid Wolf had been waiting for. It was their only chance.

"I'm goin' to try and get through on foot," he whispered. "Befo' I go, I'll unloose Blizzahd. He's trained to follow, and he'll find me latah, if I make it. I don't dare ride him, because he's white and too good a tahget in the moon. I'll have to crawl toward Boot Hill. It's the only way out. In half an houah, yo' follow. Savvy?"

Dave nodded. Then The Kid added a few terse directions:

"I'll show yo' the way and meet yo' on the hill. Be as quiet and careful as an Indian, and take yo' time. If anything should happen to me, strike fo' yo' place on the San Simon. The reason I'm goin' first is so that yo' can escape in the excitement if they spot me. Heah's luck! I'll turn my hoss loose now."

They shook hands. Then, like a lithe moving shadow, the Texan crept out into the night.

CHAPTER XXIV

PURSUIT

Fire flames darted occasionally from the high tulles, licking the darkness like the tongues of venomous serpents. Rifles cracked, and bullets, fired at random, buzzed across the sand flats. Kid Wolf had an uncomfortable few minutes ahead of him.

Whenever the moon peeped out of its flying blanket of cloud, he was forced to lie flat and motionless on the ground. Lead often spattered uncomfortably close, but foot by foot he made his way toward Boot Hill.

This rise in ground, he believed, would be free from his enemies.

After once reaching this, Dave Robbins and he would be on the road to safety. Blizzard, well trained, would follow him if he managed to elude the bullets of the Garvey gang.

The Texan was on Boot Hill now, and for the first time in many minutes, he breathed freely. The firing behind had become faint, and it was hardly likely that any watchers remained on the hill.

But Kid Wolf received a thrill of horror and surprise. The moon drifted free of its cloud curtain for a moment. He was standing not a dozen feet from the two freshly made graves. One, with Bill Robbins'

headboard over it, was covered with a mound of earth.

Standing near the other, with a c.o.c.ked revolver in his hand, was the half-breed, Charley Hood! His cruel lips were parted in a terrible smile as he slowly raised the weapon to a level with his eyes!

While Kid Wolf had been creeping toward Boot Hill, Dave Robbins was in the adobe hut, counting the dragging minutes. The suspense, now that the time for action was at hand, was nerve-racking. Would the Texan make it? Robbins strained his ears for the triumphant yells that would announce The Kid's death or capture.

As the seconds grew to minutes, he began to breathe easier. When it seemed to him that a half hour had pa.s.sed, he prepared to follow. The moon, however, was now too bright, and he had to wait fully a quarter of an hour more before the light faded to shadow again. When the moment arrived, he squirmed through the doorway and across the sands on his hands and knees.

Dave Robbins was frontier bred, and although his progress was slower than the Texan's had been, he crept along as silently as one of the redskins themselves. Not a mesquite twig snapped under his body; not a pebble rattled. It seemed to take him hours to reach the hill which Kid Wolf had pointed out to him. As he did so, the moonlight again became so bright that it made the landscape nearly as white as day.

For a time, he lay flat against the ground; then he wriggled on.

Where was he? Would he find his friend, the Texan? He waited a while, and then whistled, soft and low. There was no answer. He looked around him, trying to decide where he was and what to do. His eyes fell upon the two recently dug graves. Headboards stood at each of them. Both were covered. Near the mounds lay a spade. The earth clinging to it was moist.

With his heart in his throat, Dave Robbins again looked at the grave markers. One read: "Bill Robbins." It was the grave of his father!

The other mound was marked "Kid Wolf"!

For a few minutes, Dave Robbins stood numbed. Something terrible had happened; just what, he did not know. It seemed the end. Could his friend, the gallant Texan, have met death? It didn't seem possible, and yet the evidence was before his eyes. Anger against Garvey and his hired killers suddenly overcame him. A hot wave seemed to sweep over him. He turned about and faced, not the distant San Simon, but in the direction of his enemies.

"I'll get some of 'em before I go, Kid!" he cried.

As if in answer, something came to his ears that brought a cry of joy to the youth. It was a stanza of a familiar song, sung in the soft, musical accents of the South:

"Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie-ee!"

Turning about, Dave Robbins saw Kid Wolf's face in the moonlight! The shock of it left the youth weak for a moment. The two wrung hands, and Robbins blurted:

"I thought yuh were dead! What happened? Why this covered grave?"

"A half-breed lookout," the Texan explained in a whisper. "Ugly, but slow with a gun. He had the drop, so instead of reachin' fo' mah Colts, I pretended to raise mah hands. Then I gave him this--mah hole cahd, the thirteenth ace."

And Kid Wolf showed him the heavy bowie knife so carefully hidden in its sheath sewn to the inside of his s.h.i.+rt collar.

"With this through his throat, he fell right in the grave they'd dug fo' me. Then I saw the shovel, and I couldn't resist throwin' some dirt ovah him. Well, that's that. I hated to take his life, but I had to do it to save mine. The thing to do now is to get out of this."

"How do yuh expect yore hoss to get to us?" breathed Robbins.

"Listen." The Texan smiled. "He knows this call."

He waited for a lull in the rifle-popping below, and then he gave the coyote yell--a mournful cry that seemed to echo and reecho. The sound was so perfect an imitation that Robbins could scarcely believe his ears. And it even fooled the Indians. It did not, however, deceive the sagacious horse that waited patiently in the adobe. The Kid clutched his young companion's arm. Straining their eyes, they saw a white something moving up an arroyo.

"That Blizzahd hoss is smahter than I am," chuckled the Texan. "He knows who his enemies are, and he knows how to keep out of their sight.

Watch him climb that dry wash."

They held their breath until Blizzard, moving so noiselessly that his hoofs seemed as cus.h.i.+oned as a cougar's, reached the top of the hill.

Then Kid Wolf led him over it and down again into a gully a little distance to the west of it. Ahead of them now was safety, if they could make it. The Texan mounted and swung up Robbins behind the saddle.