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  NIGHT RIDERS

  by Abel Short

  Arcadia House 1947

  Scanned and Proofed by RyokoWerx

  CHAPTER 1

  Big Joe Gannon rode into Maddox and into a living death. He didn't know that latter, of course. He would have laughed in that soft, easy way of his at any man who predicted it. Big Joe never thought about death.

  After all, he had those two bone-handled Colt .45's strapped on his thighs, a hundred and ninety pounds of whalebone frame, and the easy-flowing swiftness of a tiger when he struck. Fear was a dish he had never tasted. On top of everything else, his slashes of slate-gray eyes were miraculously accurate when he rode the triggers of sudden-drawn guns. More than a few crack killers had looked into those muzzles of his and seen death awaiting them. An hombre like that wastes no time meditating on what Boot Hill he'd like to stake a claim in.

  So Big Joe forked his cayuse past the giant dead eucalyptus tree at the bridge over Snake River and into Maddox. He was a tall slab of man, spare-bellied, with long thin legs, his hair reddish and sleek beneath the pinch-topped gray sombrero. His big-boned shoulders overhung the rest of his body like the exposed pole beams of a cabin. Until a man looked into the eyes with their quality of bleakness, his face was pleasant, with a wide, full-lipped mouth and a slightly broken nose. He had huge long-fingered hands that bespoke power.

  But that mouth was momentarily thinned and tight against his teeth now. And the big hands resting on the saddle horn were hooked as if about to clutch gun butts. He was remembering his mission here as a Special State Officer from the governor's staff. Harrison Ord, a brother officer, had come into Maddox some weeks before to try to find the hombre behind a string of killings in the town. Ord's body had been found down the trail, a bullet in his back, the rear section of his head blasted away, and his hands tied behind him. That was bad enough.

  A note written by Ord before he was slain had come through to headquarters. "I believe I've found Snake Hallin," he had written. "I can't prove it yet but am taking steps…"

  Snake Hallin had been one of the most wanted— by the Law—gun-passers in the whole Southwest. Handy Clay of Allison had gone out to bring him in, and had died trying. The renowned Bat McPherson had taken Snake's trail, caught up with his man, and had his chips cashed. Roy Whortle, tough, hard-bitten sheriff of Alameda, had laid a trap for the ill-famed Snake; the jaws had sprung the wrong way…

  "Now—me… No, sir!" Gannon muttered as he rode into the hell-town. He was that way, refusing to believe any man could get him.

  Nothing had been heard of Snake Hallin in some years; apparently he had just disappeared into thin air. A story went the rounds that he had died of blood poisoning following a wound and was buried at Tres Pinons. A state officer had gone down there and opened up the grave after listening to a couple of witnesses describe the occupant as Hallin. But the officer pried open the cheap coffin and found a white-haired Mexican peon inside.

  The trail had come to a dead end there, though. Two former cronies of the vicious killer were located and secretly watched for months. It led to nothing. They, too, obviously believed Hallin was gone. At headquarters they said, "If Hallin isn't dead, we'll hear about him sooner or later. He was bred a gun-wolf and he doesn't know any other way to live. He'll have to show his hand. When he does…"

  They had been confident they would know when Snake Hallin did; he was bald as a turkey egg, had been since his early twenties following an illness. You couldn't miss a man like that.

  Big Joe had a picture of him. It was a copy of an old photograph taken when Hallin had done a short term in the Big House some time ago for a knife fight. Drawing the picture from the oilskin case under his shirt, he gave it a brief study to refresh the mental image he had. Hallin's hat had been off for the picture, of course. His high-domed skull seemed to gleam even in the picture. He had deep-set eyes flanking the big long nose that bisected a sad, swarthy, and clean-shaven face. The information below said that Snake Hallin was five-foot-ten, weighed a hundred and eighty pounds, and had a gold tooth in the left front side of his lower jaw.

  "I'll sure know him when I see him," Big Joe muttered. He cocked an eyebrow at the dour face that hinted at meekness. But the cold dull round holes of eyes belied that last. "I'll know him…" He slipped the photograph back inside his shirt as he drew abreast of the blacksmith's barn at the end of the prosperous range town's main street. He moved his dun cayuse on at a walk.

  A man pulling out from the gutter in a buckboard eyed him casually, taking in the rusty black pants and the black-and-white checkered shirt, the cracked boots, the battered sombrero jerked down a little on the left side of the head. Gannon might have been any wandering cowhand looking for a new bunkhouse in which to hang his hat. The pot-bellied deputy on the steps of the jail came to the same conclusion about Big Joe and went inside to sneak a drink from the bottle in the town marshal's desk. Which was exactly the impression Big Joe Gannon hoped to make; he carried no identification or credentials, no official papers. He had even left his special officer's badge behind him; after what had happened to Ord, his superiors had considered it wise.

  He kept sweeping the road, the side street branching up to the north, as he eased along past little homes, then more and more stores. There was a barbershop with a gaudily painted homemade pole, a big General Store with the town loafers sprawled along the wide flight of steps leading to it, the inevitable hay and feed store, and barroom after barroom.

  It was out of the big combined bar-and-gambling hell just down from the crossing that the two men came backing suddenly. They batted the low-cut swing doors open with their shoulder-blades, stepped clear. Two guns sprouted from the hands of each. They paused a moment beneath the big sign that proclaimed the place to be "The Golden Stirrup," one of them barking to those inside to be careful.

  "We won that dinero all fair and square," he called. "And we aim to keep it if we have to ventilate somebody to do it!"

  The evening wind whipped in from the range, carrying with it the scent of sage, and brushed up the alkali of the town road. In the gathering shadows of twilight, men darted for cover up and down the line, doors slamming, and shades being pulled hastily over lighted windows. Maddox reacted like a town inured to shooting melees.

  But Big Joe, stiffening in the saddle, had eyes only for the companion of the man barking a warning at the doorway of the Golden Stirrup. The former was stubby and bandy-legged, neckless over thick shoulders; his sombrero brim darkened his face. But Big Joe knew him by that spade of beard jutting from his chin: Pony Grimes, gambler-gunman, wanted dead or alive for the killing of a rancher down at Bull Hill. Big Joe himself had captured him some seven months back and put him in a local jail over night for safe keeping before taking him back to Bull Hill the next day. Somehow Grimes had escaped and bragged about it. The thing had been a blot on Joe Gannon's escutcheon.

  At sight of him in the dusk, Big Joe momentarily forgot his original mission. He was an hombre given to blunt, impetuous action anyway, rather than patient cold-blooded planning. Almost without thinking, he veered his pony toward the side of the road where a few other hammerheads stood at a hitchrail. Even as he whisked his .45's clear of the oil-worked holsters, Pony Grimes and his partner ducked into the deeper shadow down from the door of the barroom-gambling hall. Big Joe started his pony along the edge of the gutter, waiting for them to move toward their horses in the line before the place.

  They didn't. There was the rattle of boot heels, then he glimpsed them ducking around the corner of the Stirrup building and into an alley. Cursing under his breath, Big Joe bolted his cayuse forward as somebody peered cautiously over the batwing doors of the Stirrup. He swung toward the alley, a slit of darkness, but saw it was too narrow for anything more
than a man afoot. He was too much of an experienced man-hunter though to abandon his own horse. The two fugitives undoubtedly had their horses waiting out back for a quick get-away.

  He hurtled the dun on past a store, past a house. There was a wide open space beside that and he tore through the weeds of it toward the rear. His hunch was correct; even as a low bank of clouds blotted out the red glow of the setting sun he saw the pair swinging into the saddle as they rode out from a little stand of cottonwoods. Big Joe eared back his gun hammers and slammed the triggers. As the flame-launched lead roared from the muzzles, though, the fleeing pair dipped into a dry wash. Grimes himself twisted his head back for a look, grabbing at his left arm, just before he disappeared.

  Big Joe ripped after them, prodding the dun on with his dull-rowelled spurs. It was just as he swung near the horseshed out behind the gambling hall that somebody bobbed out the back door of the Golden Stirrup and threw up a rifle. It spat. A chunk of wood leaped from the corner of the shed and hit Big Joe over the right eye, opening a slice in his flesh. He merely brushed at it as he pounded on; a skin break like that had never made him think twice before.

  He slammed down into the dry wash that angled off away from the town, swinging pell-mell recklessly around a sharp bend in it. There were bushes there and there might have been an ambush, but all Joe wanted was a target—Pony Grimes—for his hoglegs. In the dimness he drove past a jutting chunk of rock strata and the draw fanned out shallowly in the sandhills back of Maddox. Right off, he sensed something wrong. He should have been able to see them beyond the low banks of the wash now—and he couldn't. Reining up he leaned low from the saddle, swiping the blood dribbling from the forehead cut. There were no fresh tracks in the loose sand.

  Wheeling back in the other direction he found the branch spiking off from just behind the outcropping rock. Cutting into it he saw red spots in the bottom of the side wash. One of his bullets had nicked one of the ponies.

  The branch wound off westward through the brush-dotted sandhills. He spurred the rugged paint on harder as the dimness thickened. If he didn't overhaul them soon he would lose them entirely on the trackless sand waste. Vaguely, from behind, came the hoofbeats of a band from the town. The cut suddenly splayed out flat between two dunes. Big Joe swung around the one on the right and his guns jumped up level. In the half light, standing beside a down wounded horse, right arm lifted in surrender, stood Pony Grimes.

  "All right, Gannon," he called. "You got me. I can't get my left arm up—it's wounded."

  Big Joe Gannon dropped to the ground and started forward. He didn't care about the other one; Grimes was the man he wanted. He raised his right arm to sleeve away the blood dripping over his eye, pausing a moment. It saved his life. A hidden gun blasted and lead sloshed by just inches ahead of Big Joe. He whirled in time to catch the muzzle flame from behind a clump of bunch-grass at the edge of the dune on the left. It was Pony Grimes' partner.

  Big Joe's weapons bucked in his hands as he rode those triggers hotly. Sand jetted around the bunch-grass. Another moment and the snake behind it flung out, hobbling, hit in the leg. But, simultaneously, Big Joe himself lurched sideward as lead nicked him in the right leg. Pony Grimes had grabbed out a gun with his allegedly helpless left arm and fired; Big Joe was in a tight spot.

  He gathered himself in a tremendous leap and flung himself behind a low ledge of lava outcropping. His right Colt chattered and the tricky Grimes stumbled backward, hit in the side, dropping his left gun. Gannon swung his attention and his muzzles to the other snake. He was just in time as a slug punctured the crown of his Stetson. Joe fired again from his knees quickly. Blood blotted out the vision of his right eye. But before it did he saw Pony Grimes' partner crumble with blood bursting from two holes in his chest to stain his shirt—a mortal hit.

  Cursing, Big Joe forced himself to his feet. Pony Grimes seemed to have vanished, and darkness was closing down fast. The man-hunter took two strides and then caught the glitter of gun metal over the body of Grimes' down horse. The gunman-gambler had crawled behind the animal for a final stand. His gun nose bubbled red in the dusk even as Big Joe spotted him.

  Big Joe, dropping flat, let go with his left weapon twice. He waited in the shadow of a sage clump. The echoes of the report died on the sandy barrens. He levered himself up. Grimes was on his knees, head slumped, left hand clawed against his belly. Liquid crimson leaked through his fingers. He was a dying hombre, but he was naturally as vicious as a sidewinder that will strike while there is still a flicker of life in its body. His right hand crept up with his gun. At the same moment, the blood from Big Joe's forehead ran over his forehead and into both eyes.

  Pony Grimes shot for the last time. The bullet ripped the flesh of the momentarily blinded Big Joe's already hit right leg.

  Big Joe Gannon was one wire-tough hairpin; ordinarily that would not have stopped him. He was thrown off balance, went staggering as he swore on the night. He tripped over a piece of bunch-grass and went sprawling, and his skull hit the lava outcropping he had used as a shield a few moments ago. Dull paralyzing pain ran through his head and he felt consciousness slipping as he rolled on the sand.

  There was a small gold locket hung on a piece of rawhide about his neck. In it was a picture of that girl, Mary, he had been going to marry before she was killed in a stagecoach runaway. Her death had been the cause of his entering this dangerous special officer service after disposing of his little ranch. When he went down, something snapped the rawhide thong and the locket spilled out on the sand ahead of him. He clutched at it and gripped it in his fingers. The oilskin case with the prison picture of Snake Hallin fell halfway out of his shirt, but he didn't notice that.

  As his senses floundered deeper in a black abyss, he was dimly conscious of a band of riders drawing up, of men dropping to the ground around him. "Pony… Pony," he muttered, trying to tell them about Pony Grimes, to warn them not to let him escape. "Pony…" Then he passed out cold…

  There were five among the newcomers. There was Shandy Smith, owner of the Golden Stirrup, a sawed-off, pot-bellied man who always looked important. There were two housemen from the place, cold-faced professional gun-slingers. There was the wizened lidded-eyed Doc Hilder who lived at the Golden Stirrup. And there was the man known as Silver Linn, general handyman at the place. He had been dubbed "Silver" because of his neatly parted white hair.

  "Well," said Shandy Smith, "this stranger saved them two from getting away with the dinero! He—"

  Silver Linn was already bending over Gannon's body with the Doc. The Doc nodded. "He's still alive."

  Silver Linn's hand jumped to the oilskin case fallen half out of Gannon's shirt. He opened it quickly and drew out the picture of Snake Hallin. Silver Linn caught his breath with a choking sound as he recognized the photograph. As if to reassure himself, his hand jumped up to below his sombrero to touch his silvery mane. "This gent is a danged coyote of a lawman. He was after—" He caught himself, pinching his lips shut against the last unsaid word. "We'll take care of him," he added grimly.

  CHAPTER 2

  They found the other two, both unknown to them, dead. The dinero Pony Grimes had cleaned up from the house dealer was retrieved. Shandy Smith looked around at his so-called handyman, Silver Linn. "Well?" he asked, waiting for his commands.

  Silver Linn thoughtfully picked at his teeth with a homemade toothpick. In the left front side of his lower jaw a tooth was missing. He was a thick-bodied, powerfully built man, looking stocky despite his five-feet-ten. He had a long nose and sad bloodshot eyes that were dull in a vicious way. He brushed dust from his gray frock coat.

  Hoofbeats drummed muffledly from the direction of the town; some others were coming out to see about the shooting.

  "Called himself 'Pony', didn't he, Doc?" Silver said at last. Doc nodded. He, too, watched Silver Linn and awaited his orders. "A damned law officer," Silver muttered, studying the prison picture. He bent and tore the locket from Big Joe's fingers, inspected it
, and then pocketed it. "Maybe we can use this danged John Law." He prodded him with his foot.

  Then he issued orders, and had Big Joe's dun horse brought over. The unconscious lawman was loaded onto it. The two housemen remounted, and swung off through the dunes, holding Gannon slung across the saddle, taking a round-about way back to town. A few moments later, a handful of riders came out of the cut from the town. Shandy Smith did the talking, telling what Silver Linn had told him to say.

  "We got these two," he said, indicating the dead Pony Grimes and his partner. "The third one—he was covering their rear—he got away. The boys're trying to track him down now."

  "Figured he was chasing them," one of the townsmen said.

  "It was a slick setup," Silver put in quietly. "They ran in a cold deck on Shandy's dealer. Marked cards, too. Shandy himself got that one." He pointed to the body of Pony Grimes.

  There was some more talk, then they all remounted and rode back to Maddox. In the Golden Stirrup, Silver Linn shed his frock coat and sombrero and helped serve drinks to some tables. After a while, with everybody listening to the brassy-haired girl singing beside the piano player, Silver eased upstairs unnoticed. He went down the hall to a room in the rear of the second floor. Doc Hilder was there with one of the house gun-passers on watch outside the door. And the wounded, still unconscious Big Joe Gannon was stretched out on a cot in the corner. He groaned and shifted as Silver Linn stepped in. Silver stood staring at him, eyes sinking into his head, a hand hooking over his gun belt and clawing spasmodically. He half drew it. Doc Hilder turned around from the wounded man and saw but dared make no move of protest. After a long moment, Silver Linn relaxed.

  "How's he coming?"

  Doc started to use technical terms till Silver cut him short with an impatient gesture. Doc mopped his wizened face with a greasy bandanna. He said he had already washed out and bound up the leg wounds. They were nothing, but the man had injured his skull in falling.