What about the Mexican girl?

  The question pounded through his mind. He had back-trailed her to this point. There was no doubt that she had been with or near Les Edwards when he died. He knew she had lied about her horse being gun-shy and bolting when her compaion shot at a coyote. She had obviously been panic-stricken.

  Even as a young lad, the Rio Kid recalled, Les had made himself a bad reputation with the girls. He was the type who might easily have turned into a woman-chaser as he matured. It was perfectly plausible to presume that he had inveigled the beautiful young Mexican girl to ride with him in the moonlight—had insulted her and she had gunned him in self-protection.

  But she wasn’t armed when the Kid stopped her. Still she had had plenty of time and might have discarded her weapon.

  What about the mysterious burro-rider whose trail also led away from the dead body? The burro marked the rider as a Mexican in all probability.

  The Rio Kid sucked deeply on his cigarette and his gray eyes glinted as he nodded to himself.

  That looked like the plausible answer. She had been followed on her night ride by a member of her own race, a member of her family, perhaps. He knew the fierce loyalty that binds Mexican families. He knew the savage paternal instinct that guards a young daughter’s chastity. He could easily visualize what must have happened.

  That’s why Tonita had thrown herself into his arms to prevent him from seeing the burro rider. She knew what had happened back there, knew the danger to her guardian if it was discovered that he had killed an American sheriff—even though the lethal shot had been fired to protect her honor.

  The Kid’s face became grim and hard in the moonlight. He knew the average Arizonian’s hatred for their brown-skinned neighbors across the Border. He had been reared in that atmosphere of hatred, and it had required a sojourn among the Mexicans to cause him to drop his own prejudices against the race. He had found them to be an honest industrious people, honorable and peace-loving, and he had learned to respect and admire them during his three years in exile.

  But he was one of the few Americans who felt that way. Along the Border, any Mexican girl was regarded as fair prey by the American punchers. They weren’t supposed to resist insults; and for a Mexican father to have the temerity to shoot down an American even in defense of his daughter’s honor would be regarded as murder.

  The Kid shook his head angrily and spun his dead cigarette away. He had a certain code of ethics that rebelled at the thought of sacrificing a Mexican to the intolerant hatred of his countrymen even to clear himself of suspicion.

  He couldn’t do that to Tonita. Not to the sweet young girl who had given him her lips back there in the moonlight.

  His hard lips twitched into a smile of mockery at himself as he reached that decision. By God, he was all at once turning noble. The Rio Kid, rated as one of the toughest hombres to ever ride the owl-hoot trail, was going to cover up for a Mexican, though it might be his own neck for so doing.

  It was funny as hell, all right. But his laughter didn’t carry much humor. It was a sardonic challenge to the trick of fate that had brought all this about. Maybe this was his chance to make up for a lot of things in his past he would prefer to forget. It was hard to believe it was mere coincidence that had brought him to Les Edwards’ side tonight. There had to be some meaning behind it. Maybe there was a just God, after all. Maybe he was being given this one chance to perform a decent act to wipe out all his past sins.

  He wasn’t very good at philosophy. He would have thrown back his head and jeered at anyone else saying the things he himself was thinking. Let it go that he was stuck anyway, and it wouldn’t do any good to drag the Mexicans into it.

  He stiffened suddenly as a faint sound came to his ears from behind. A dry mesquite bean cracking under a soft footstep. He had been so engrossed in his own bitter musings that he had let his guard down. Now the sound came from a point not more than ten feet away.

  Even as he tensed and his hands darted to his guns, a drawling voice warned, “I’ll drill you if you move. Put yore hands on top of yore head an’ hold ’em there.”

  The Rio Kid snorted with disgust at his own damn’ foolishness in getting caught so easily. But there wasn’t any good in him getting shot from behind and joining Les Edwards on the trail. He slowly lifted his hands away from his guns and clasped them together over the peaked crown of his hat.

  He heard stealthy movement behind him, coming closer, and he waited stolidly without turning his head until first one holster and then the other was relieved of its weight.

  He heard his captor breathe deeply with relief and then step back. He dropped his hands and turned his head slowly to look at the man behind him.

  The deep breath of relief turned into a gasp of astonishment: “Hugh! Hugh Aiken.”

  The Kid said, “Howdy, Charlie. This is a right onfriendly way for an’ old friend to act after I ain’t seen you for so long.”

  “Hugh,” Charlie Barnes stammered again. He looked beyond the Kid at the body of Les Edwards and a swift expression of revulsion crossed his stolid features. He shuddered and looked down at the Kid’s two guns in his hands. “What are you doing here, Hugh?”

  “I wrote you I was comin’. Did you get my letter?”

  Charlie nodded unhappily. “Today.”

  “An’ you come out tuh meet me tonight?” Gladness edged the Kid’s voice. “I knew I could count on you, Charlie. I reckon yo’re the only one hereaboots I can count on.”

  “That’s … Les Edwards lyin’ there, isn’t it?”

  The Kid nodded cheerfully. “Shot through the back.”

  Charlie shuddered again. “Just like …” He paused, unable to go on.

  “Yep.” The Kid’s voice hardened. “Jest like his Pappy before him. Seems like them Edwards will never learn to dodge bullets from behind.” Beneath the bantering tone of his voice was a fierce note of questioning.

  “This is hell,” Charlie exploded helplessly. “You won’t dare show yourself now. Not after this.” He gestured toward the corpse with one of the Kid’s guns.

  The Rio Kid reached a sinewy hand for it. He plucked the .45 out of Charlie’s unresisting hand and reached for the other one, muttering, “I’ve got so I feel sorta undressed without my guns.” He slid them into their holsters, then said roughly, “Maybe it’s better with Les dead. I notice he’s wearin’ his daddy’s star big as life. Les always hated me. I reckon I shore wouldn’t of had much chance with him bein’ sheriff.”

  “Is that why … you gunned him?”

  “Who said I did?”

  “Are you going to deny it, Hugh?” Charlie shook his head sadly. “I’ve always been willing to believe maybe Sheriff Edwards’ death was an accident or somethin’. But two accidents just don’t happen to two sheriffs … father an’ son … exactly the same way.”

  There it was. Just as the Kid had foreseen it would be. Even his old and trusted friend refused to accept the possibility of such an absurd coincidence.

  The Kid’s resolution hardened. What was the use of denying it? To do so might only cause trouble for Tonita—and wouldn’t do him any good.

  He changed the subject abruptly by asking, “You seen Peggy lately?”

  “Yeh. Yeh, sure. Just this afternoon I rode by the Triangle A.”

  “You an’ her ain’t … yo’re not married, huh?”

  “Nope. Not yet.”

  The Kid frowned at a hurried evasive note in Charlie’s voice. “How’s she gettin’ on?”

  “She’s doin’ all right. Fine.” The heartiness of Charlie’s response was overdone. The Kid drew his own conclusion from the reply, and it was not a pleasant one. He winced at the thought of the unhappiness he must have brought to his sister, and again changed the subject:

  “How do things stand for me hereaboots? On that old charge, I mean.”

  “It don’t look good,” Charlie told him deliberately. “The poster is still up in the postoffice. They found your gun close to Sheriff Edwards’ body that night, you know.”

  “Yeh,” the Kid said gruffly. “I reckoned they had.” He hesitated, then said, “I didn’t kill him, Charlie.”

  “Well, all that’s water under the bridge now.” Charlie spoke as though he preferred not to pursue the subject. “Folks aren’t going to ask whether you killed the old man or not when they find Les dead … and know you were in the Bar L pasture when it happened.”

  “What aboot the Bar L?” the Kid demanded. “Someone ranchin’ it now?”

  “Yeh. Feller name of Henry Pelham. Come in two or three years ago an’ stocked it with good stuff. He’s been doin’ mighty good.”

  “How aboot gettin’ his stuff rustled?”

  “He don’t seem to have any trouble that way,” Charlie admitted after a faint hesitation. “He hires some tough gunhands, an’ has built extra heavy fences.”

  “Locked with padlocks? But I never saw a fence that’d keep out rustlers before. Say his name’s Henry Pelham?”

  “That’s right. No one knows where he drifted in from.”

  The Rio Kid said, “H-m-m.” He squatted down on his heels and slowly rolled a cigarette, his frowning gaze fixed on the horizon as though something puzzled him.

  After a long silence he gave a jerk and asked, “Who found Sheriff Edwards that night … an’ my gun?”

  “Pete Trobridge. He was on his way back to Bloody Gap that night.…”

  “U-m-m. Trobridge? Runs the saloon in Bloody Gap?”

  “That’s right. He swore you passed him riding hell-bent toward the Border without pausin’ to pass the time o’ day. And around the bend he come on Sheriff Edwards … shot through the back … an’ yore gun laying near by with one empty cartridge. Being as how Edwards was headed that way to arrest you, an’ you’d swore you wouldn’t be arrested … well, there didn’t seem to be much doubt what’d happened.” Charlie Barnes spread out his hands expressively.

  “I reckon not,” the Rio Kid agreed. His brow was furrowed with deep thought.

  “What did happen that night, Hugh? Last I saw of you was when you tore away from the dance to meet Sheriff Edwards on the trail, cussin’ a blue streak.”

  The Kid shook his head and his frown deepened. “I was purty drunk. Things have always been mixed up when I try to remember. I know I didn’t gun him. I met some feller in the trail before I come on Edwards. I don’t remember meetin’ Trobridge afterwards, but I was high-tailin’ it so fast I mighta passed without seein’ him.”

  Charlie nodded. “I reckon you did awright. He described that new yellow an’ red neck-scarf you was wearin’ at the dance … one he hadn’t never seen before.”

  “I don’t even know who the feller was I met fust,” the Kid admitted dismally, “but I reckon he was the killer. Like I say, I was purty drunk till I come on Edwards layin’ in the trail daid. That sobered me up plenty. Then I found out I’d lost my gun an’ I got panicked. I figgered it was thereaboots somewheres, but I couldn’t find it when I hunted. I was a damned fool, but all I could think of right then was gettin’ acrost the Border … so I got.”

  “That wasn’t so foolish,” Charlie told him gravely. “More’n likely you’d been strung up if you’d stayed around.” He shook his head and sighed deeply. “I don’t see how you figgered you could prove yourself out of it by comin’ back.”

  “If I could find out who that was I met on the trail I’d prove it,” said the Kid grimly. “I thought I’d snoop around … you an’ me both … an’ maybe after all this time the killer’d let somethin’ slip, feelin’ safe like he does, with all the blame on me.”

  “I can try my best,” said Charlie doubtfully. “But this second killin’ ties you right up in a knot, looks like.”

  “Why does it?” the Rio Kid scowled. “Don’t nobody need know I was here tonight. I can hide out for a time.”

  Charlie’s worried expression cleared somewhat. “I guess you can, at that. How about that line shack up in Hidden Valley where you an’ me used to camp out on hunting trips when we were kids? I don’t reckon anyone ever goes near there now.”

  “That’ll be a good place. I can ride there tonight an’ you can slip up an’ bring me some grub tomorrow.” The Kid hesitated and a shadow crossed his face. “I’d like mighty well to see Peggy first.”

  “Don’t do it. Not till things’re cleared up.”

  “You reckon … you think she … hates me?” asked the Rio Kid wistfully. For the moment all his defenses were down and he was no longer the two-gunned desperado of the Border. He was a young man hungering for the comforting news that his sister still believed in him, that her faith had been strong enough to endure for three years.

  “Not that,” Charlie assured him awkwardly. “It’s only that … well … you know Peggy’s got a mind of her own. And it ain’t been easy on her with only old crippled Hank Greenow to help out. She’s changed, Hugh. She ain’t a little girl any more. She’s thinner, and she’s … she’s turned hard, Hugh. I don’t hardly feel like I know her any more.”

  The Rio Kid nodded. He covered his hurt and disappoinment by stretching his arms and yawning. He glanced overhead at the moon and stars and muttered, “I’d better mosey along to Hidden Valley. I’ll hole up at that old shack until you come to bring me some word. An’ you’d better get outter here, too,” he added harshly. “I know what can happen when a man gets too friendly with a corpse that’s been shot through the back. ’Twouldn’t do for you to tell why you were out here tonight.”

  He arose and held out his hand. Charlie gripped it tightly, stood there and watched him mount his black stallion and head northward into the mountains to the hidden shack which they had frequented as youngsters together.

  9

  Henry Pelham sat comfortably in a straight chair tilted back against the wall of the tiny living room and through an open door into the kitchen approvingly watched Peggy fixing supper.

  With her sleeves rolled up and her thin face warmly flushed by the heat of the roaring wood range, she made a pretty picture of domesticity.

  With the proper clothes and a little more flesh on her bones she would grace any man’s home, Henry Pelham told himself with satisfaction. She would take on the needed flesh soon enough after changing her diet from the sourdough biscuits, boiled frijoles and salt meat she was now preparing for supper; and he had the money to buy her all the clothes her heart could desire.

  It would be a pleasure to spend money on Peggy—who had done without everything but the barest necessities of life these past few years. Pelham let his thoughts roam into the future with speculative pleasurableness. What a delight it would be to introduce this simple ranch girl to the cities with their big stores overflowing with the treasures of the earth; to witness her wide-eyed astonishment at the luxury of the hotels and dining cars.

  He was glad that he would be able to give all those things to his wife, and her gratitude and happiness would be sufficient recompense—at first. Later, she would come to love him. He had no fear of the ultimate outcome of the projected marriage. He understood human nature and the ways of the world well enough to take his chances on love. In the years to come Peggy would look back upon tonight as the luckiest moment in her life. She would contrast the pleasant pampered ways of her new life with what might have been had she married some such fellow as Charlie Barnes, for instance, and would know she had made a wise decision.

  Men like Charlie Barnes were all right—in their place, but Pelham had the good-natured contempt for them that every ruthlessly strong man has for the plodding failures of the world.

  Peggy’s voice brought him back from his musings. She had opened the rear door and was calling Hank to supper from the bunkhouse. The time-honored call of the West: “Come and get it before I throw it out and wash the skillet.”

  Henry Pelham smiled and yawned. He’d keep old Hank Greenow on as foreman of the Triangle A, he decided. Hank was a good cowman of the old school. A loyal old fellow, too. He knew Hank hated and distrusted him, but the old fellow would come around all right. A little cash money would accomplish wonders with a crippled old codger like Hank. And Peggy would appreciate his generosity in keeping Hank on as foreman.

  He heard Hank’s footsteps coming from the bunkhouse. They stopped outside the kitchen door. Pelham couldn’t hear what he said to Peggy, but he heard her pleading reply, “Please, Hank. Come on in to the table with us.”

  The only word he could distinguish in Hank’s surly reply was his own name, but it was evidently a downright refusal to join them at the supper table, for Peggy turned away from the open door with drooping shoulders, and the flush had been driven from her face.

  Henry Pelham arose and walked into the kitchen. Peggy had lifted a tin plate down from the shelf and was ladling out a generous helping of frijoles from the pot steaming on the range.

  Pelham smiled indulgently as he entered the kitchen. “Let me speak to Hank. Perhaps I can persuade him he won’t be contaminated if he eats supper with me.”

  Peggy darted him a frightened glance and shook her head vigorously, placing a warning finger on her lips.

  But Pelham disregarded the signal and strode to the door. Hank glared at him without speaking, a dour, silent figure in the soft moonlight.

  “Hating me isn’t getting you anywhere,” Pelham told the old man with bluff heartiness. “You only make Miss Aiken unhappy. Come on in, Hank, and bury the hatchet. I want to talk to you about my plans for building up the Triangle A. You’ll still be in charge, of course.”

  Hank turned his head aside and spit into the dust. “I ain’t got nothin’ to talk over with you.”

  “Come on, now,” Pelham urged good-naturedly. “I’m not poison even if I have made the Bar L pay while you’ve let the Triangle A run down. Let’s be friends and plan for the future together.” He stepped out with extended hand.

  Hank glared at him and crossed his right arm across his chest, wiry fingers clenching the stump of his left arm.