Hardy whirled it over his head. Kid Wolf, however, instead of jumping backward to avoid it, darted in like a wild cat. While the stool was still at the apex of its swing, he struck, with the strength of his shoulder behind the blow. It landed full on the rustler's jaw, and Hardy went crashing backward, heels over head, landing on the wreckage of the stool. For a moment he lay there, stunned.

"Get up!" snapped The Kid crisply. "Theah's still mo' comin' to yo'."

Staggering to his feet, Hardy made a run for the front door. Kid Wolf, however, met him. Putting all the power of his lean young muscles behind his sledgelike fists, he hit Hardy twice. The first blow stopped Hardy, straightened him up with a jolt and placed him in position for the second one--a right-hand uppercut. Smash! It landed squarely on the point of Hardy's weak chin. The blow was enough to fell an ox, and the rustler chief went hurtling through the door, carried off his feet completely.

What happened then was one of those ironies of fate. The rope on which Hardy had hanged the McCay spy, George Durham, still hung before the door, its noose swaying in the wind some five feet from the ground.

Hardy hit it. His head struck the rope with terrific force--caught in the loop for an instant. There was a sharp snap, and Hardy dropped to the wooden sidewalk. For a few moments, his body twitched spasmodically, then lay still and rigid. His neck had been broken by the shock!

For a minute Kid Wolf stared in unbelief. Then he smiled grimly.

"Guess I was right," he murmured, "when I said it was on the books fo'

Hahdy to die by the rope!"

Cattle were approaching Midway on the Chisholm Trail--hundreds of them, bawling, milling, and pounding dust clouds into the air with their sharp hoofs.

The Texan, watching the dark-red ma.s.s of them, smiled. McCay cattle, those! And there was a woman in Dodge City who was cared for now--Tip's mother.

"I guess we've got the job done, Blizzard." He smiled at the big white horse that was standing at the hitch rack. "Heah comes the boys!"

It was a wondering group that gathered, a few minutes later, in the ill-fated Idle Hour. They listened in amazement to Kid Wolf's recital of what had taken place since he left them.

"And so Hardy hanged himself!" the sheriff from Limping Buffalo e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, when he could find his voice. "Well, I must say that saves me the trouble o' doin' it! But there's some reward comin' to yuh, Mr.

Wolf."

The Texan smiled. "Divide it between Scotty, Caldwell, and White," he drawled. "And, Tip, heah's the ten thousand Mistah Hahdy donated.

Present it to yo' good mothah, son, with mah compliments."

Tip could not speak for a minute, and when he did try to talk, his voice was choked with emotion.

"I can't begin to thank yuh," he said.

Kid Wolf shook his head. "Please don't thank me, Tip. Yo' see, I always try to make the troubles of the undah dawg, mah troubles. So long as theah are unfohtunates and downtrodden folks in this world, I'll have mah work cut out. I am, yo' might say, a soldier of misfohtune."

"But yo're not goin'?" Tip cried, seeing the Texan swing himself into his saddle.

"I'm just a rollin' stone--usually a-rollin' toward trouble," said the Texan. "Some time, perhaps, we'll meet again. Adios!"

Kid Wolf swung his hat aloft, and he and his white horse soon blurred into a moving dot on the far sweeps of the Chisholm Trail.

CHAPTER XI

A BUCKSHOT GREETING

"Oh, the cows stampede on the Rio Grande!

The Rio!

The sands do blow, and the winds do wail, But I want to be wheah the cactus stands!

And the rattlah shakes his ornery tail!"

Kid Wolf sang his favorite verse to his favorite tune, and was happy.

For he was on his beloved Rio.

He had left the Chisholm Trail behind him, and now "The Rollin' Stone"

was rolling homeward, and--toward trouble.

The Kid, mildly curious, had been watching a certain dust cloud for half an hour. At first he had thought it only a whirling dervish--one of those restless columns of sand that continually shift over the arid lands. But it was following the course of the trail below him on the desert--rounding each bend and twist of it.

The Texan, astride his big white horse, had been "hitting the high places only," riding directly south at an easy clip, but scorning the trail whenever a short cut presented itself.

Descending from the higher ground of the mesa now, by means of an arroyo leading steeply down upon the plain, he saw what was kicking up the dust. It was a buckboard, drawn by a two-horse team, and traveling directly toward him at a hot clip. There was one person, as far as he could see, in the wagon. And across this person's knees was a shotgun.

The Kid saw that unless he changed his course he would meet the buckboard and its pa.s.senger face to face.

Kid Wolf had no intention of avoiding the meeting, but something in the tenseness of the figure on the seat of the vehicle, even at that distance, caused his gray-blue eyes to pucker.

The distance between him and the buckboard rapidly decreased as Kid Wolf's white horse drummed down between the chocolate-colored walls of the arroyo. Between him and the team on the trail now was only a stretch of level white sand, dotted here and there with low burrow weeds. Suddenly, the driver of the buckboard whirled the shotgun. The double barrels swung up on a line with Kid Wolf.

Quick as the movement was, the Texan had learned to expect the unexpected. In the West, things happened, and one sought the reason for them afterward. His hands went lightning-fast toward the twin .45s that hung at his hips.

But Kid Wolf did not draw. A look of amazement had crossed his sun-burned face and he removed his hands from his gun b.u.t.ts. Instead of firing on the figure in the buckboard, Kid Wolf wheeled his horse about quickly, and turned sidewise in his saddle in order to make as small a target as possible.

The shotgun roared. Spurts of sand were flecked up all around The Kid and the big white horse winced and jumped as a ball smashed the saddletree a glancing blow. Another slug went through the Texan's hat brim. Fortunately, he was not yet within effective range.

Even now, Kid Wolf did not draw his weapons. And he did not beat a retreat. Instead, he rode directly toward the buckboard. The click of a gun hammer did not stop him. One barrel of the shotgun remained unfired and its muzzle had him covered.

But the Texan approached recklessly. He had doffed his big hat and now he made a courteous, sweeping bow. He pulled his horse to a halt not ten yards from the menacing shotgun.

"Pahdon me, ma'am," he drawled, "but is theah anything I can do fo'

yo', aside from bein' a tahget in yo' gun practice?"

The figure in the buckboard was that of a woman! There was a moment's breathless pause.

"There's nine buckshot in the other barrel," said a feminine voice--a voice that for all its courage faltered a little.

"Please don't waste them on me," Kid Wolf returned, in his soft, Southern speech. "I'm afraid yo' have made a mistake. I can see that yo' are in trouble. May I help yo'?"

Doubtfully, the woman lowered her weapon. She was middle-aged, kindly faced, and her eyes were swollen from weeping. She looked out of place with the shotgun--friendless and very much alone.

"I don't know whether to trust you or not," she said wearily. "I suppose I ought to shoot you, but I can't, somehow."

"Well I'm glad yo' can't," drawled The Kid with contagious good humor.

His face sobered. "Who do yo' think I am, ma'am?"

"I don't know," the woman sighed, "but you're an enemy. Every one in this cruel land is my enemy. You're an outlaw--and probably one of the murderers who killed my husband."

"Please believe that I'm not," the Texan told her earnestly. "I'm a strangah to this district. Won't yo' tell me yo' story? I want to help yo'."