The stranger's crisp words had their effect, since "Kid Wolf" was a name well known west of the Chisholm Trail. His reputation had been pa.s.sed by word of mouth along the border until there were few who had not heard of his deeds. His very name seemed to fill the riffraff of the barroom with courage. Some of them cheered, and all prepared to obey the young Texan's orders. Every one was soon busy loading and examining six-guns.

Garvey was the one exception. He was infuriated, and his malignant eyes gleamed with hate. Kid Wolf had made an enemy. He was, however, accustomed to that. Smiling ironically, he faced Garvey, who was quivering all over with helpless rage.

"Yo' won't need to come along," he drawled. "I'd rathah have Apaches in front of me than yo' behind me."

Kid Wolf lost no time in rounding up his hastily drafted posse. A horse was procured for Robbins and The Kid prepared to ride by his side. Kid Wolf's horse was "tied to the ground" outside, and a shout of genuine admiration went up as the men caught sight of the magnificent creature, beautiful with muscular grace. Swinging into his California saddle, the Texan, with Robbins at his side and the posse, numbering eleven men, swept down toward the mountain pa.s.s.

Some of the men carried Winchesters, but for the most part they were armed with six-guns. Now that they were actually on the way, the men seemed eager for the battle. Perhaps Kid Wolf's cool and determined leadership had something to do with it.

Young Robbins reached over and clasped the Texan's hand.

"I'll never forget this, Mr. Kid Wolf," he said, tears in his eyes.

"If it wasn't for you----"

"Call me 'Kid,'" said the Texan, flashing him a smile. "We'll save yo'

fathah and the men in the stage if we can. Anyway, we'll make it hot fo' those Apaches."

After a few minutes of fast going, they could hear the faint crackling of gunfire ahead of them, carried on the torrid wind. Robbins brightened, for this meant that some survivors still remained on their feet. Kid Wolf, experienced in Indian warfare, understood the situation at once, and ordered his men to scatter and come in on the Indians from all sides.

"Robbins," he said, "I want yo' with me. Yo' two," he went on, singling out a couple of the posse, "ride in from the east. The rest of yo' come in from the west and south. Make every shot count, fo' if we don't scattah the Apaches at the first chahge, we will be at a big disadvantage!"

It was a desperate situation, with the odds nearly five to one against them. Reaching the pa.s.s, they could look down on the battle from the cover of the mesquites. From the overturned stage, thin jets of fire streaked steadily, and a pall of white smoke hung over it like a cloud.

From the brush, other gun flashes answered the fire. Occasionally a writhing brown body could be seen, crawling from point to point. The thicket seemed to be alive with them.

Kid Wolf listened for a moment to the faint popping of the guns. Then he raised his hand in a signal.

"Let's go!" he sang out.

A second later, Blizzard was pounding down the pa.s.s like a snowstorm before the wind.

The leader of this band of murderous Apaches was a youthful warrior named Bear Claw, the son of the tribal chief. Peering at the coach from his post behind a clump of paloverde, his cruel face was lighted by a grin of satisfaction. From time to time he gave a hoa.r.s.e order, and at his bidding, his braves would creep up or fall back as the occasion demanded.

Bear Claw was in high good humor, for he saw that the ambushed victims in the stage could not hope to hold out much longer. Only three remained alive in the coach, and some of these were wounded. The white men's fire was becoming less accurate.

The young leader of the Apaches was horrible to look at. He was naked save for a breechcloth and boot moccasins and his face was daubed with ocher and vermilion. Across his lean chest, too, was a smear of paint just under the necklace of bear claws that gave him his name. He was armed with a .50-caliber Sharps single-shot rifle and with the only revolver in the tribe--an old-fashioned cap-and-ball six-shooter, taken from some murdered prospector.

Bear Claw was about to raise his left hand--a signal for the final rush that would wipe out the white men in the overturned coach--when a terrific volley burst out like rattling thunder from all sides.

Bullets raked the brush in a deadly hail. An Indian a few paces from Bear Claw jumped up with a weird yell and fell back again, pierced through the body.

The young chief saw whirlwinds of dust swooping down on the scene from every direction. In those whirlwinds, he knew, were horses. Bear Claw had courage only when the odds were with him. How many men were in the attacking force, he did not know. But there were too many to suit him, and he took no chances. He gave the order for retreat, and the startled Apaches made a rush for their ponies, hidden in an arroyo.

Bear Claw scrambled after them, with lead kicking up dust all about him.

But it did not take Bear Claw long to see that his band outnumbered the white posse, more than four to one. Throwing himself on his horse, he decided to set his renegade warriors an example. Giving the Apache war whoop, he kicked his heels in his pony's flanks and led the charge.

Picking out the foremost of the posse--a bronzed rider on a snow-white horse--he went at him with leveled revolver.

What happened then unnerved the Apaches at Bear Claw's back. The man Bear Claw had charged was Kid Wolf! The Texan did not return the Indian's blaze of revolver fire. He merely ducked low in his saddle and swung his big white horse into Bear Claw's pony! At the same time, he swung out his left hand sharply. It caught Bear Claw's jaw with a terrific jolt. The weight of both speeding horses was behind the impact. Something snapped. Bear Claw went off his pony's back like a bag of meal and landed on the sand, his head at a queer angle. His neck was broken!

Then Kid Wolf's guns began to talk. Fire burst from the level of both his hips as he put spurs to Blizzard and charged with head low directly into the amazed Apaches. The others, too, followed the Texan's example, but it was Kid Wolf who turned the trick. It was the deciding card, and without their chief, the redskins were panic-stricken. The only thing they thought of now was escape. The little hoofs of their ponies began to drum madly. But instead of rushing in the direction of the whites, they drummed away from them. Kid Wolf ordered his men not to follow. Nor would he allow any more firing.

"No slaughter, men," he said. "Save yo' bullets till yo' need them.

Let's take a look at the stage."

Wheeling their mounts, the posse, who had lost not a man in the encounter, raced back to the overturned coach. The vehicle, riddled with bullets and arrows, resembled a butcher's shop. On the ground near it was the body of the driver, while the guard, hit in a dozen places, lay half in and half out of the coach, dead.

Young Robbins had left four men alive when he made his escape toward Lost Springs. There now remained only two. And one of these, it could be seen, was dying.

"Dad!" Robbins cried. "Are yuh hurt?"

"Got a bullet in the shoulder and one in the knee," replied his father, crawling out with difficulty. "Good thing yuh got here when yuh did!

See to Claymore. He's. .h.i.t bad. I'm all right."

Kid Wolf drew out the still breathing form of the other survivor. He was quick to note that the man was beyond any human aid. The frontiersman, his six-gun still emitting a curl of blue smoke, was placed in the shade of the coach, and water was given to him.

"I'm all shot to pieces, boys," he gasped. "I'm goin' fast--but I'm glad the Apaches won't have me to--chop up afterward. Take my word for it--there's some white man--behind this. There's twenty thousand dollars in the express box----"

His words trailed off, and with a moan, he breathed his last. Kid Wolf gently drew a blanket over his face and then turned to the others.

"I think he's right," he mused, as he took off his wide-brimmed hat.

"When Indians murdah, theah's usually a white man's brains behind them."

Garvey, when Kid Wolf had left with his quickly gathered posse, went to the bar and took several drinks of his own liquor. It was a fiery red whisky distilled from wheat, and of the type known to the Indians as "fire water." It did not put Garvey in any better humor. Wiping his lips, he left his saloon and crossed the road to a tiny one-room adobe.

A young Indian was sleeping in the shade, and Garvey awakened him with a few well-directed kicks. The Indian's eyes widened with fear at the sight of the white man's rage-distorted face, and when he had heard his orders, delivered in the hoa.r.s.e Apache tongue, he raced for his pony, tethered in the bushes near him, and drummed away.

"Tell 'em to meet me in the saloon p.r.o.nto!" Garvey shouted after him.

The saloon keeper pa.s.sed an impatient half hour. A quartet of Mexicans entered his place demanding liquor, but Garvey waved them away.

Something important was evidently on foot.

Soon the dull _clip-clop_ of horses' hoofs was heard, and he went to the door to see five riders approaching Lost Springs from the north.

He waved his hand to them before they had left the cover of the cottonwoods.

The group of sunburned, booted men who hastily entered Garvey's Place were individuals of the Lost Springs ruler's own stamp. All were gunmen, and some wore two revolvers. Most of them were wanted by the law for dark deeds done elsewhere. Sheriffs from the Texas Panhandle would have recognized two of them as Al and Andy Arnold--brother murderers. Another was a killer chased out of Dodge City, Kansas--a slender, quick-fingered youth known as "Pick" Stephenson. Henry Shank--a gunman from Lincoln, New Mexico--strode in their lead.

The fifth member of the quintet was the most terrible of them all. He was a half-breed Apache, dressed partly in the Indian way and partly like a white. He wore a battered felt hat with a feather in the crown.

He wore no shirt, but over his naked chest was b.u.t.toned a dirty vest, around which two cap-and-ball Colt revolvers swung.

His stride, m.u.f.fled by his beaded moccasins, was as noiseless as a cat's. This man--Garvey's go-between--was Charley Hood. He grinned continually, but his smile was like the snarl of a snapping dog.

"What's up, Garvey?" Shank demanded. "We was just ready to start out fer a cattle clean-up."

"Plenty's up," snarled Garvey. "Help yoreselves to liquor while I tell yuh. First o' all, do any of yuh know Kid Wolf?"

It was evident that most of them had heard of him. None had seen him, however, and Garvey went on to tell what had happened.

"How many men did he take with him?" Stephenson wanted to know.