"About a dozen."

"Bear Claw will wipe him out, then," grinned Al Arnold.

"Somehow I don't think so," said Garvey. "And if that stage deal fails us----"

"A twenty-thousand-dollar job!" Shank barked angrily. "And we get half!"

"We get all," chuckled Garvey. "The Apaches will give their share to me for fire water. That's why this must go through. If Bear Claw and his braves slip up, we'll have to finish it. As for Kid Wolf----"

Garvey's expression changed to one of malignant fury, and he made the significant gesture of cutting a throat.

"I hear that this Kid Wolf makes it his business to right wrongs,"

Shank sneered. "Thinks he's a law of himself. Justice, he calls it."

"Well, one thing!" roared Garvey, thumping the bar. "There ain't no law west o' the Pecos! And he's west o' the Pecos now! The only law here is this kind," and he tapped his .44.

"What's happened to yore gun?" one of them asked.

Garvey's face suddenly went dark red.

"I dropped it this mornin' and busted the handle," he lied. "If it had been in workin' order, I'd have got this Kid Wolf the minute he opened his mouth."

"Well, if the Apaches don't get him, we will," Stephenson declared.

"By the way, Garvey, there's another deal on foot. What do yuh think o' this?" And he laid a chunk of ore on the bar under the saloon keeper's nose.

"Solid silver!" Garvey gasped. "Where's it from?"

"From the valley of the San Simon. It's from land owned--owned, mind yuh--by an hombre named Robbins. Gov'ment grant."

"We'll figger a way to get it," returned Garvey, then his eyes narrowed. "What name did yuh say?"

"Robbins. Bill Robbins."

Garvey grinned. "Why, he was on the stage! It was his kid that came here and made his play fer help. Looks like things is comin' our way, after all."

The conference was interrupted by the sound of galloping hoofs. An Indian pounded up in front of the saloon in a cloud of yellow dust.

The pony was lathered and breathing hard.

"It's a scout!" Garvey cried. "Let him in, and we'll see what he has to say."

The Indian runner's words, gasped in halting, broken English, brought consternation to Garvey and his treacherous gunmen:

"No get money box. Have keel two-three, maybe more, of white men in stage wagon. Then riders come. White chief on white devil horse, he break Bear Claw's neck. Bear Claw die. We ride away as fast as could do. White men fix stage wagon. Hunt for horse to drive it to Lost Springs."

Garvey clenched his huge fists.

"Get me another gun!" he rasped. "We'll have this out with Kid Wolf right now!"

Charley Hood spoke for the first time, and his b.e.s.t.i.a.l face with distorted with rage.

"Bear Claw son of Great Chief Yellow Skull! Yellow Skull get Keed Wolf if he have to follow him across world! And when he get him----"

Charley Hood, the half-breed, laughed insanely.

"I never thought of that," said Garvey. "Maybe we'd be doin' Mr. Wolf from Texas a favor by puttin' lead through him. Bear Claw was Yellow Skull's favorite. The old chief is an expert at torture. I'd like to be on hand to see it. But I've got an idea. Shank, have Jose dig a grave on Boot Hill--make it two of 'em. We've got to get that express money."

"And the silver," chuckled the desperado, as he took a farewell drink at the bar.

CHAPTER XXIII

TWO OPEN GRAVES

It was some time before the overturned stagecoach could be righted. It took longer to provide a team for it. When the bodies of the unfortunate white men had been loaded into the vehicle and the ponies lined out it was late in the afternoon.

Kid Wolf had examined the contents of the express box and found that it contained a small fortune in money. He decided to take charge of it and see that it reached proper hands. Twenty miles west of Lost Springs, he learned, were an express-company station and agent. The Texan planned to guard the money at Lost Springs overnight and then take it on to the express post, located at Mexican Tanks.

The two Robbinses, both father and son, were overcome with grat.i.tude toward the man who had saved them. They at once agreed to stay with Kid Wolf.

The posse members that the Texan had drafted at revolver point were not so willing. Although most of them were honest men, they feared Garvey's gang and the consequences of their act. All of them suspected that Garvey had a hand in the plot to rob the stagecoach. Most of them made excuses and rode away in different directions.

"We beat the Apaches," explained one, "so I reckon I'll go back to the ranch. Adios, and good luck!"

Kid Wolf smiled. He knew that the men were leaving him for other reasons. Perhaps a man with less courage would have avoided Lost Springs, or even abandoned the money. The young Texan, however, was not to be swerved from what he believed to be the right.

"Look out for Garvey, Kid," begged Dave Robbins. "He hates yuh for what yuh done."

"I've heard of him," the elder Robbins added. "If helpin' us has got you into trouble, I'm sorry. He's a man without a heart."

"Then some day," Kid Wolf said softly, "he's liable to find a bullet in the spot wheah his heart ought to be. I don't regret comin' to yo'

aid, not fo' a minute. And I guess Blizzahd and I are ready to see this thing through to the end."

Kid Wolf was riding on his white horse alongside the rumbling stage.

The only member of the drafted posse who had stayed was driving the vehicle, and beside him on the box rode the two Robbinses, father and son.

The road to Lost Springs was not the direct route the Indian messenger had taken. It led around steep side hills and high-banked washes in which nothing grew but tough, stunted clumps of thirsty paloverde.

Near the tiny settlement, the trail climbed a long slope to swing around a cactus-cluttered mound which served as Lost Springs' Boot Hill. The stage trail cut the barren little graveyard in two, and on both sides of it were headboards, some rotting with age, and others quite new, marking the last resting places of men who had died with smoke in their eyes.

It was nearly sundown when Kid Wolf and the party with the bullet-riddled coach reached this point. They found a group of hard-eyed men waiting for them. With Garvey were his five gunmen, mounted, armed to the teeth, and blocking the road! Kid Wolf caught the driver's eyes and nodded for him to go on. The stage rumbled up to the spot where Garvey waited.

"Stop!" the Lost Springs ruler snarled. "I reckon we want some words with yuh!"

"Is it words yo' want," drawled the Texan, drawing up his snowy mount, "or bullets?"

"That depends on you!" Garvey snapped. "We mean business. Hand over that express money."

"And the next thing?" the Texan asked softly.