The Mexican _vaquero_ came to his news haltingly. He enveloped it in mystery. There was a dead man lying at the foot of Battle b.u.t.te, out in the rim-rock country, and there was this wound in the back of his head.

That was all. Pedro became vague at once as to detail. He took refuge in shrugs and a poor memory when the Ranger pressed him in regard to the source of his information.

Roberts knew the ways of the Mexicans. They would tell what they wanted to tell and no more. He accepted the news given him and for the moment did not push his questions home.

For twenty-four hours the Ranger had been in the saddle, and he was expecting to turn in for a round-the-clock sleep. But Pedro's tale changed his mind. Captain Ellison was at Austin, Lieutenant Hawley at Tascosa. Regretfully Roberts gave up his overdue rest and ordered another cup of strong coffee. Soon he was in the saddle again with a fresh horse under him.

The Panhandle was at its best. Winter snows and spring rains had set it blooming. The cacti were a glory of white, yellow, purple, pink, and scarlet blossoms. The white, lilylike flowers of the Spanish bayonet flaunted themselves everywhere. Meadowlarks chirruped gayly and prairie-hens fluttered across the path in front of the rider.

Battle b.u.t.te had received its name from an old tradition of an Indian fight. Here a party of braves had made a last stand against an overwhelming force of an enemy tribe. It was a flat mesa rising sharply as a sort of bastion from the rim-rock. The erosions of centuries had given it an appearance very like a fort.

Jack skirted the base of the b.u.t.te. At the edge of a clump of p.r.i.c.kly pear he found the evidence of grim tragedy which the circling buzzards had already warned him to expect. He moved toward it very carefully, in order not to obliterate any footprints. The body lay face down in a huddled heap, one hand with outstretched finger reaching forth like a sign-post. A bullet-hole in the back of the head showed how the man had come to his death. He had been shot from behind.

The Ranger turned the body and recognized it as that of Rutherford Wadley. The face was crushed and one of the arms broken. It was an easy guess that the murder had been done on the b.u.t.te above and the body flung down.

Jack, on all fours, began to quarter over the ground like a bloodhound seeking a trail. Every sense in him seemed to quicken to the hunt. His alert eyes narrowed in concentration. His fingertips, as he crept forward, touched the sand soft as velvet. His body was tense as a coiled spring. No cougar stalking its prey could have been more lithely wary.

For the Ranger had found a faint boot-track, and with amazing pains he was following this delible record of guilt. Some one had come here and looked at the dead body. Why? To make sure that the victim was quite dead? To identify the victim? Roberts did not know why, but he meant to find out.

The footprint was alone. Apparently none led to it or led from it. On that one impressionable spot alone had been written the signature of a man's presence.

But "Tex" Roberts was not an old plainsman for nothing. He knew that if he were patient enough he would find other marks of betrayal.

He found a second track--a third, and from them determined a course to follow. It brought him to a stretch of soft ground at the edge of a wash. The footprints here were sharp and distinct. They led up an arroyo to the bluff above.

The Ranger knelt dose to the most distinct print and studied it for a long time. All its details and peculiarities were recorded in his mind.

The broken sole, the worn heel, the beveled edge of the toe-cap--all these fastened themselves in his memory. With a tape-line he measured minutely the length of the whole foot, of the sole and of the heel.

These he jotted down in his notebook, together with cross-sections of width. He duplicated this process with the best print he could find of the left foot.

His investigation led him next to the summit of the bluff. A little stain of blood on a rock showed him where Wadley had probably been standing when he was shot. The murder might have been done by treachery on the part of one of his companions. If so, probably the bullet had been fired from a revolver. In that case the man who did it would have made sure by standing close behind his victim. This would have left powder-marks, and there had been none around the wound. The chances were that the shooting had been done from ambush, and if this was a true guess, it was a fair deduction that the a.s.sa.s.sin had hidden behind the point of rocks just back of the bluff. For he could reach that point by following the rim-rock without being seen by his victim.

Roberts next studied the ground just back of the point of rocks. The soil here was of disintegrated granite, so that there were no footprints to betray anybody who might have been hidden there. But Jack picked up something that was in its way as decisive as what he had been seeking. It was a cartridge that had been ejected from a '73[1] rifle.

The harmless bit of metal in his hand was the receptacle from which death had flashed across the open toward Ford Wadley.

At the foot of the rim-rock the Ranger found signs where horses had been left. He could not at first make sure whether there were three or four.

From that spot he back-tracked for miles along the edge of the rim-rock till he came to the night-camp where Wadley had met the outlaws. This, too, he studied for a long time.

He had learned a good deal, but he did not know why Ford Wadley had been shot. The young fellow had not been in Texas more than six or eight months, and he could not have made many enemies. If he had nothing about him worth stealing--and in West Texas men were not in the habit of carrying valuables--the object could not have been robbery.

He rode back to Battle b.u.t.te and carried to town with him the body of the murdered man. There he heard two bits of news, either of which might serve as a cause for the murder: Young Wadley had quarreled with Tony Alviro at a dance and grossly insulted him; Arthur Ridley had been robbed of six thousand dollars by masked men while on his way to Tascosa.

Ranger Roberts decided that he would like to have a talk with Tony.

[Footnote 1: The '73 rifle was not a seventy-three-caliber weapon, but was named from the year it was got out. Its cartridges could be used for a forty-four revolver.]

CHAPTER X

"A d.a.m.nED POOR APOLOGY FOR A MAN"

The big cattleman from New Mexico who was talking with the owner of the A T O threw his leg across the arm of the chair. "The gra.s.s is good on the Pecos this year. Up in Mexico[2] the cattle look fine."

"Same here," agreed Wadley. "I'm puttin' ten thousand yearlin's on the Canadian."

A barefoot negro boy appeared at his elbow with a note. The owner of the A T O ripped open the envelope and read:

Dear Mr. Wadley:

I was held up last night by masked men and robbed. They took the gold. I'm too sick to go farther.

Arthur Ridley.

The jaw of the Texas cattleman clamped. He rose abruptly. "I got business on hand. A messenger of mine has been robbed of six thousand dollars." He turned to the colored boy. "Where's the man who gave you this?"

"At the Buffalo Corral, sah."

Wadley strode from the hotel, flung himself on a horse, and galloped down the street toward the corral.

Young Ridley was lying on a pile of hay when his employer entered. His heart was sick with fear and worry. For he knew now that his lack of boldness had led him into a serious mistake. He had by his indecision put himself in the power of Moore, and the chances were that the man was in collusion with the gang that had held him up. He had made another mistake in not going directly to Wadley with the news. The truth was that he had not the nerve to face his employer. It was quite on the cards that the old-timer might use a blacksnake whip on him. So he had taken refuge in a plea of illness.

The cattleman took one look at him and understood. He reached down and jerked the young fellow from the hay as if he had been a child. The stomach muscles of the boy contracted with fear and the heart died within him. Clint Wadley in anger was dangerous. In his youth he had been a gun-fighter and the habit had never entirely been broken.

"I--I'm ill," the young fellow pleaded.

"You'll be sure enough ill if you don't watch out. I'll gamble on that.

Onload yore tale like shot off'n a shovel. Quit yore whinin'. I got no time for it."

Arthur told his story. The cattleman fired at him crisp, keen questions.

He dragged from the trembling youth the when, where, and how of the robbery. What kind of pilgrim was this fellow Moore? Was he tall? Short?

Dark? Bearded? Young? Old? What were the masked men like? Did they use any names? Did he see their horses? Which way did they go?

The messenger made lame answers. Mostly he could only say, "I don't know."

"You're a d.a.m.ned poor apology for a man--not worth the powder to blow you up. You hadn't the sand to fight for the money entrusted to you, nor the nerve to face me after you had lost it. Get out of here.

_Vamos!_ Don't ever let me hear yore smooth, glib tongue again."

The words of Wadley stung like hail. Arthur was thin-skinned; he wanted the good opinion of all those with whom he came in contact, and especially that of this man. Like a whipped cur he crept away and hid himself in the barn loft, alone with his soul-wounds.

From its window he watched the swift bustle of preparation for the pursuit. Wadley himself, big and vigorous to the last masculine inch of him, was the dominant figure. He gave curt orders to the members of the posse, arranged for supplies to be forwarded to a given point, and outlined plans of action. In the late afternoon the boy in the loft saw them ride away, a dozen lean, long-bodied men armed to the limit. With all his heart the watcher wished he could be like one of them, ready for any emergency that the rough-and-tumble life of the frontier might develop.

In every fiber of his jarred being he was sore. He despised himself for his failure to measure up to the standard of manhood demanded of him by his environment. Twice now he had failed. The memory of his first failure still scorched his soul. During ghastly hours of many nights he had lived over that moment when he had shown the white feather before Ramona Wadley. He had run for his life and left her alone to face a charging bull. It was no excuse to plead with himself that he could have done nothing for her if he had stayed. At least he could have pushed her to one side and put himself in the path of the enraged animal. The loss of the money was different. It had been due not wholly to lack of nerve, but in part at least to bad judgment. Surely there was something to be said for his inexperience. Wadley ought not to have sent him alone on such an errand, though of course he had sent him because he was the last man anybody was likely to suspect of carrying treasure....

Late that night Ridley crept out, bought supplies, saddled his horse, and slipped into the wilderness. He was still writhing with self- contempt. There was a futile longing in his soul for oblivion to blot out his misery.

[Footnote 2: In western Texas when one speaks of Mexico he means New Mexico. If he refers to the country Mexico, he says Old Mexico.]