The Frontier, May 1926 — page 77: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

some distance beyond and to the side of his quarry. It did not show up the bed of the ledge, however. So, fol- lowing a rapid approach of what he estimated to be forty yards, Toi-Yabe assumed his slow crawl again, leaving the outside for the first time. In a hand-to-hand tussle, as this well might prove to be, he preferred the rock wall at his back. Who could be the man who was ready to dispute with lead any en- croachment upon this peculiar subter- ranean preserve? What was his rea- son for jealousy? Toi-Yabe, creeping forward, would have liked an answer to both questions. IV HE expected gun- fight to a decision did not occur. Toi- Yabe had crawled at least far enough, he thought. Still, j he heard a sound ahead. It was the aspiration of slow but jerky breathing! Then came a low groan, some mut- , gered unintelligible words. Toi-Yabe frowned. <A futile de- coy! He edged toward the sound, however, rose to his feet. His thumb held back the filed hammer of his six- gun. He hoped grimly that it did not misfire again from a_ water-soaked cartridge when he came to the show- down. Outside in the big sunlit world a mere handful of nimbus had been over the sun for a space of minutes. Alone in a painfully blue Nevada sky, the cloud held on a while, and then gave up. In another clime it might have been thought the precursor of a storm; here it was something to be looked at and viewed with wonder. Of course no rain was expected. Toi-Yabe did not know anything of the cloud; yet as he inched along, waiting to kill a man whose hand had fired three times at him—and with- out excuse—he saw the gray light brighten, become even intense! The broad: ledge gradually became limned by reflected sunlight. Then Toi-Yabe saw his man! The prospector did not fire immedi- ately—and eventually did not fire at all. The fact was that with the grow- ing light of the inducted sun he saw a figure sprawled out, face against the rock and right hand limply holding a weapon, far ahead. Toi-Yabe watched, his thumb hold- ing back the hammer of the Colt. Thus CHAPAREJOS he stood while long seconds ticked by. Then he walked forward a step, two silent steps, three. After due delibera- tion he reached the prone body, quickly secured its two revolvers and made certain the man had no knife or der- ringer concealed. After that Toi-Yabe looked more closely at his antagonist, finding him unconscious. Fle was Sheriff Bellin- ger! Repressing his unbounded astonish- ment, Toi-Yabe hurriedly brought up Dickie, and then examined the wounded sheriff. The latter was wounded twice. One bullet had passed through the right side rather shal- lowly; whether or not it had damaged a vital organ the prospector could not determine. The second leaden slug had shattered Bellinger’s right shin- bone, and undoubtedly was more pain- ful if not as dangerous. The sheriff had lost a great deal of blood. Toi- Yabe, utilizing the other’s own clothes for bandages and a rude compress, managed to check the flow—albeit from the pools of blood on the rocky floor he doubted seriously that Stone Bellinger ever would recover con- sciousness. “Daddy!” cried the boy, when first he glimpsed the face of the inert man. He squirmed away from Toi-Yabe, to run to the side of his idol—the man who from the first had chosen the grim pursuit of the law’s vengeance rather than the love he himself had helped to create. “The hell!” gasped Toi-Yabe Tol- man. This affair had grown too com- plicated for even his keen abilities in analysis. The kid belonged to the sheriff. The sheriff had half-recog- nized the shoes and stockings, ap- parently. He, Toi-Yabe, unwittingly had imperiled the lad, only to save him from the subterranean river—and find at the other end of the cavern Stone Bellinger, ready to fight to the last gasp against someone! And then, there was the memory of that rapid gunfire heard across the ridge—shooting which occurred only a short time after the sheriff departed from Toi-Yabe’s camp. What did it all mean? He drew Dickie away, comforting the lad, assuring him that the daddy would be all right after he’d had a good long sleep—phrasing hope rather than certainty. Then by tactful ques- tions he drew from the boy a lurid, nightmarish tale of being snatched from bed, gagged, and carried away by a big, fat man on horseback. Toi- Yabe obtained a serviceable descrip- 67 tion of that big, fat man, and his mouth drew into a line. Haj Maddox! What the fool’s idea could have been was hard to discern, yet motives now were unimportant. Maddox once and for all had placed himself beyond the pale of sympathy or toleration. Only justice could await him now. The running fight down the neigh- boring valley with the sheriff riding hard in pursuit and shooting only at the legs of Haj’s fleeing animal, in order not to wound his own son, Dickie gave with a dramatic force entirely un- conscious. Haj, terrified at the unex- pected meeting which jettisoned his scheme in an instant, thought only of his own escape. Riding as hard as he could force the cayuse, he came to rocky, uneven ground down among the cave formations, steadily losing his lead over the relentless Bellinger. A sudden idea came to the fleeing criminal, Passing a black crevice in the hillside, one which looked like it might drop to the bowels of the earth, Haj bent from the saddle and tossed Dickie into it. He figured Stone Bel- linger would stop, and that was ex- actly what the sheriff did—but for an- other reason. Both men fired, and both scored hits. Bellinger tumbled from the sad- dle, while ahead of him the horse of Haj Maddox stumbled and _ pitched headlong, dying. And then, while both men were dazed, little Dickie scrambled up and climbed to escape them, unaware that his own father was one of the creatures of this terribly real nightmare. Later, Haj realized that now he was committed. Either the sheriff and his boy died right then and there, or Haj could plan on stretching hemp. Shots were exchanged. Bellinger was wounded again, but managed to crawl to the sheltering crevice. Grinning like a wolf, Haj Maddox was satisfied. He did not dream of another entrance to that cavelike hole. He settled, six-gun in hand, to await the appearance of either the boy or man. He would he in no danger; this sort of pot-shot gun-fighting suited him right down to the ground. Toi-Yabe did not learn all of this from Dickie, yet he could surmise the situation. His face took on the ham- mered bronze expression well known to his old associates of bandit days, the killer’s mask. He removed his own watersoaked belt and gun, replacing it with the sheriff’s two belts and long- barreled Remingtons. He hefted the weapons, saw that they were freshly COMnnicloOokxsS.Con