Rimrock Trail Page 7

  CHAPTER VII

  BOLSA GAP

  Sheriff Jordan had a high-powered car purchased, not so much from thefees of his office as with his perquisites, a word covering a wide rangeof possibilities, all of which the sheriff made the most of. He wasproud of his car and proud of his ability to run it anywhere atrecord-breaking speed. It carried an extra water container that could bemounted on the running board for desert work, an extra gasoline and oilsupply, there were always extra tires strapped on, extra spark plugshandy and his batteries were always well charged.

  "I aim to make her efficient," said Jordan, "bein' she represents myoffice. That's me. If I needed me an airyplane, I'd get me one to huntthe outlaws out of cover, an' I'd run it myself, an' run it right.That's me, Bill Jordan!"

  Boaster though he was, there was little doubt as to Jordan's efficiencyor his courage. He brought in the criminals he went out to get, somealive, some dead; prosecuted the first with zeal and collected therewards with alacrity. The trouble was that he did _not_ always go outafter certain individuals, who were outside the law, as interpreted bythe people, but inside it, as protected by the political ring to whichJordan, with other prominent officials, belonged.

  Jordan had taken up his brother-in-law's grievance with the greater zestsince he had a half-interest in Plimsoll's Good Luck Pool Parlors, ashare that had cost him good money. On top of that had come Sandy'sflouting of him on the bridge in front of the sheriff's own followers.He had to save his face, politically as well as personally.

  To secure papers bringing Molly Casey within the jurisdiction of thecourt was not a difficult matter, but it was not so easy to get them atan early hour, since court was not in session and the judge none tooeager to arise of a morning. But Jordan knew nothing of the visit ofMiranda Bailey to the Three Star and he pressed matters with no specialexpedition, though he characteristically wasted no time.

  Armed with the necessary warrant, backed by an assurance that, unlesssome extraordinary howl went up, the girl would be given into thecustody of Jim Plimsoll as guardian, by virtue of his claim topartnership with her father, the sheriff, Plimsoll and two others, allthree deputized for the occasion, started the car from Hereford at aquarter of twelve, after an early lunch. They passed the butte where Jimlay prone atop without noticing the flashes he shot into the sky. At afew minutes after twelve they reached Three Star where Buck, seated onthe porch, his saddle astride a sawhorse, stitched away at a cinch.

  Buck played his part well, allowing Jordan to ferret out information tohis own satisfaction. It appeared plain that all three partners hadtaken flight with the girl in the buckboard. Sandy's pinto and Sam'sroan were in the corral. Jordan overlooked one thing, the counting ofsaddles, though that would not have been an easy determination.

  "Some one tipped this thing off," he said sternly to Buck. "Who was it?"

  "Meanin' this visit's offishul?" asked Buck. "What's it fo', Sheriff?Moonshine or hawss stealin'?" He spoke in a jesting note, his weatheredface impassive as the shell of a walnut, but Plimsoll scowled, notingthe turn of Buck's bland countenance in his direction for the firsttime. It was whispered that the brands on Plimsoll's horse ranch werenot those usually known in the county, nor even in the countiesadjoining. There were rumors, smothered by Plimsoll's stand with theauthorities, of bands of horses, driven by strangers, arrivingwearied--and always by night--at his corrals.

  "It don't matter--to you--what it's for," answered Jordan. "I'lloverhaul 'em an' bring 'em back. Crossin' the county line won't do 'emany good with this warrant. Ef they try hide-out tactics or put up ascrap, it'll be kidnappin' an' that's a penal offense."

  Buck whistled.

  "Thought you wasn't goin' to let me know," he said. "It's the gel."

  "Who's been here to tip it off?" asked Jordan.

  Buck looked at him serenely, took a plug of chewing from his hip pocket,took his knife, opened it deliberately and slowly cut off a corner ofthe tobacco.

  "Search me," he drawled. "Me, I don't stay up to the house."

  Jordan, temporarily discomfited but still confident of bringing back hisquarry, marked the trail of the buckboard in the alkali soil, noted thehoof-prints of the diverging riders and nodded with the semi-smile andhalf closed-eyes of conscious superiority. He had already elicitedapparently reluctant information from Pedro as to the four passengers inthe buckboard. Buck had been more reticent. To the sheriff Buck'sreticence betokened desire to cover the fugitives. He fancied thatPedro's testimony was the result of Jordan's own cleverness incross-questioning. Joe resorted to "no sabes."

  "You 'tendin' ranch?" Jordan asked Buck, at last.

  "Yep. Till I git fresh orders."

  "I'll bring you back those orders, also yore bosses, before sun-down."

  Buck permitted himself his first grin.

  "You'll have to go some," he said. "Goin' to bring 'em back in irons?Figgerin' on abduction?"

  Jordan gave no hint of how Buck's shaft might have targeted hisintentions, but climbed into the car and started it. The powerfulmachine went lunging through the soft dirt, following the blurry trailof the buckboard's iron tires, throwing up dust as a fast launch churnsspray.

  After leaving the Three Star all semblance of road vanished. Thealkaline soil was almost as fine as flour, and deep. This and the fearof losing the trail kept the machine down to a limit that would havebeen ridiculous on a real road but represented fast work on the desert.The water boiled in the radiator from the heat of the toiling engine andJordan stopped, replenished, reoiled. Reaching the lava strip where thebuckboard had halted for water and the noon meal, they found the trailskirting the flow toward the south. The main mass of the mesa, broken upinto gorges, gaps, stairway cliffs, marked by purple shadows, scanty inthe early afternoon but gradually widening, was about fifteen milesaway. Jordan braked his car. He ignored the water in the spring. Hisspare supply was still ample and was distilled, not alkaline.

  He turned to one of his deputies.

  "Which way do you figger they're headin', Phil?" he asked. "Is there acut or a pass through the mesa?"

  "Dam'fino. Mesa's all cut up, but it's sure a Godforsaken country.Nothin' but rock an' clay an' cactus. No one ever goes there. I reckon Iknow as much of this country as most an' I sure never explored the dump.One thing's sure an' certain. Them fellers from the Three Star usuallyknow where they are headin'. Trail's plain."

  "Sure is." But Jordan scratched his head a trifle doubtfully. If SandyBourke and his chums had been tipped off, this trail was a little tooplain to be true. Presently, as the machine plowed on south, theystruck a patch of desert where the rock surfaced out and showed no traceof hoof or tire. Jordan stopped the car and the four got out, castingaround, expecting that this outcropping had been used as a device tothrow off the pursuit. Fairly fresh horse droppings showed that thebuckboard had held to its course and, the rock passed, the trail showedplain again, curving in toward the broken wall of the mesa, leadingtoward a cleft that was plainly distinguishable.

  "That's Bolsa Boquete," announced the deputy named Phil. "I never wentthrough it."

  "What's it mean--the name?"

  "Boquete's gap. Bolsa's money--not jest the same as dinero. It's theword they have on the bank winders down in Mexico. Exchange."

  "Money Gap? That don't tell us a thing," said Jordan. "But I'll bet mystar they've gone through it all right. We ought to be not much more'nan hour behind them."

  "They're on about us getting the papers," said Plimsoll. He had not saidmuch on the trip so far. "Too much talk nowadays. You can't whisper in adugout but what the news is all over the county inside of twentyminutes. Bourke sabes that getting the girl out of the county won't doany good; he aims to get her out of the state and any Arizona court orsheriff jurisdiction. He's the brains of the outfit. We've got to gether, Jordan."

  "You ain't tellin' me a thing I don't know, Jim. But there's one thingyou _can_ tell me. Is that tip you got about Dynamite a sure one?"

  Plimsoll, sitting beside Jordan, fl
ashed him a look of contempt.

  "Do you think I'm chasing this girl because I'm stuck on her? One of theparty with this eastern crowd dropped into my place and talked. Showedsome samples and I had a good look at them. He happened to leave a bitor two behind and I had them assayed. Here is where I get back the moneyI put up to grubstake Casey."

  Jordan gave him a grin of derision.

  "You an' yore grubstake," he jeered.

  Plimsoll said nothing more.

  As they neared the gap, translated by Phil in the unconsciousness thatBolsa had two meanings in Spanish, Jordan slowed up.

  "No shootin' in this deal," he warned. "Come to a show-down, Bourkewon't buck the law soon's we show papers. So long's he ain't beennotified the court is makin' a ward of the girl they ain't done nothin'wrong. But--if he resists, that's different."

  "I ain't goin' to be awful anxious to start shootin'," said Phil. "Theydone some pretty shootin' at the bridge that time. Sandy Bourke's atwo-handed lead flinger an' Soda-Water Sam's no slouch. Neither'sMormon. Me, I'll be peaceable 'less it's forced on me otherwise."

  They entered the split in the mesa. The cliffs shimmered in the heat,their outlines fuzzy. Branched and pillared cactus showed in gray-greenreptilian growths. The soft earth, through which here and there thevolcanic cores of the range were thrust, seemed as if it could supplythe paint shops of a nation with almost any hue desired, ready formixing with oil or water. Waves of heat beat between the walls of thecleft. The floor was fairly smooth, swept clean by occasionalcloud-bursts, save for the skeleton of a tree and another of a too-farwandering steer, both blanched white as the alkali-crusted boulders. Itwas nearly level going and the car pounded along, all the occupantslooking for trail sign. The mesa corridor, nowhere more than thirty feetwide, twisted and snaked, three hundred feet of sheer wall on eitherside topped by sloping cliffs mounting far higher toward the actual topof the mesa.

  "Keep an eye peeled for rain, Phil," said Jordan, "I'd sure hate to getcaught in here with a cloud-burst."

  "Right," answered Phil. "I c'ud see better if I had a drink. Plimsoll,you got somethin' on the hip, ain't you?"

  Plimsoll produced a bottle and the four of them drank the fieryunrectified, unstamped liquor. Ahead was an abrupt turn. Jordan slowed.Making the curve, a fence stretched across the gorge, reaching from wallto wall, a four-strand barrier of barbed-wire, strung on patent steelposts. Jordan braked with emergency. The sight of such a fence in such aplace was as unexpected as the sun-dried carcass of a steer would be onBroadway. Plimsoll and Jordan cursed, the former in pure anger, thelatter with some appreciation of the stratagem for delay.

  "We can tear it down quicker'n they fixed it," he said. "I've got a pairof nippers in the tool kit. They can't have driven in those posts deep.Come on."

  A voice floated down to them.

  "You leave that fence alone, gents. _If_ you please. I went to a heap oftrouble puttin' up that fence. It's _my_ fence."

  They looked up, to see Mormon seated on the top of a great boulder thathad land-slipped from the cliff into the gorge. From thirty feet abovethem he looked down, amiably enough, though there was a glint of bluedmetal in his right hand.

  "Hello, Jim Plimsoll," he went on. "I ain't seen you-all fo' quite awhile. You fellers out fo' a picnic?"

  Jordan advanced to the foot of the rock, producing his papers.

  "I have a bench warrant here to bring into court for the appointment ofa proper guardian, the child Molly Casey, she being a minor and withoutnatural or legal protectors. I've got yore name on these papers, MormonPeters, as one of the three parties with whom the girl is now domiciled.I warn you that you are obstructing the process of the law by yoreactions. You put up that gun an' come down here an' help to pull downthis fence, illegally erected on property not yore own. Otherwise you'resubject to arrest."

  "That is sure an awful long speech fo' a hot day," said Mormon equably."But I don't sabe that talk at all. Molly Casey ain't here, to beginwith. Nor she ain't been here. An' I don't sabe no obstruction of thelaw by settin' up a fence in a mesa canyon to round up broom-tails."

  One of the deputies snickered.

  "Broom-tails?" cried Jordan. "That's too thin. There's no mustangshangin' round a mesa like this, 'thout feed or water." He flushedangrily. He was short-tempered and he was certain the fence was a ruseto gain time, with Mormon left behind to parley. It all seemed to pointto Sandy Bourke making for the railroad.

  "You never kin tell about wild hawsses, or even branded ones," saidMormon pleasantly. "Ask Plimsoll. He picks 'em up in all sorts ofplaces."

  Plimsoll cursed. Mormon still held his gun conspicuously, and herestrained his own impulse to draw. Jordan wheeled on the gambler.

  "You keep out o' this, Jim Plimsoll," he said. "I'm runnin' this end ofit. He's talkin' against time. You come down an' help remove thisfence," he shouted up at the smiling Mormon, "or I'll start something.It ain't on yore property and it's hindering the carrying out of mywarrant."

  "It ain't on a public highway neither," retorted Mormon. "But I'll comedown. Don't you go to clippin' those wires an' destroyin' what _is_ myproperty." He slid down the rock and commenced to unbend the metalstraps that held the wire in place. Jordan and one of his men followedsuit with pliers from the motor kit. The job took several minutes.

  "You'll come along with us," said Jordan. "You lied about the girlcomin' this way. I've a notion to take you in for that. But I reckon youcan go back in the buckboard with yore partners."

  "Reckon I'll travel in the buckboard, when you catch up with it," saidMormon. "But I'll come erlong with you fo' a spell--of my own free will.I don't see no harm in takin' the gel visitin' anyway," he concluded ashe took an extra seat in the tonneau.

  Jordan made no answer but started the engine. The gorge began to narrowperceptibly, its floor slanted upward and the machine labored with amixture that constantly needed more air. The way zigzagged for half amile and then they came to a second fence. No buckboard was in sight.Beyond the wire the pitch of the ravine showed steeper yet, as itmounted to a sharp turn. Leaning against a post stood Soda-Water Sam,smoking a cigarette, his gun holster hitched forward, the butt of theweapon close to one hand. Jordan and his men leaped out as the carstopped, Mormon following more slowly.

  "Afternoon, hombres all," said Sam. "Joy-ridin'?"

  Jordan wasted no more explanations.

  "You take down this fence," he fairly shouted.

  "What fo'?"

  "Ask yore partner."

  "Sheriff claims we're cumberin' the landscape with our li'l' corral,Sam," said Mormon. "He's got a paper that gives him right of way, hesays. Seen anything of Molly Casey?"

  "Not for quite a spell. Go easy with them wires, Sheriff. Price ofwire's riz considerable."

  The second barrier down and the car through, Jordan ordered Sam to getin the car.

  "Jump, or I'll put the cuffs on you," he said.

  "Not this trip," replied Sam coolly. "No sense in my climbin' in there.Me an' Mormon's through with our li'l' job. We'll go back in thebuckboard. It's round the bend. I was jest goin' to hitch up."

  Jordan glared unbelievingly, yet Sam's words carried conviction.

  "Yo're sure goin' to have trouble turnin' yore car right here," Sam wenton imperturbably. "Kind of mean to back down, too. It's worse higher up.Matter of fac' the gap peters out jest round the turn. This is BolsaBoquete. Bolsa means purse, Sheriff, one of them knitted purse nets.Good name for it. Look for yo'self, if you don't believe me."

  Jordan and Plimsoll strode on up the pitch. Mormon followed, Sam stayedwith the two deputies. Around the bend stood the buckboard with thebuckskins in a patch of shadow under a scoop in the ending wall thatturned the so-called pass to a box canyon.

  "I told you the gel warn't erlong," said Mormon. "She and Sandy was withus fo' a spell. But they're goin' visitin' an' they shifted to saddleway back, out there by the spring beside the lava strip."

  Mormon's bland smile masked a sterner intent than show
ed in his eyes.Jordan, furious at being outwitted, dared not provoke open combat. Hehad nothing on which to make arrest of the two Three Star partners andhe was far from sure of his ability to do so under any circumstances.Mormon hitched up the buckskins, but followed the sheriff and thescowling, silent Plimsoll back to the car.

  "See that notch, way over to the no'th?" said Mormon, bent on exploitingthe situation to the full. "I reckon Sandy and the gel's shackin'through there about now. Hawss trail only. 'Fraid you won't catch him,Sheriff. They aim to ketch the seven o'clock train at Caroca. It's theon'y pass over the mesa. If Sandy had knowed you wanted him he mighthave waited. Why didn't you phone? Ninety mile' around the mesa, nearestway, an' it must be all of five o'clock now, by the sun."

  He stopped, puzzled by the change in the sheriff's face. Chagrin hadgiven place to exultation.

  "Catch the seven o'clock train at Caroca?" said Jordan. "Thanks for theinformation, Mormon. That schedule was changed last week when theypulled off two trains on the main line. The train leaves at nine-thirtyan', if I can't make ninety miles in four hours an' a half, I'll makeyou a present of my car. Stand back, both of you. No monkey businesswith my tires. Cover 'em, boys. The law's on my side, you two gabbingword-shooters."

  He handled the car wonderfully, backing and turning her, and, whileMormon and Sam stood powerless, the former crestfallen, the lattersardonically gazing at his partner, the machine went tilting, snortingdown the gorge.

  "You sure spilled the beans, Mormon," said Sam finally. "I'd havethought them three wives of yores 'ud have taught you the vally ofsilence."

  "I ain't got a damned word to say, Sam. But I'd be obliged if you'd kickme--good. Use yore heels, I see you got yore spurs on."