Neither the words nor the tone sounded right to Hal. He said blithely:' Shove it under the door. I'll leave a dime tip for you at the room clerk's desk, Mullins.'
Half a dozen bullets crashed through the door. Those inside the room heard the sound of hurried feet racing down the corridor. A minute later, an engine started beneath the window. Hal looked out and saw an automobile tearing past the postoffice with gathering speed.
THROUGH the window of the bare room he called his office, Tick Black watched a car roll into the yard and three men descend from it. Before they had taken five steps toward the house, he knew they had no good news to report. Mullins and Frawley moved heavily, with no spring of victory in their gross bodies, and even Brick Fenwick's light, quick-stepping figure seemed to drag.
When they came into the room, Black was sitting at his desk. He was a small lean man past middle life dressed in levis tucked into dusty run-down-at-the-heel boots. His blue shirt was old and patched, and the white Stetson on his head had not been new within the memory of any of his associates. No razor had touched his face for days. He looked as ruthless as an old gray wolf.
His flinty eyes passed from one to another of the men and came to rest on those of Fenwick. The thin lips of the cattleman were tightly closed. Whatever news his gunmen had to tell would be told without any help from him.
'We didn't get either of them,' Brick blurted out bluntly.
Tick did not say anything. He had long ago learned the value of silence. The blaze in his bleak eyes was enough.
'They were at the Frontera,' Mullins explained. 'Right after supper they went up to their room. We never saw them again till they were getting in the bus for the flying field, and three or four other guys were going out too.'
'Soon as they reached Tucson, they took the kid out to the camp and left him there,' Frawley contributed. 'We only met Stevens and Wall.'
'Just chinned with them awhile and maybe bellied up to the bar for a drink or two,' Black suggested with bitter sarcasm.
'We couldn't cut loose right in the lobby of the Frontera, could we?' demanded Frawley. 'With a lot of tourists standing around.'
A shutter dropped over the eyes of the ranchman, a film which left them opaque and blank. 'So it comes to this, that I sent a bunch of boys to mill,' he said gently, with biting malice.
Brick took up the challenge instantly. 'Maybe you'd better go yourself next time.'
'Maybe I had.' Black's splenetic laughter had as much mirth as the lash of a whip. 'This Stevens certainly has the Indian sign on the lot of you. He holds you up in a poker game. He whales the stuffing out of Frawley. At Big Bridge he kills Hanford and doesn't get a scratch, though you spill a pint of lead at him. And all you dare do at Tucson is to swap the time of day with him. I wish I had a Mr. Big like that on this ranch.'
'He's a lucky stiff,' Mullins growled.
'He makes his own luck, and he's not a stiff yet. If he were, everything would be nice and dandy.' The little cattleman leaned forward and rapped sharply on the top of the table with his knuckles, an appalling malignity in his eyes. 'Can't you get it into your thick skulls that the fellow knows enough to have you all fried?'
'I don't think so. He's just guessing.' Frawley's big fist made the table jump when it thumped down. 'Tell us what you would have done, Mr. Smart Man. I mean last night — at Tucson.'
'Used my head,' Black flung back. 'I can think of a dozen ways to have got at him. You might have sent a bellhop up with a telegram, been waiting in the corridor, and shot him into a rag doll when he came to the door.'
'We tried that,' Mullins defended. 'Not a telegram, but a jug of ice water. Stevens got on to who we were and was scared to open the door.'
'He's too clever and too tough for you, looks like.'
'We scared the living daylights out of him anyhow,' Frawley boasted. 'Before we left we poured lead through the door.'
Anger leaped into Black's thin high voice. 'You blundering lunkheads, you haven't sense enough to pound sand into a rathole. I send you to do a job. You not only fail to deliver, but you have to advertise to everybody in Arizona what you are trying to pull off.'
'We didn't do any such thing,' denied Frawley. 'Nobody knows who we were. We went down the back stairs and lit out without being seen.'
'That will be enough from you, Mr. Black,' Fenwick warned in a low, even voice. 'I do your dirty work, but no old blister like you can sling names at me.'
Black looked into the hard shallow eyes and swallowed his rage. 'All right. All right. Naturally I am annoyed. But we'll forget the past and start from the chunk again. Did you find out why Stevens was going out to the flying field?'
'Sure,' Mullins said. 'We trailed out after the bus. He and Wall chartered a plane to get back here.'
'Then he's at the M K?'
'We wouldn't know,' Fenwick answered dryly. 'Maybe he went to New York — or Africa. All we know is that he told the company he was going home and that he headed this way.'
'A plane landed in the valley this morning, somewhere near the Seven Up. He and Wall must have been on it.'
'So what do we do?' Mullins asked.
'It will be as easy to stop his clock tomorrow morning as it was today. If he had been at home this morning, Jim would have got him. We're still sitting pretty, boys 'Black's smile was suave and friendly.
'You're electing me to take the risk,' Frawley growled.
'That's history, Jim,' Fenwick reminded him. 'We drew cards for it night before last.'
'Nothing said about me spending my life at it, was there?' Frawley inquired acidly. 'Three times yesterday I tried to get the bird. From the hill opposite his ranch house, and he wasn't home. Again at Big Bridge. And last night at the Frontera.'
'Don't you count the time you beat him up at the Lovell ranch?' Tick asked, a masked barb in his innocent voice.
'By God, you'll go too far sometime,' Frawley warned. 'And what you got to do with it? You didn't draw cards with us. You didn't even put money in the pot like the rest of us.'
'I'll right that now,' Black said. 'I'll match what all three of the other boys put up. Count me in for a hundred and fifty plunks.'
'Fair enough, Jim,' Fenwick said. 'When you get this fellow alone, blast him. Then slip away without being seen. That's all there is to it.'
'That wasn't all there was to it when we had him in front of the restaurant,' the ex-foreman complained.
'We didn't get him alone. His friends poured out to help him. You'll catch him out in the brush some day.'
'Easy as falling off a log — for you fellows who haven't got to do it,' Frawley sneered.
Black passed to new business. 'There's another thing, boys. The Government can't prove that this spy they sent here didn't fall off the cliff accidentally. But even if they are satisfied he did, another man is likely to be sent in his place. I'm a little worried about this tenderfoot who came to work at the M K. If you get a chance to talk with him or with any of the M K riders, find out all you can as to his past and how he spends his time.'
Fenwick agreed that would not be a bad idea. It might be only a coincidence that he and Stevens had met at the Rest Easy, or, on the other hand, they might have come together by appointment. Why not throw a scare into the fellow — tell him he was getting mixed up in a dangerous situation? If he was just a maverick who had drifted in on the lookout for a job, he would pull his freight rather than stay and get into trouble. If he sat tight, they could figure him as possibly a Government man.
That struck Black as a good idea, provided Fenwick was very careful not to tell him anything damaging. The
