“Como esta usted, señor?” said Curly Bill with an easy smile, reining in his pony.
Don Miguel’s air was one of guarded aloofness.
“Buenas dias,” he returned with a touch of chill in his voice.
“Fine day.”
Curly Bill threw one leg nonchalantly over the pommel of his saddle and drawing a sack of tobacco and a package of yellow paper from his pocket rolled a cigarette.
Well, yes, Don Miguel agreed, it was a fine day. But just a little hot. So for a moment they exchanged casual courtesies. Curly Bill spoke Spanish with all the inflections and vernacular idioms of a Mexican. Don Miguel began to thaw.
“I thought it possible,” he said apologetically. “Well, never mind. It imports nothing. But, by the Virgin, one cannot be too careful when travelling these wild trails. I have never yet met with misadventure. But I have been warned that sometimes robbers lurk in these lonely mountains.”
Curly Bill threw back his head and laughed.
“Robbers, eh? No, señor. What few people there are over here on this side of the line are all right. Just plain honest people trying to make a living.”
Curly Bill himself, if Don Miguel happened to be curious, was just a cowboy looking for stray cattle. The headquarters ranch of his outfit was way up yonder—he waved his hand—way up yonder to the north. If, possibly, the señor was going in that direction, he might see the ranch buildings with the windmill off to the right. Don Miguel would keep his eye out. He was bound for Tucson.
“Ah, Tucson,” returned Curly Bill with a sly chuckle, “is muy bueno town. You bet. Plenty pretty girls. A baile every night. Good hard liquor. You and these hombres of yours will have one high old time. Eh?”
Don Miguel smiled. This rough-looking stranger after all was a very pleasant fellow. But the caravan was losing time. It must be moving.
“Vaya con Dios.” Don Miguel lifted his sombrero with the courtly politeness of a Spanish gentleman. “Go with God.”
“So long,” said Curly Bill.
As the mule train, with a huge clashing of bells, got under way, Curly Bill again shot a swift furtive glance to the rim of the canyon wall. Nothing stirred. Rocks and chaparral thickets, bathed in peaceful sunshine, were as still and silent as death.
Riding slowly along the length of the caravan, Curly Bill gave genial salutation to the dusky outriders as he passed each one in turn.
“Como le va?” he called jovially to the two Mexicans trailing behind as rear guard.
“Bien y usted?” they shouted back gaily through the dust.
But while their friendly looks still rested on him, Curly Bill’s dimpling geniality vanished with the suddenness of an extinguished candle. His face darkened like thunder. His eyes sputtered fire like twin black devils. With the quickness of a wildcat’s spring, he snapped out his six-shooter. Twice he pulled the trigger. The two shots were so close together they sounded almost as one. With the smile of greeting still on their lips, the two Mexicans slumped from their saddles, thumped upon the ground, and lay still.
As if the report of Curly Bill’s gun had been a signal, a dozen rifles spouted flame from along the rim of the canyon wall. Among the rocks and tangled chaparral, steeped a moment before in wilderness stillness, ambushed outlaws rose against the sky as by devil’s necromancy. Through drifting blue veils of smoke they loomed like phantom demons, pumping lead from their rifles with the steadiness of death machines.
“Get ’em all, boys.”
“Give the greasers hell.”
Death leaped upon the Mexicans in the canyon as a mountain lion springs from a tree upon the back of a deer. Caught in the trap, with no chance for their lives, the smugglers, here, there, yonder, pitched to headlong death from their plunging ponies. Their death cries went up in poignant tumult to the still mountains. The mules, stampeding, swept over the bodies in a whirlwind of terror. … Throwing his hands aloft in wild death spasm, a bronzed horseman dived to the ground and rolled over in a somersault. … Another, wounded to the death, fought hard to the last against dying; tottering weakly he clenched his saddle pommel; he bent down slowly, his eyes glazing, his face stricken gray, contorted in agony; as he fell, he wrapped his arms blindly around a foreleg of his flying pony and was jerked to the earth, his body sprawling with a thud at full length. … One was carried by his maddened horse to the top of a high embankment against the canyon wall; a bright red spot leaped out upon his forehead. “Mother of God,” he screamed as, plunging twenty feet downward, he crashed through the tops of willow trees into the creek. … Don Miguel, borne down the canyon in the hurly-burly, was struck by a bullet between the shoulder blades; he was flung to the ground, his rifle whirling in mad parabola. But Don Miguel had knightly courage as well as knightly courtesy. Staggering to his knees, he pointed his six-shooter in a weakly wobbling hand toward the heights of flaming death; his bullet whistled harmlessly. But this was the smuggler chieftain; he must be killed quickly. A concentrated fire was turned upon him; he sank gently to the ground as if composing himself for sleep. … A handsome stripling—he was only sixteen—raced in wild flight up the canyon. Curly Bill himself from his place of concealment behind a rock at the edge of the massacre fired a half-dozen shots after him, cutting leaves from the trees about the lad’s head. “José,” shouted the boy at the top of his voice, “Pancho, Manuel.” These were his brothers. But they will not hear his frantic calls to them. They lay crumpled
