The Coyote Read online

  “It all come from my not knowin’ enough about the trails, I guess,” Rathburn explained lamely. “Got me on the far end of the hogback. Two of ’em. Had their guns in my face before I knew it. Couldn’t have drawed if I wanted to. They’d have shot me out of the saddle in a wink. All I could do was hand over the package an’ beat it.”

  “And they said you were a gunman,” said Sautee in derision. “How do I know anybody stopped you and robbed you? Maybe you’ve come back here with that story to cover up the theft of the money. I guess I made a mistake in ever thinking of trusting a man of your caliber.”

  “I was afraid of that,” said Rathburn. “I was afraid if anything like this was to happen you might think I was lying and was taking the money myself. But I fooled ’em, Mr. Sautee,” he finished in triumph.

  “What’s that?” Sautee asked sharply.

  “Look here,” cried Rathburn excitedly as he took off his hat and recovered the package he had put in it before starting toward the mine.

  He held up the package. “I was scared they might get wise an’ get the drop on me,” he said. “So I opened the package an’ took out what was in it and put it in my hat. They got the original package, all right, but it was stuffed with an old glove of mine. Here’s the money. I didn’t go right on to the mine for fear they’d find out their mistake an’ pot me from the timber. This is the money you gave me, minus the seals an’ the string an’ box. I wanted you to see that I was on the square.”

  Sautee’s eyes were bulging. “Give me that,” he gulped out.

  “Why––don’t you want me to take it to the mine?” asked Rathburn in surprise.

  “Hand that over,” ordered Sautee, reaching for the package.

  Rathburn drew away. “All right, Mr. Sautee,” he said in a complaining voice. “If you don’t want me to go through with the job you can back down, I guess. We’ll just make sure the money’s here, though.”

  Sautee leaped toward him.

  “Give me that package!” he cried angrily. “Do you hear me?”

  Rathburn warded him off, keeping the package at arm’s length away.

  “Just hold your horses,” he said coldly. “I reckon I know what I’m doing. You don’t trust me now, an’ I ain’t goin’ to take any chances with you. I’m goin’ to open this an’ show you that the money’s there, that’s all; I’m goin’ to show you that I’m giving you back what you gave me all fair an’ square.”

  Sautee’s face was ashen. His voice trembled as he spoke again: “Hand it over and get out of here. I’ve had enough trouble with you. I’ll take your word for it.”

  But Rathburn was undoing the paper wrappings.

  Again Sautee made a leap, but this time he met Rathburn’s left fist and staggered back, dropping into a chair. Rathburn looked at him coldly.

  “Funny you’re so anxious to take my word for things now, when a minute ago you said you couldn’t know but what I’d told that holdup story for a blind so’s I could get away with––this!”

  The wrappings fell away, revealing a wad of blank paper.

  Rathburn’s face froze. Sautee stared white-faced at what the other held in his hand. Then a peculiar glint came into his eyes and he looked at Rathburn narrowly.

  “So that’s the way of it,” he said sarcastically.

  Rathburn stuffed the paper into a pocket. Then he pulled a chair in front of the mines manager and sat down. He took out paper and tobacco from his shirt pocket and began to fashion a cigarette.

  “It sure looks bad for me, doesn’t it, Mr. Sautee?” he asked as he snapped a match into flame.

  “I thought you were going to return the money,” Sautee said sneeringly.

  “It looks bad two ways,” Rathburn went on as if he hadn’t heard the other’s comment. “First, if that package the holdups got had contained the money you could have swore it was a put-up job. I’d have had to beat it fast. Now, when I find that the package you gave to me was full of blank paper, you can say that I framed the holdup story and changed the money for paper in the bargain.”

  Sautee’s eyes were glowing. “An’ you’ll have to beat it, after all,” he jeered.

  “So it would seem,” mused Rathburn. “I fooled ’em, an’ to all appearances I fooled myself, although maybe I did take a peep into that package when I changed it in my room, Mr. Sautee.”

  The mines manager shifted in his chair; but he stared defiantly at Rathburn.

  “You’d have a hard time proving anything,” he said grimly.

  “That’s the trouble,” Rathburn admitted. “I’d sort of have to depend on you. I was thinkin’ maybe you double crossed me to make ’em think I was carrying the money while you sneaked it up some other way, Mr. Sautee.”

  “You can think what you want to,” said Sautee. “But you better start moving. If I was you, I’d get as far away from this town and Mannix as I could by daylight.”

  Rathburn’s manner underwent a lightning change as he threw away his partly finished cigarette.

  “You’re right,” he said crisply. “It’s time to start moving, Sautee.”

  He rose, and his right hand moved incredibly fast. Sautee gasped as he looked into the bore of Rathburn’s gun. He could hardly realize that Rathburn had drawn.

  “I fooled the night riders twice,” explained Rathburn with a peculiar smile. “First, when I let ’em get the wrong package, an’ again when I let ’em get the wrong gun. This gun an’ I work together like clock ticks when necessary. I’ll have to ask you to fork over the money that you drew from the bank an’ that should have been in that package, Sautee.”

  Rathburn’s eyes had narrowed and hardened; his words were cold and menacing––deadly in their absolute sincerity.

  “What––what do you mean?” stammered the mines manager.

  “I take it you’re not deaf,” snapped out Rathburn. “Maybe you don’t know it, Sautee, but so help me, you’re takin’ a chance by acting like you didn’t get me.”

  Sautee’s thin face was twitching in a spasm of commingled rage and fear.

  “The Coyote!” he breathed.

  “Who told you that?” demanded Rathburn on the instant.

  Sautee gripped the sides of his chair, and his face went a shade more pallid.

  “Carlisle,” he confessed in a strained voice.

  Rathburn laughed, and the mines manager shivered as he heard.

  “Now, Sautee, we’ll quit beatin’ around the bush,” Rathburn said through his teeth. “We’ll get down to business together, or I’ll begin to search your place here. But if I have to search, I’ll search alone. There ain’t so much chance of a shot bein’ heard way up the street; an’ there ain’t much chance of me bein’ caught on that hoss of mine if I don’t want to get caught. Also, I’m beginning to feel like I was in a hurry. Fork over that money!”

  Sautee looked just an instant longer into the eyes of the man towering over him. Then he rose, shaking, dry-lipped, and knelt down by the head of the bed. He lifted a piece of the carpet, opened a small trapdoor, reached inside, and brought out a bundle of bank notes. Rathburn took the money from him.

  Sautee still was kneeling as he heard Rathburn walk lightly to the front door and insert the key in the lock. He tried to cry out, but the effort resulted only in a croak in his throat. He heard the door close softly.

  “The Coyote!” he mumbled, passing a hand across his forehead.

  The echoes of galloping hoofs came to him as he scrambled to his feet and staggered toward the door.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XX

  APPEAL TO THE LAW

  For some moments Sautee stood in the darkened doorway staring up the moonlit street. The echoes of Rathburn’s flight had died away. The town was still. Sautee did not cry out, although he had recovered a considerable measure of his composure. He listened intently and finally grunted with satisfaction.

  “Up the road,” he muttered. “That means he is making for the pass over the mountains.”

  H
e walked hurriedly through his office into the living room. There he stood for a spell beside the table on which burned the lamp. His brows were knit into a heavy frown. He seemed debating a question in his mind. He tapped with nervous fingers on the table top.

  “Pshaw,” he said aloud, his face darkening. “He’s an outlaw.”

  He put on his coat and dropped an automatic pistol into a side pocket. After another moment of hesitation he blew out the light and walked quickly out of the place, locking the door after him.

  He hurried up the street to the jail. He found the jailer dozing in the little front office and did not attempt to disturb him. From the jail he hurried another short distance up the street and turned in at a little house located some distance back from the sidewalk. He knocked loudly on the door, and after a brief wait repeated the performance.

  A light showed, and the front door opened. Mannix, the deputy, looked out.

  “Let me in,” said Sautee briefly. “There’s been another robbery.”

  Mannix swung the door wide and stepped aside. He wore an ulster over his night clothes, and his bare feet were thrust into slippers. He scowled at the mines manager as he shut the door.

  “More of the company’s money gone?” he asked with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

  Sautee nodded. “Some twenty-odd thousand,” he said soberly; “and I believe the man that got it is responsible for the holdups that have been pulled off around here.”

  “Who got it?” Mannix asked quickly.

  “Rathburn,” Sautee announced.

  Mannix smiled in undisgusted contempt. “Your own fault,” he pointed out. “Wouldn’t give me a chance to investigate. Said you had a scheme that would show him up one way or the other. Wouldn’t let me in on it, an’ I was fool enough to let you have a try, although I don’t believe I could have held him anyhow.”

  “Just it,” said Sautee. “Wouldn’t have done any good to keep him in jail, and I thought I had a two-way scheme that would either show him up, as you say, or get me an excellent messenger. I intrusted Rathburn with a package to carry to the mines office. He’s a gunman, a desperado, probably a killer, and I thought it would appeal to him to be put in a place of trust. If he fell down––then I figured you’d be able to get him like you said you could.”

  Mannix snorted. “After tryin’ a fool scheme you want to shift the business on my shoulders, eh? Well, Sautee, you’ve never shown much confidence in my ability, an’ you don’t have to show any now. It looks to me as if the finishing of this play is all up to you.”

  “Oh, no, it isn’t,” said Sautee confidently. “You’ll be most mighty glad to take out after him.”

  “Suppose you wait an’ see how quick I start,” Mannix retorted angrily. “What’s the matter? Didn’t he carry out your orders? I suppose you gave him a bundle of money to make off with. Sautee, I believe you’re a fool!”

  The mines manager winced and then frowned. “I gave him the money to carry to the mine,” he confessed without flinching. “He came back with a story about being held up, and when he saw that I didn’t believe him and intended to turn him back to you, he pulled a gun on me and made his get-away. He lit out through town for the road to the hogback and the pass over the mountains.”

  Mannix laughed harshly. “You’re clever, Sautee; there’s no getting away from how clever you are. Now you want me to go chasing up to the hogback to head him off. Well, I’m tellin’ you that I don’t know where he’s gone, an’ I ain’t starting out after him at any two o’clock in the morning. If you’d have kept your nose out of this he’d still be all safe an’ quiet in jail. That’s final, so you might as well clear out an’ give me a chance to get some sleep.”

  Sautee merely smiled after this speech from the disgusted deputy.

  “Since I intrusted Rathburn with that job I’ve found out something about him which takes the case out of my hands entirely,” he said with a smirk. “I don’t care if you don’t start after him till day after to-morrow. But if your chief––the sheriff––finds out that you didn’t hit the trail to-night he’ll likely ask you for your badge!”

  “Are you threatening me?” Mannix demanded loudly.

  “No, I’m only stating facts,” Sautee replied stoutly. “That man who calls himself Rathburn is The Coyote!”

  Mannix didn’t start. He appeared hardly interested. Only the keen, penetrating quality of the steady gaze he directed at the mines manager betrayed the fact that his faculties were aroused.

  “The Coyote hit back for Arizona after that deal he was mixed up in over in Dry Lake, across the range,” he said with conviction.

  “Oh, he did?” Sautee sneered openly. “Well, you had him in jail last night, and you can probably get him again, if you start right out after him.”

  “What makes you think this fellow Rathburn is The Coyote?” demanded Mannix.

  “Carlisle knows him by sight, and he told me.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?” the deputy asked sternly.

  “Because Carlisle didn’t tell me until after I told him what I’d done,” Sautee evaded. “Then I didn’t have the––ah––nerve, under the circumstances, to come to you with the news. At that, I thought he might go through with it.”

  Mannix swore softly. “Giving a pay-roll messenger’s job to a man who’s got a price on his head a mile long!” he exclaimed savagely. “Why didn’t Carlisle come to me?”

  Sautee shrugged. “I’m not responsible for Carlisle. Maybe he didn’t feel sure of it, and maybe he’s just naturally jealous of The Coyote and wants to bring him in himself. Carlisle is a gunman, as you know, and a good one.”

  “I know it,” snapped out Mannix; “and I know both Carlisle an’ you are a pair of bunglers. I guess you wanted to show me up, but you’ve gone about it in a way that won’t get you anything nor hurt me, I’ll see to that.”

  Sautee smiled as the deputy hurried out of the room.

  In a few minutes Mannix returned fully dressed and carrying a rifle. The deputy’s face was severe, and his eyes burned with the fire of the man hunt. He signaled impatiently to the mine manager to follow him. As they walked across the little porch and around to the rear of the house where Mannix kept his car the deputy talked fast.

  “I’m goin’ up to the hogback. He ain’t had start enough to get up there yet on a horse, an’ I’ll beat him to it. It’ll be daylight in about two hours, an’ I’ll be there till daylight. If you think you can do it, get out some of the men an’ cover the trails to the mine on horses. He might try to get over that way. Then you better take your car and go up to the mine by the road as fast as you can to tell ’em to be on the lookout. Watch out on the hogback, for I’ll be up there, parked with my lights out.”

  He had reached his small garage when he finished giving his instructions, and Sautee, with a promise to do as he had been told as quickly as possible, ran down the street toward the Red Feather, where a light still shone.

  The news that The Coyote and Rathburn were one and the same, and that he had robbed the mining company that night and was probably responsible for the other holdups, created an immediate sensation among the few gamblers in the resort. Sautee added to the excitement by quoting rewards at random, and the forming of two posses to comb the trails to the mine and beyond was under way at once.

  Sautee ran to his office and got out his small car. He stopped at the Red Feather and took one of the men from the mine with him. He stopped again when he reached the Carlisle cabin, pounded on the doors, and looked in the windows. But the place was deserted, and Sautee’s features were wreathed in perplexity as he went back to his car.

  “That’s queer,” he said as he climbed into his seat.

  “What’s that?” asked the man beside him.

  But Sautee’s answer was drowned in the roar of the motor as he sped up the road toward the hogback and the mine.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXI

  A CAPTURE

  When Rathburn rode away fro
m Sautee’s quarters he galloped up the street straight for the road which led west out of town. He pulled his horse down to a trot when he reached the Carlisle cabin and made another brief inspection which showed that the place was deserted. Then he struck into the trail behind the cabin and began the ascent toward the Dixie Queen.

  He rode slowly through the timber, depending upon his mount to keep to the dim trail, but in the open stretches in meadows and on the crest of ridges where the timber thinned, he made better time. On this occasion one would not have noted an attitude of uncertainty about his manner or movements. He had paid strict attention to the barn man’s description of this trail, and he had determined general directions the day before. Rathburn was not a stranger to the art of following new trails; nor was he the kind to become confused in a locality with which he was not familiar unless he became absolutely lost. In this instance it would be a hard matter to become lost, for the ridges rose steadily upward toward the summits of the high mountains, the town was in the narrow valley below, and the foothills ranged down to the desert in the east.

  He was halfway to the mine when he saw the gleam of an automobile’s lights in the road far below.

  “Sautee got busy right quick,” he said aloud. “I ’spect they’re hustlin’ up to head me off at the hogback. They’re figuring I’d try to go back the way I come in.”

  He smiled grimly in the soft moonlight, and his gaze turned toward the east, where the stars glowed over the shadowy reaches of desert which he could not see, but the very thought of which stirred something in his soul.

  Then he pushed on up the trail toward the mine. For more than an hour he rode, and then, when he came to the crest of a ridge just below the Dixie Queen, he saw the lights of an automobile in the road to the right of him.

  “Now what?” he ejaculated. “They ain’t figurin’ I’d come up here!”

  He sat his horse with features again wreathed in perplexity. He scowled at the approaching gleam of light. In the direction of the hogback he could see nothing. Nor could he see the horsemen already on the trail below him and on the ridge trail to eastward.