Trouble Shooter (1974) (2 page)

What had worried Pete Melford? Why had the writer of the letter to Cindy lied? He had said that Pete had not arrived home but had been killed en route. But Hopalong's letter had been posted from a place called Sipapu after Pete had returned to the ranch.

"Do you know where a place called Sipapu is?" Hopalong asked Taylor.

"Never heard of it."

"We'll ask in Kachina. Let's look around."

Despite a careful search, no sign of a ranch could be found. No fence posts remained, no ash heaps, no ruined walls, no

marks of a foundation. Where the log cabin was said to have stood was a tree all of three feet in diameter.

"The old boy must have been crazy," Taylor said reluctantly. "Too bad. Cindy needs the place. She's about broke."

"She sold her other place?"

'Teah, but there were debts to pay and she gave each of the old hands a bonus. That left her mighty short."

Hopalong moved Topper into the shade of the big tree. If Pete Melford had a cabin, this would have been the site, but this tree was at least forty years old, and there was no indication that anything had ever been built in the vicinity. A well had been mentioned in the letter, but there was no sign of one, nor of the corrals, or sheds.

"Look!" Taylor said suddenly. "We've got visitors!"

Four riders were trotting their horses toward them. All were armed. Drawing up, the nearest of them, a lean-bodied man with an angular, hungry face, looked quickly from Rig Taylor to Hopalong. "Howdy! Huntin' for somethin?"

"We're looking for the PM outfit," Taylor said. "It was supposed to lay about here."

"PM?" The rider shook his head, his small eyes growing wary. "Never heard of it. No such brand around here or I'd know."

"You never heard of Pete Melford?"

"Can't say I have. Now that's settled, you hombres better slope. We've been missin' cattle, an' folks hereabouts don't take kindly to strangers ridin' their range."

"Can't say that I blame you," Hopalong said, brushing a large fly from Topper's neck. "You own this land?"

The man's face hardened. "That's right! We run it, an' while we ain't huntin' trouble, we can handle any that comes our way, so start movin'!"

Rig Taylor stepped his horse forward. He was facing squarely toward the four, one hand holding the bridle reins, the other resting on his thigh. He looked alert and ready, and Hopalong shot a quick, interested glance toward the sandy-haired young rider. Whatever else Taylor might prove to be, he had nerve. "Maybe," Taylor suggested, "you hombres don't want trouble. Well, neither do we, but we've been shot at and we don't care for it none. We're lookin' for a ranch that's supposed to be right around here, and we expect to keep looking until we find it."

"Not on this land you don't!" The lantern-jawed man kneed his mount forward a step, his hand relaxed and ready. "This is Box T range. Five miles in three directions and twenty miles north she is all Box T, so get off an' stay off!"

"Oh yeah? Well, I have a letter that describes--"

"Taylor..." Hopalong cut in. "Give me a chance to ask this gent a couple of questions before we go half-cocked."

For a moment Taylor looked surprised, then he backed off. "Go on, ask away."

"You're ramroddin' the Box T?" Hopalong asked mildly.

"That ain't neither here nor there! Bill Saxx ramrods the T, but I'm segundo. I'm Vin Carter!"

"Who owns the Box T?"

"Colonel Justin Tredway."

"Thanks," Cassidy said dryly. "I'd say that for an outfit that don't want trouble, you're somewhat on the prod. Now, where would a man find this Tredway? On the Box T?"

"When he's not there, you'll find him at the Mansion House in Kachina," Carter said disagreeably, "but you'd do better not to try to run any blazers on him. He's plumb salty!"

Rig Taylor fell in unwillingly beside Hopalong. They rode that way, their backs to the watchers. Taylor was angry and his eyes blazed with resentment. "Don't know's I can blame you," he said, "but I figured you'd back my play."

"Why?" Hopalong turned and smiled at him. "Why walk blind into a shooting match that would get you nowhere? Dead or wounded, you would be of no use to Miss Blair. Didn't it seem obvious enough that it was what they wanted? To me they seemed just a little too much on the prod for honest ranch hands. Where I've been riding, hands swap yarns and tobacco when they meet on the open range, but these hombres had chips on their shoulders."

That was what he had been thinking, and Hopalong's suspicions were aroused by the too-easy irritability of these men. If Pete Melford had said the PM was here, Pete was not wandering in his mind. He had always been a meticulous man when it came to directions, and if his range had been appropriated by the Box T, which seemed possible, then these men were wary of anyone examining the range.

"You think this outfit shot at me?" Rig asked suddenly.

"I doubt it. It could have been them, but more likely it was somebody else. If that bullet had hit you, it could be passed off as an accident. A stray bullet--a hunter who didn't look at what he was shooting, or a dozen reasons."

He reined Topper over to avoid a gully cutting into the range. "Have you been looking around very much?"

"Over a week. I can't believe this setup. The peaks, the rivers, and the town are right. The only thing that's missing is the ranch."

"Maybe that's why they tried to kill you. Maybe they had this place rigged for any casual examination, but when you stayed around, it began to worry them."

"That's logical enough, but who shot at me, that's what I want to know."

Hopalong shook his head. "You've got me. There's either two outfits mixed up in this or one with a mighty shrewd head behind it. I doubt if this bunch of Box T riders knew anything about that shot."

"You may be right." Taylor indicated a tall cottonwood. "One thing is sure--the house never stood there. That tree is all of forty feet and it never grew that high in three years! I sure hate to go back to Cindy an' tell her she ain't got a ranch."

From the site where the ranch was supposed to be to the town of Kachina was all of ten miles, and the two rode it almost in silence, each busy with his own thoughts. For the first five miles the trail led across country through range-land and scattered timber. Finally for a half mile it followed a high-walled canyon. Once on the main trail to town, the going was better, for it was a prairie road from which the rocks had been removed.

"Freighters built this road," Taylor commented. "They told me that in town."

Hopalong drew Topper to a halt and nodded to indicate a narrow, winding trail, long unused, that led back into the brush and up into the hills. "Where does that go?"

"Heard about that," Taylor admitted. "It goes back to an old mining camp beyond Chimney Creek Canyon. No way to get there now as the old freighter's bridge across the canyon is down and nobody's been up there in years. Beyond it there's a big mesa. They call it Babylon Mesa or Babylon Pastures. It's supposed to be haunted."

"Haunted?"

"Yeah. Some sort of religious folk live up there. Folks in Kachina are scared of them. A few years back somebody did start up there--that was when the bridge was still in that led to that mining camp. He found some dead men lying around up there, dead of nobody knows what. Three or four were miners from the camp, and at least one was one of the Brothers from the mesa. He wore a brown robe, like one of them old-time priests. No marks on any of 'em. This feller got out, and right fast."

"And they say it is haunted?"

"Uh-huh. Queer lights seen up there at times... That's what they say. I hear the grass used to be mighty good up there."

Hopalong's mind reverted to Pete Melford and his long-overdue letter. Obviously something had warned Pete of impending trouble, and fearing his niece would be left with nothing, he had written to Hopalong for help. But the letter had come too late to help Pete, and there was a big question if it had not come too late to help Cindy Blair. But it might be worth a try.

What evidence did he have that anything was wrong? Pete

himself was the best warranty of that, for Pete had been a practical, unimaginative man. If he said he had a ranch, then he had one. Nobody who knew him would ever doubt that. Furthermore, while such a man might be thrown from a horse, and any man might be, with Pete it was highly improbable. He was the soul of caution. As many horses as he had broken, and bad horses, he had never been hurt. And the horses he himself rode were always carefully trained and gentle.

The facts were, however, that Hopalong knew very well that Pete had survived his return to the ranch. His own letter proved that. It also proved that the author of the letter to Cindy was a liar or else did not know what he was talking about.

"Look," Hopalong suggested, "you go to the Mansion House. Stand around the bar and keep your ears open for any gossip. Listen to anything you hear, for any of it may be important. In the meantime, spot this Colonel Tredway if you can. Don't talk to him, just locate him and see who his friends are. He seems to be the one who has possession of the land; that's 1 as good a place to start as any.

"Meanwhile, I'll do some checking. I've an idea or two that will bear looking into."

Leaving Topper at the livery stable, Hopalong stepped outside and paused there, breathing the cool air of evening and studying the town.

Kachina stood on the edge of a small flat among rolling chaparral-covered hills. The population might have been two hundred people, and most of the buildings were new. Obviously the biggest part of town had only been built in the past few years.

There were older buildings, however, of which the livery stable was one. Behind the stable, which stood on the north side of the street, were the corrals. To the left of the stable was a narrow passage and then a general store, a lawyer's office, the residence of the town's one doctor. Farther on were two other homes, then another store, the Mansion House, and beyond it, the express office.

On the south side of the street opposite the Mansion House was the Elk Horn Saloon, and east of it ran a row of false-fronted buildings, one of which was empty, then the assayer's office, a harness- and shoe-repair shop, the town's blacksmith, the Roundup Saloon, and opposite the livery stable, the Chuck Wagon Restaurant. Behind the Chuck Wagon was a long building of adobe that did duty for a bunkhouse, providing for those travelers who either could not afford the comparative luxury of the Mansion House or who preferred, for reasons of their own, a certain degree of anonymity.

A lean-jawed man with stooped shoulders cared for the horses. When he finished, he came out into the street, lighting a pipe. "Not much of a town," Hopalong said. "Been here long?"

The oldster shook his head. "Ain't nobody been here long. It's a new town ... grew up around Colonel Tredway's freighting operation. Back in the old days there was a fair strike out past Chimney Creek Canyon, so they built that road and started freightin' to 'em. The mine went bust and so did the town, but by then Tredway was doin' business elsewhere and he started his own town right here. He built the Mansion House and a couple of other buildings." The man gestured about, vaguely. "I come here when she opened up. Folks heard there was gold in

the crick down the road about a half mile. A whole flock of us come a-runnin'. There was a mite o' color, but not much. I had me a couple o' horses, so I started rentin' 'em out. There's been a lot of stuff that was freighted in that just passed through to other camps. They made a sight o' money out of that freightin'."

Hopalong glanced at the stable. 'This building looks mighty old," he suggested.

The old man nodded. "She was here when the town started. Folks say there was a bunch of outlaws hung out hereabouts. Don't know nothin' about it myself. They was two, three old deserted buildin's arounv when I come in here."

"Ever hear of a man named Pete Melford? Or the PM Ranch?"

"Melford? No, can't say's I have." The old man pondered the question. "Nobody never lived in Kachina of that name. Leastways nobody who stayed aroun' none."

"How about Sipapu?"

"That's it___The strike I mentioned. Been nearly a ghost

town for years. The stage used to stop for mail, but then the bridge got bad and they moved the route."

Hopalong watched the shadows gathering in the lee of the hills and along the east side of the buildings. It was cool and pleasant in the evening in this country, and there was good grass. No wonder Pete had liked it and had settled here. Leave it to such a canny rancher to pick a place like this. Somewhere around the country Pete would have left his sign, for he was a man with habits that stayed with him, and Hopalong Cassidy had known the man too long not to be aware of those habits. Pete had been naturally fastidious. He liked to see things cared

for, and he liked things in their place. Also, he was a man who thought of eventualities and prepared for them. Perhaps he had even prepared for this one.

Something else came to Hopalong's mind. "What do you know about Babylon Pastures?" he asked suddenly.

He was unprepared for the reaction. "Don't know nothin' about it!" The old man's voice was suddenly harsh and ugly. "I don't want to know nothin' about it, now or never. That ain't no place for man nor beast, an' you're better askin' no questions about it!"