Boy's Cinema (1935-39)

20 "Jim Bowie's safe!" lie panted. "Clark, .Jim Bowie':- safe! He's a-headin' into the encampment now!" He was right. Astride a Lathered bronc, the veteran frontiersman was bearing down on the scene from an easterly direction, and within another thirty seconds was drawing rein amidst his comrades of the wagon-train, who pressed around him with exclamations of thankfulness and congratulation. Bowie interrupted them, however, calling for silence. Then he addressed himself to Clark. "Listen." he rapped out. "the Rider o' the Painted Stallion is in danger. I heard that hombre Dupray tellin' his men that he'd seen her camped up in a gulch called Lost Canyada. an' I heard him say that three o' the gang had better start out and get her. Him an' his pack o' cut-throats seemed so het-up o\ ei the prospect of finishin' her off at last that I managed to make .my getaway an' grab myself a bronc, and here I am." Clark Stuart's features had become tense. "Lost Canyada!" he reiterated. " Where's that ?" "As far as I could make out from what Dupray said." Bowie rejoined, "it's about four miles north of Bed Ridge, on the " "I know Lost Canyada," Davy Crockett broke in. "Clark, I'll trail along with you an' Buwie an' show you the way." "Yeah, an' you can count me in on this, too," said Jamison. "Hey. listen. I reckon this needn't interfere with our drive against the gang's hide-out. While you and I an' Davy an' Bowie are makin' for Lost Canyada, Clark, the rest o' the boys can start for Dupray's headquarters. After we've horned-in on this attempt to wipe out the Rider, we can swing south and join up with 'em somewhere near Tascosa Bend." Clark acquiesced in this suggestion, and. after bidding Kit Carson remain at the encampment, he and Jamison and Davy Crockett took horse and spurred in a north-easterly direction with Bowie, .leaving the other members of the wagon-train to set forth at a more leisurely pace for Tascosa Bend, on the River Los Lunas. The hoofs of their ponies drumming on the sunbaked ground. Clark and his three companions galloped onward into the hills, little dreaming that they were following a course that was to lead them into a death-trap. Not for a moment did any of them suspect that they were the intended victims of a cunning plot whose motive was murder—and least of all did Jim Bowie suspect that he had been made the chief instrument of that plot, the innocent bearer of false tidings. With Davy Crockett acting as guide, the quartet pressed on through the hills, and an hour after leaving the wagon encampment outside Santa Fe they might have been seen approaching a craggy, rock-strewn ravine that was hemmed in amongst the remote, barren mountains. "That's Lost Canyada light ahead." announced Davy Crockett. The four of them eased up, and. their bronos travelling at a walk, moved for- ward into the gulch, unaware as they passed between the sloping walls of it that sinister eyes were watching them from above—the eyes of gunmen who lurked amid groups of boulders that littered the rims of the two acclivities. Zamora and his cronies were in posi- tion, and well concealed, and there was not one of the dago's confederates whose trigger finger was not itching to September i7t.li. i!>ss. BOY'S CINEMA send a bullet speeding towards the quartet who had entered (lie canyada. But Zamora had been insistent that the victims should be allowed to pro- ceed well into the ravine before a shot was fired, and the outlaws held them- selves in restraint. Zamora himself would give the signal to rain death upon those four men below, and the signal would take the form of a bullet discharged by him and directed at Clark Stuart. Thus had it been arranged when Clark and his com- rades had been seen approaching from afar. Slowly the U.S. Government agent and his friends advanced along the rock- strewn floor of the canyada, scanning- it in anticipation of espying the Rider or her stallion, never casting so much as a glance in the direction of the twin ridges from which their hidden foes were looking down on them. And yet, oddly enough, each one of the four began to feel conscious of a sense of misgiving, a nameless apprehension, a vague uneasiness that stole upon them as they penetrated deeper into the defile.* It has been said that men who live cheek-by-jowl with danger sometimes develop a curious instinct, a sixth sense, which tends to warn them of an enemy's presence before that enemy has revealed himself to the eye. Such might have been the case now as far as Clark, Davy Crockett, Jamison and Bowie were concerned, for there was not one of them whose career had not been fraught with hairbreadth escapes and desperate situations. On the other hand, it may have been the deathly silence which reigned over the gulch that, communicated to them a feeling of tension and nerviness. At any rate, none of them gave any audible indication of foreboding, each trying to dismiss the premonition from his mind as something that was unfounded. "It's mighty quiet, an' if the Rider's around she ain't, keepin' much of a look-out," Bowie said presently, "or she'd have spotted us by now an' showed herself." Clark fidgeted in his saddle. "Maybe we got here too late," he muttered anxiously. "Maybe those outlaws have been and gone. Maybe she's -" He checked all at once, for his keen eyes had detected imprints on the ground ahead—the imprints of hoofs which led from the eastern end of the defile and then split up. one set of tracks turning off up the canyada's left- hand slope, the other swinging across to the slope on the right. "Say," he ejaculated, "a whole bunch of horsemen seem to have been here pretty recently, unless I'm mis- taken. Take a look at these." He dismounted to examine the im- prints more closely, and his companions followed suit. Then, having scrutinised those tracks, Clark raised his glance towards the summits of the acclivities on each side of the defile, and it. was as he was conning the ridge on the right that he espied a man's head lift into view above a craggy boulder. He recognised the face that was dis- closed. It was the face of Macklin, and at sight of that ruffian the big frontiersman gave vent to an exclama- tion and whipped his six-gun from its holster. Realising he had been spotted. Macklin ducked. In the same instant ('lark's revolver belched flame and had. the smashing report of the shot splitting the silence of the canyada startlingly, Every Tuesday the bullet clipping splinters from the boulder behind which Macklin had- crouehed down again. And then pandemonium broke loose in that remote ravine of the northern hills. From all points along the rims of the twin promontories that over- looked the defile the forty-fives of Zamora and his satellites gave grim response to the missile discharged by Clark, puffs of gun-smoke issuing from the gangsters' coverts, deadly slug- zip- ping viciously around the ambushed quartet in the canyada and kicking up spurts of dust and stones. The ravine echoed and re-echoed the blatter of the fusillade, and the tumult of the shooting and the ugly whew of lead struck terror into the mounts of Clark Stuart and his friends, the ani- mals plunging and cavorting wildly. Indeed, (hose belonging to Jamison. Crockett and Bowie tore their reins free from their masters' hands, and suddenly the broncs were wheeling to stampede out of the canyada in panic- flight. Heedless of their owners' stentorian cries, the ponies clashed from the defile, leaving Crockett and Jamison and Bowie without the slightest, prospect of escaping from the death-trap—for, if there had been some slender chance ot each of the four ambuscaded pioneers beating a retreat on horseback and re- gaining open ground to show the out- laws a clean pair of heels, there was cer- tainly no hope of any of them except Clark accomplishing, such a project now. Clark alone had retained control of his horse. Yet he had no impulse to swing himself astride the creature and seek safety by galloping out of the can yada and abandoning his comrades to (heir fate. Instead he veiled to the other three men to burrow down amongst a cluster of rocks hard by. and as they made for those rocks he accom- panied them in a blundering fashion, dragging his scared sorrel after him. As on many another occasion, the gun-play of Zamora and his rascally crew was not characterised by any out- standing degree of accuracy, or Clark and his friends would have been struck down by the opening salvo. As it was, they reached the nearby rocks without so much as a scratch being inflicted on them, and from the shelter of these natural breastworks of granite they began to pump retaliatory bullets at their foes. Clark plied his six-gun resolutely with his right hand, the while he maintained a grip on his bronc's rein with his left. Jamison and Davy Crockett likew ise handled revolvers, blazing away at the canyada's rims. As for Bowie, he added the whip-like crack of his long- barrelled rifle to the booming detona- tions of his pardneis' forty-fives and the reverberating volleys of the Zamora gang's "irons," and of the first dozen shots loosed off by the four men on the ravine's bed three hit home. "I reckon we've got the best 'van- tage-point we could've found on the floor o' this here canyada." Jamison presently vouchsafed, as he was reload ing the chambers of his six-shooter. "An' if we can keep pickin' off them coyotes on the slopes we may coruo OUta this ambuscade alive yet." Davy Crockett glanced at him. "You're sort of forgettin' that our ammunition may run out long afore all them bandits have emptied their cart- ridge bells. Jamison, ain't you?" he rejoined. There was a brief silence, and then Clark spoke. "Davy's right, old-timer," he said to