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52
Photoplay Magazine
"You must bring him back to me. Echo drew back from her husband.
lently as the desert rattler moves over the sand.
An Apache yell rose from a dozen directions at once and Dick ducked as bullets rained about him and spattered on the rock.
In a flash he rose and fired.
A rifle barked behind him and he felt the sting of a bullet in his arm. As he felt the rush of warm blood under his sleeve he knew it was a losing fight. He moved around the rock to the spot where he had tied down Pete, his faithful horse. Painfully reaching around with his good arm. Lane pulled out his si.x-shooter, then pressed the muzzle close to Pete's head.
"So long. Old Timer — it's all up with us — and you're too good a horse for any damned Apache to abuse. I'll be following you right close.''
Dick Lane shut his eyes and pulled the trigger. Pete was safe from the hideous, torturing Apaches — but not his master.
'T'HE Apaches rushed. Lane threw aside precaution and * stood up, firing point blank into them as they came — one --^wo — three — four cartridges. Then Dick turned the gun to his own forehead.
Before he could pull the trigger an Apache dropped on him frorn the rock and bore him to the ground. In a moment the Indians had him tied and their leader came to stand over him, grinning.
"I might have expected this from you, Buck!" Lane, twisting with the pain of his bonds, looked his scorn at McKee.
The half-breed toyed with his beaded vest and grinned wider.
"Well — you and your honored sheriff of Pinal County made it hot for me." McKee was deliberate and confident. "So you see I had to come to Mexico for my health — to that you owe the pleasure of this meeting." The white half of McKee could speak excellent English.
But while the half-breed stood taunting his victim, far back down the trailthe Rurales.were examining the tracks where the Apaches had come upon Dick Lane's trail. The marks in the desert dust told their own story to these vigilantes of Mexico and swiftly they continued up the course taken by McKee's renegade band. McKee seemed to have half-forgotten his flight, so intent was he on hectoring his prisoner.
"Before I kill you, I'd admire to know where you've hidden your dust — Mr. Lane." He was mockingly polite. "I'll die before I tell you — you dirty half-breed!" "So?" McKee leered at him. "I'll make you talk —glad to talk."
At a motion from their leader, the Apaches tied Lane up to a sahuaro cactus and brought up a smoldering brand from his expiring campfire. They pulled off Lane's boots and McKee placed the fire under the prospector's naked feet.
Lane cursed and writhed in pain. "We are waiting for you to say something — something pleasant — where did you say the gold was?" McKee beckoned to one of his redskins to bring more wood. The flames were licking at Lane's tortured feet. He could stand no more.
"In God's name! Stop! The dust is under that flat rock yonder."
Lane fell limp against the rawhide ropes that held him, fainting. An Indian kicked aside the firebrands and McKee ran to the stone and uncovered Dick's cache of gold dust.
The half-breed was covetously hefting the weight of the bags when a half dozen rifles cracked at once about him. He flattened out on the earth and rolled for cover. In a flash the Indians were in pitched battle with the Rurales.
McKee and his bucks worked their way around a protecting wall of the mountain, leaped aboard their ponies and fled as the Rurales closed in.
The Rurales were in time to rescue Lane and bring him back to consciousness, but Buck McKee and his red outlaws were free and on the open trail again. With Lane's gold in his possession, and leaving Lane, he was sure, as good as dead, McKee conceived a daring plan.
When Lane came back to consciousness he found himself in a Mexican hospital in Chihuahua. He was fighting himself back to life, but not back to reason and sanity. The Apache ordeal had taken heavy toll of his resources. Back in Pinal County, up in the States, the folks Dick Lane had told good-by a year before were becoming increasingly anxious about him.
Dick was overdue and the reports that filtered in out of the Indian country were disquieting.
Echo Allen spent hours on the veranda of the Bar-i ranchhouse looking down the road. Bud Lane went daily to Florence, the budding capital of Pinal County, hoping for news. There he met Echo, with Polly Hope. "Any word from Dick?''
"No." Bud shook his head gloomily. "I'm getting worried. They say Geronimo is on the warpath again, too. If Dick don't show up in another week I'm going looking for him." Polly's face filled with alarm.
"I won't let you go. Bud. Why, you might get killed!" Polly stood with downcast eyes, embarrassed at her own display of feeling.
Jack Payson, approaching, overheard and joined the group. "It's no more than right that Bud should go," he observed quietly. "I'll go with you. Bud."
Echo, in turn startled, started to speak, then bit her lips in suppression of her newly discovered emotion. Why should she care if Jack went? Echo was questioning herself. The silent inner answer was disconcerting. Filled with anxiety and loyalty for Dick Lane, she suspected herself in love with Jack Payson, his pal.
It was the morning that Bud and Jack, outfitted and ready to start in quest of Dick Lane, were bidding farewell at the Bar-i ranch, that Buck McKee, the half-breed outlaw, rode through the Bar-i gate.
Tack Payson intercepted McKee as he approached. "What's your business here, Buck McKee?" Jack's voice rang out crisp and sharp.
"Keep your shirt on, Mr. Payson.'' The half-breed was smiling and self-possessed. "I am here to fulfill the last request of Dick Lane."
McKee strode by Jack, who stood astonished, and approached Echo with a deep bow.
"I was with Mr. Lane at the last, ma'am, and he wanted I should bring this to you as a little keepsake." McKee dropped