A \ B \ C \ D \ E \ F \ G \ H \ I \ J \ K \ L \ M \ N \ O \ P \ R \ S \ T \ U \ V \ W \Z

The Bells of San Juan by Jackson Gregory

J >> Jackson Gregory >> The Bells of San Juan




"How many men are with him?"

"About twenty. But . . . my God! Rickard's men and del Rio's are
shooting from the east and the others are shooting from the west . . .
poor old Tommy Rudge got shot in the stomach and Denny Blain is down
and . . ."

"Del Rio and Rickard didn't come in machines did they?"

"No. Brocky said tell you they'd left their cars, sent them on filled
with loot toward the south, where a lot of other Greasers are waiting
for them; then the Kid and del Rio and about fifty men altogether
started a big herd of horses and cattle this way. Brocky tried to
stampede the herds, but the others are more than two to one, so he got
his men in the arroyo and they're giving 'em hell from there."

"Galloway's on the other side?"

"No. Brocky said tell you Galloway hadn't shown up yet. We think he
didn't expect things to get started so soon. One of Brocky's men
riding in a little while ago from the other side of San Juan thought
that he had seen Galloway and some one that looked like a girl riding
with him toward the old crossroads where the Denbar place used to be.
Brocky thinks maybe you can come in and head Galloway off and bust up
the whole play that way."

So Galloway and "some one who looked like a girl" had ridden toward the
old Denbar cross-roads. And Galloway had not yet joined his forces.

"Elmer," said Norton quickly, "ride on to San Juan. Tell John Engle
what you have told me about Galloway. Tell him . . ."

"I won't!" cried Elmer, on the verge of hysteria. "I won't do it. Do
it yourself; send some one else. I want to go with you; I want a
rifle, I tell you! Didn't I see Tommy Rudge go down with a bullet in
his belly? Didn't I see Denny when the Kid shot him?"

Norton laid a hand on Elmer's arm, speaking quietly.

"Listen, Elmer," he said. "We will do what we can where Brocky is.
But that isn't all of the devilment to-night. Galloway got Florrie
away somehow; she was the one riding with him toward the crossroads.
It's up to you to ride on and ride like the devil and tell John
Engle. . . . Come on, boys!"

Elmer sagged in his saddle as though he had been struck a heavy
physical blow.

"Galloway got Fluff!" he muttered dully.

His gaze trailed along after the departing posse. Norton on his big
roan was setting the pace, the steady swinging gallop to eat up the
miles swiftly and yet not kill the horses before the journey's end.
The others followed him, stringing out single file to take advantage of
the trail. The moon picked them out with clear relief, a grim line of
retribution. And yet the boy, while his eyes wandered after them, saw
only little Fluff struggling in Jim Galloway's arms. . . .

Then suddenly he, too, was riding, but at a pace which took no heed of
a horse's endurance, riding a gallant brute that stretched out its
neck, nostrils flaring, hammering hoofs beating out the very staccato
of urgent speed upon the flying sands. Already his revolver was tight
clinched in a lifted hand. Already he had swerved a little from the
distant lights of San Juan. He was taking the shortest line which led
to Denbar's crossroads.

"Galloway's got Fluff," he said over and over, choking on the words.


An hour later Norton heard the first spitting of rifles. Another
fifteen minutes of shod hoofs pounding through the broken hills and he
saw the first spurts of flame cutting through the shadows where the
trees clung to the arroyo. As he drew in his horse the men behind him
closed up about him. He threw out his arm, pointing.

"Brocky's boys must be right down there," he said sharply. "The Kid
and del Rio will be yonder; those are their horses. Young Page says
there are about fifty of them."

A fusillade of rifle-shots interrupted him. Along a fifty or sixty
yard front the Kid's and del Rio's men had crept in closer to Brocky's
arroyo, worming their way upon their stomachs, and now fired together.
There came a rattling reply from the creek, the shouting of cowboys.

"We'll take those fellows first," ordered Norton quickly. "They will
see us when we climb that little rise. Spread out; go easy until we
get to the top. Then, boys, let's see who can give them hell first and
fastest."

They looked to their rifles for the last time and rode slowly up the
short slope of the low-lying ridge. Then, as the first man topped it,
there came a shout from the shadows in front, another shout, and the
whizzing of rifle-balls. Norton used his spurs then; his big roan
leaped forward and was racing down the farther slope; his men in a long
line rode with him. And as he rode he lifted his own gun and poured
his lead into the thickest of the shadows.

A wild shout of cheering broke from the arroyo; rifle-barrels grew hot
in hot hands. On through the bright moonlight came the sheriff's
posse, some of them firing as they rode, others saving their lead. To
be seen from afar now, they drew many a shot toward themselves. And
yet the target of a man riding swiftly over uneven ground and in the
moonlight is not to be found overreadily by questing lead. When Norton
called to his men to stop and dismount, taking advantage of a row of
scattered boulders, not a saddle was empty.

[Illustration: On through the bright moonlight came the sheriff's
posse.]

Every man as he dismounted threw his horsed reins to the ground; the
animals might bolt or they might not, some of them might not stop for
many a mile, others would be found a hundred yards away. But they must
all think less of that now than of what lay in front of them.

"That you, Norton?" came a cheery voice booming suddenly through the
silence which had shut down as the newcomers disappeared among the
boulders.

"Here, Brocky!" shouted Norton. "All right down there?"

"Pretty well," called Brocky. "They've winged three or four of
us . . . they're damned rotten shots, Roddy. We've popped over a dozen
of them."

There were other shouts then, tenor Mexican voices for the most part
with the Kid's unmistakable snarl running through them. Men were
calling in Spanish to their fellows across the arroyo. Whatever it was
that Brocky was trying to say was lost in the din. And then again came
a volley of rifle-shots.

Norton rose slowly to his feet, studying the situation with frowning
eyes. A bullet hissed high overhead, another cut by his side, another
went shrieking off into the night. But while they whined in his ears
he laid his rude plans.

The arroyo wound and twisted this way and that through the broken
uplands. Where Brocky Lane had placed his men so as to defy the union
of the two bands of outlaws it described a wide rude arc curving about
the spur from Mt. Temple. Here the cowboys, with some twenty or thirty
feet separating each man from his nearest fellow, were extended along a
line which must be about two hundred yards long. The Mexicans to the
eastward, where del Rio and Kid Rickard and Moraga were, were bunched
in the protecting shadows of a field of boulders such as those where
the sheriff's men lay.

"We could stick here all night and get nothing done," said Norton to
the men close to him. "Rickard's gang could have charged down on
Brocky long ago if they'd had the stomach for that sort of thing.
They've got the numbers on us; they more than had the count on Brocky's
outfit; with those jaspers on the mountainside they could have turned
the trick. But that sort hasn't the desire for a scrap unless they can
pull it from behind a rock. And, by the same token, they won't last
five minutes in the face of a charge. Get me?"

"But the ginks on the mountain will pick us off pretty lively as we hit
the trail down the slope here," said a thoughtful voice.

Then Norton explained further. He meant to eliminate the other crowd;
it could be done. When he gave the word every man was to jump to his
feet and make the first half of his charge the bloodless one down into
the arroyo toward Brocky Lane. Then, Norton's men and Brocky's united,
they could surge up the creek's banks and make their flying attack,
coming in between the two other factions so that the men on the
mountain must hold their fire or kill as many of their own crowd as of
the others.

The suggestion was accepted without discussion. When Norton said
"Ready," they were ready; when he jumped to his feet and ran down
toward the arroyo, they ran with him. A shout of laughter went up from
each side of the dry water-course as jeering voices announced
triumphantly that the Gringoes were afraid. And with the shouts came
rifle-shots.

But to the last man of them they reached the arroyo safely, and ducking
low, trotted on to join the cowboys. In a moment more Norton had found
Brocky Lane, had explained his plan, had had Brocky's silent nod for an
answer. In quiet voices the men passed the word along the line. Those
from the farther end drew in closer so that their whole body of
something better than thirty men occupied but a brief section of the
arroyo.

"Get your wind first, boys," Norton admonished them. "Better fill your
clips, too, while you've got the chance. And count on using a six gun
before you're through. All right? Let's show 'em the sort of a scrap
a Gringo _can_ put up."

Then again they were running, the unwavering line of thirty men, but
with a difference which the outlaws might not mistake. And as they ran
they held their fire for a little, knowing how useless and suicidal it
would be to pause half-way. But presently they were answering shot
with shot, pausing, going down upon one knee, taking a moment's
advantage of a friendly rock, pouring lead into the agitated groups
among the boulders, springing up, running on again, every man fighting
the fight his own way, the thirty of them making the air tingle with
their shouts as they bore onward.

Then it was man to man and often enough one man to two or three, dark
forms struggling, men striking with clubbed guns, men snatching at
their side-arms, going down, rising or half rising, firing as long as a
charge was in a gun or strength in a body. And as they fired and
struck and called out after the fashion of the cowboy in a scrimmage
the body of men before them wavered and broke and began to fall back.

Norton swung his clubbed empty rifle up in both hands and beat down a
man firing at him with a revolver. All about him were struggling forms
and he was sore beset now and then to know who was who. A
fierce-mustachioed, black-browed man thrust a rifle toward his breast
and pulled the trigger and screamed out his curses as Norton put a
revolver bullet through him. A slender, boyish form sprang up upon a
rock recklessly, training his rifle upon Brocky Lane. It was the Kid.
But the Kid had met a man quicker, surer, than himself, and Brocky
fired first. Kid Rickard spun and fell. Norton saw him drop but lost
sight of him before the body struck the earth. He had found del Rio;
del Rio had found him.

Two smoking revolvers were jerked up, two guns spoke through the clamor
as one gun. The men were not ten feet apart as their guns spoke.
Norton felt a bullet rip along his outer arm, the sensation that of a
whip-lash cutting deep. He saw del Rio stagger back under the impact
of a forty-five-caliber bullet which must have merely grazed him, since
it did not knock him off his feet. Del Rio, his lips streaming his
curses and hatred, fired again. But his wound had been sorer than
Norton's, his aim was less steady, and now as he gave back it was to
fall heavily and lie still.

It had lasted less than five minutes. "It's Jim Galloway's fight and
Galloway don't come!" some one had shouted. They broke again, gave
back and back . . . and then were running, every man of them scenting
defeat and much worse than defeat unless he came to a horse before
another five minutes. And after them, firing now as they ran, came
Brocky's cowboys and Norton's men.

"They've got all of their horses over there together," yelled Brocky
into Norton's ear. "The horses for those Ginneys who have been hiding
out in the mountains, too. That's why I cut in between them that way.
Now if we can only scatter their cayuses . . . why, Roddy, we'll have
every damned one of 'em afoot to be rounded up when we get ready!"

And Brocky, limping as he went, had raced along after the others.

But Norton did not follow. His eyes had gone to the horses which he
and the San Juan men had left beyond the little line of boulders. And,
travelling that way, he had seen a lone horseman far off to the south,
a horseman riding frantically, seeking to come to the lower slopes of
Mt. Temple.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE BELLS RING

"Galloway!"

It seemed almost as though some great voice had shouted it to him
through the din. Yonder, riding on his spurs, come at this late
moment, was Jim Galloway. The man responsible for all of to-night's
bloodshed, for the disappearance of Florrie, for the death of Billy
Norton.

"Coming, Jim Galloway!"

Did he say it? Or again was it a voice shouting to him, urging him on?
He looked off to the east. Flying forms everywhere with other racing
forms pursuing, firing as they ran. Horses jerking back, rearing,
breaking away from the few men guarding them. Full defeat for Jim
Galloway there. But to the west? Galloway coming on at top speed,
shouting as he came, and, upon the mountain's lower slope the others of
Galloway's men, armed and bloodthirsty. If Galloway came to them,
whipped them with his tongue, stirring them with his magnetism . . .
why, then, the fight was all to be fought over.

Now again Norton, too, was running, bearing down upon the straggling
horses. He caught up the first dragging reins to lay his hand to,
swung up into the saddle, measured swiftly the distance between
Galloway and the men on the mountain . . . and used his spurs.

On came Jim Galloway, his wide, heavy shoulders not to be mistaken in
the rich moonlight, his hat gone, his head up, a rifle across the
saddle in front of him. Norton lost sight of him as he swept down into
the bed of the arroyo, caught sight of him again from the farther side.
Already Galloway was appreciably nearer his men, driving his horse
mercilessly.

"If he comes to his crowd before I can stop him," was Norton's thought,
"he'll put his game across on us yet. I've got to head him off and
take the chances."

Nor were the odds to be overlooked. Galloway was still too far away to
be stopped by a rifle-ball, and Norton, heading him off, would expose
himself not only to Galloway's fire but to that of the men who were
moving to a lower slope to meet their leader. And yet, with fate in
the balance, here was no time for hesitation.

Now Galloway had seen him, had recognized him, perhaps, the thought
coming naturally to him that it would be Roderick Norton who rode to
cut him off. He shifted his rifle so that his right hand was on the
grip, the barrel caught in his left; he had dropped his horse's reins.
Norton was slipping a fresh clip into his gun, his own reins now upon
his horse's neck. And now both men knew that unless a bullet stopped
him Norton would cut across Galloway's path before he could come to his
men.

"At him, Roddy, old boy! We're coming!"

Norton glanced over his shoulder and pressed on. Brocky had missed
him, had seen, had called back a half dozen of his men and was
following. Well, if he dropped, maybe Brocky and the others could get
Jim Galloway. It really began to look as though Galloway had played
out his string.

They were firing from the mountainside now, the bullets thus far flying
wild of their rushing target. Norton shook his head and urged his
horse to fresh endeavor. In a moment he would be fairly between
Galloway and Galloway's last chance. His eye picked out the spot where
he would dismount at that moment, a tumble of big boulders. He would
swing down so that they would be between him and the mountain, so that
nothing but moonlit open space lay between him and Jim Galloway.

While rifles cracked and spat fire and sprayed lead over him and about
him he rode the last fifty yards. He reached the boulders, set his
horse up, threw himself from the saddle, and with his back to the rock,
his face toward Galloway, he lifted his rifle. Galloway, almost at the
same instant, jerked in his own horse. He was so close that Norton
caught his cry of rage.

"Hands up, Galloway!" cried the sheriff. "Hands up or I'll drop you."

But at last Galloway had come out into the open; at last there was no
subterfuge to stand forth at his need; at last, gambler that he was, he
accepted the even break of man to man. As Norton's voice rang out
Galloway fired.

He shot twice before Norton pulled the trigger. Norton shot but the
once. Galloway dropped his rifle, sat rigid a moment, toppled from the
saddle. And his men, seeing him go down, cried out to one another and
drew back into the mountain canons.


"Funny thing," said Brocky Lane afterward. "Had the picture of a kid
of a girl in his pocket! Must have carted it around for a year. Old
Roddy's bullet tore right square through it."

It was a picture of Florrie Engle, taken years before. As Brocky said:
"Just a kid of a girl." Where he got it nobody knew. But then there
were other things about Jim Galloway which no one knew. Perhaps . . .
Quien sabe!


During the late hours of the night and the following forenoon the thing
was ended. Sheriff Roberts's deputies with a posse in automobiles had
raced southward, intercepting those other cars despatched toward the
border by the Kid and del Rio. Brocky Lane with a score of men had
swept down upon the stolen herds, scattered them, fired fifty shots,
emptied some three or four saddles, and sent the escaping rustlers
flying toward the Mexican line. Singly and in small groups other men,
farmers, cowboys, miners, and the dwellers of small settlements, joined
with Norton's men, giving battle to those of Galloway's crowd who had
drawn back into the fastnesses of Mt. Temple. In the afternoon Norton,
with the aid of a handful of cowboys from Brocky's outfit and from Las
Flores, escorted fifteen anxious-faced prisoners to the county-seat,
where jail capacity was to be taxed. And night had come again, serene
and peaceful with the glory of the moon and stars, when he rode once
more into San Juan, sore and saddle-weary.

At the hotel he learned that Virginia had gone to the Engles. He left
his jaded horse with Ignacio and walked down the street. In front of
the Casa Blanca he stopped a moment, staring musingly at the solid
adobe walls gleaming white in the moonlight. The place was quiet,
deserted. No single light winked at him through door or window. It
seemed to him to be brooding over the passing of Jim Galloway.

He found Florrie and Elmer strolling under the cottonwoods. They had
scant interest in him, little time to bestow upon a mere mortal.
Florrie could only cry ecstatically that Black Bill was a hero! He,
all alone, had terrorized the Mexican woman guarding her, had saved
her, had brought her back. And Elmer could only look pleased and
stammer and whisper to Fluff to be still.

Virginia had heard his voice, the voice she had been listening for
throughout so many long hours, and met him before he had come to the
door.

"Oh, thank God, thank God!" she cried softly. "But . . . you are hurt?"

He forgot his wound as both arms closed about her. From somewhere at
the rear of the house he heard Mrs. Engle's voice crying eagerly; "It's
Roddy!" She was hurrying to greet him. What he had to say must be
said briefly.

"My work is done," he said quickly. "I have put in my resignation this
afternoon. They can get a new sheriff. I am going to be a rancher, my
dear. And, Virginia . . ."

He was whispering to her, his lips close to her hair. And Virginia,
though her face was suddenly hot with the flush mounting to her brow,
gave him steadily for answer:

"Whenever you wish, Rod Norton!"

So it was only twenty-four hours later that Ignacio Chavez stood in the
old Mission garden and made his bells talk, just the three upon the
western arch, the Little One, La Golondrina, and Ignacio Chavez, the
golden-throated trio that tinkled to the touch of his cunning hand and
seemed to laugh and sing and proclaim the gladdest of glad tidings.
Then Ignacio drew his enrapt gaze earthward from the full moon and made
out a man and a girl riding out into the night, riding toward the Ranch
of the Flowers. And he made the bells laugh again.

"And to-morrow," vowed Ignacio solemnly, "not later than to-morrow or
the day thereafter, you shall have your reward, _amigos_. You have
told the world of heavy doings; you have rung for Jim Galloway dead;
you have made the music for the wedding of _el_ Senor Nortone. And it
shall be I who will make a little roof like a house over you. You will
see!"

Copyright (c) 2007. bestextbooks.com. All rights reserved.

Coningsby Dawson - "Out To Win"

James Cook - "A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1"

George Bethune English - "The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old"

Various - "The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 42, August 26, 1897"