II
Barlow borrowed one of Saxton’s cayuses to take a lope into the hills. He would have invited Ruth along, but then he was not sure that Ruth would be interested, and anyhow he realized that he did not cut a very expert figure on a horse.
Hard work, too, this horseback riding. He realized it more and more as the sun gradually sank behind the ridge to the west of the town. He had been walking beside his mount along the trail, but with darkness approaching he decided to try once more to ride, despite his soreness.
Saxton would probably be wondering what had become of him. Dusk had fallen with unexpected swiftness here in the mountains, and he was none too sure of the trail.
It was as he was rounding a curve from where he hoped to be able to see the fork leading into Pampa that he heard a sound that could not possibly be mistaken—by Bill Barlow. He had heard that sound too often to make any mistake about it.
That subdued roar was the pounding of twelve cylinders all right enough. He’d have bet a million dollars on it—if he had had it.
He gazed up into the violescent dusk. The roar was getting louder now, and sure enough, over the ridge from out of the north swooped a great shadow that circled about and made a landing in the hill-rimmed meadow just below him to the right.
“Jack Harraden!” he said to himself, “He must have heard I was in Pampa.”
Bill Barlow forgot all about the trail into town now. He took the first path that led downward, tied his tired beast to a fence-post and started afoot cross-country in the darkness, guided by the roar of the plane’s engine as it taxied along the ground.
He continued on, the soft ground serving as a pad for his feet. He heard the sound of men’s voices after a considerable walk, and he was about to call out when he discovered that the men were wrangling over something. He could not make out the words, but there was no mistaking the intonation.
Some sixth sense caused him to stoop in the shelter of the fence that inclosed a large field with an overhanging hill at one corner it. He could distinguish the outline of the plane there in the gloom, its wings looking ghostlike and mysterious, and from the loud voices he could tell that the men were walking in his direction.
Some of the talk was in Spanish, and he got a word of it here and there. Bill had taken Spanish two years at college—and had become very fluent in football.
He caught the words “Pancho Lopez” and “dinero,” which he knew meant money. Then, to his satisfaction, a new voice boomed out in English:
“Yeh, he’s big chief—down there. But I’m boss up here until this thing is put over, Ramos, and don’t ever forget it!”
There was a sullen response in Spanish, too low in tone for Bill to make it out.
“That’s all right,” came the first man’s voice again. “That third plane stays in the hills. You never can tell what might happen. Them armored cars could pick us off up there in the air with the right breaks.”
Bill Barlow lay prone beside the fence as the men—there seemed to be four of them—passed within a few feet of him. One of them had a holster strapped at his side and wore a cartridge belt.
He seemed to be the leader, and he was raking down the untractable Ramos who had evidently ventured to irritate him with some rash suggestion. His voice trailed off as the group walked toward a dark smudge a hundred yards or so away which Bill thought might be a cabin.
“An armored car!” Could there be any connection? Saxton had told him that afternoon that he wished him to remain in Pampa in order to meet his son, who was coming down with the bullion shipment from Trinidad in an armored car.
Bill Barlow waited until there was no sound from the cabin, if that was what it was, then leaped the fence and crept toward the airplane. No watchman had been left on guard, and Bill believed the mysterious aviators might return at any moment.
On the far side of the plane he risked a flash from his torch, and then snapped it off quickly.
The ship was a De Haviland painted green. In front of the pilot’s seat was mounted a machine gun. Bill thought he recognized the type and that it was synchronized to shoot between the blades of the propeller.
At any rate, it was a weird sight on an airplane in peace time in a New Mexico meadow.
He did not risk another flash, but scurried away in the darkness, and somehow found his way to his tethered horse. When he finally reached the Saxton home it was almost dawn, and he rapped on the window that he knew to be Saxton’s.
In a couple of minutes the banker, pyjama-clad, stuck his head out.
“What the devil’s up?” he asked, sleepily. “Where were you, Bill?”
“I’ll tell you all that later,” Bill replied. “Meanwhile, I’ll ask you one. What time is your son starting from Trinidad in that armored car?”
“Who? Ted? Why, he may have started by this time. First streak of daylight they’ll shove off. Roads’ll be clearer then, and what folks don’t see won’t bother ’em.” Saxton kindled a cigar, and gave vent to his rumbling laugh. “Why? You’re not worrying about that, are you? That type of armored car could stand off an army, boy.”
“I suppose so. But, Saxton, I want you to do something right away. Get Trinidad on the phone. If your son hasn’t started, tell him to wait till tomorrow. Make it emphatic. It may be very important. If he has started, get one of the towns this side of Trinidad, and see that the car is held there. Now do that. Be sure. Will you, Saxton?”
The banker looked at him keenly.
“There’s something up, I can see that,” he said. “But I think you’re getting upset over a trifle. Those armored cars, you know—”
“Yes, I know,” Bill cut in.
Should he mention his discovery to Saxton? He might be on the wrong track entirely. The armed plane might possibly be one of the exhibits from the recent Las Vegas carnival.
At any rate, only he himself could be of any possible service now, if the car had started from Trinidad. No use worrying Saxton and Ruth, he decided.
He waited until he heard Saxton at the telephone asking for long distance to Trinidad, and then grabbing up a rifle and several rounds from a little den-like hunting room which Saxton had furnished off of the living-room, he remounted his horse and galloped along the road to the east of the town, and, just as dawn streaked the sky, reached his plane.
A few minutes later he had turned the horse loose to graze, and had hopped off, the nose of his old Jenny pointed toward Trinidad.
As he sailed along he wondered if he was on a useless quest. He might be.
In the first place, there was a possibility that his suspicions were not well founded. Then Saxton might be able to get Trinidad before the armored car started, and could head it off.
But as he flew along he almost hoped that he was in for action. For that was the way with Bill Barlow. Fellow war aces had said that he “fattened on trouble.”
And, if that was the case, there was enough trouble ahead to make Bill Barlow very fat indeed.