They climbed steadily onward, while the Texan searched the trail with
keen eyes that missed nothing. Suddenly he drew up his horse.
Blizzard had shied at something lying prone ahead of them, and The
Kid's eyes had seen it at the same instant.
Stretched out on the sandy ground, The Kid saw, when he urged his horse closer, was the body of a man, face down and arms flung out. A blotch of red on the blue of the shirt told the significant story—a bullet had got in its deadly work. Dismounting, the Texan found that the man was dead and had met with his wound probably twenty-four hours before. There was nothing with which to identify the body.
"Seems to me, Blizzahd," Kid Wolf mused, "that Gentleman John is a deepah-dyed villain than we even thought."
He continued on up the pass, eyes and ears open. The white horse took the climb as if it had been level ground, his hoofs ringing a brisk tattoo against the stones.
Nobody was in sight. The land stretched out on all sides—a vast lonesomeness of rolling green and red, broken here and there by towering rocks, grotesque in shape and twisted by erosion into a thousand fanciful sculptures. But at the bottom of a dry wash, Kid Wolf received a surprise.
Br-r-reee! Ping! A bullet breezed by his head, droning like a hornet, and glanced sullenly against a flat rock. Immediately afterward, The Kid heard the sharp bark of a .45. He knew by the sound of the bullet and by the elapsed time between it and the sound of the gun that he was within dangerous range. Crouching low in his saddle, he wheeled Blizzard—already turned half around in mid-air—and cut up the arroyo at a hot gallop.
Flinging himself from his horse when he reached shelter, he touched Blizzard lightly on the neck. The wise animal knew what that meant. Without slackening its pace, it continued onward, its hoofs drumming a rapid clip-clop, while its master was running in another direction with his head low.
Breaking up the ambush was easy. The Kid took advantage of every bit of cover and went directly toward the sounds of the shots, for guns were still barking. The men, whoever they were, were shooting in the direction of the riderless horse. Squirming through a little piñon thicket, Kid Wolf saw three men stationed behind a low ledge of red sandstone. The guns of the trio were still curling blue smoke.
"Will yo' kindly stick up yo' hands, gentlemen," the Texan drawled, "while yo're explainin'?"
The three whirled about—to find themselves staring into the two deadly black muzzles of The Kid's twin six-shooters. Automatically they thrust their arms aloft.