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  THE TONTO KID, by H. H. Knibbs (Part 1)

  Copyright © 1936 by Henry Herbert Knibbs.

  DEDICATION

  To Jordan and Keith.

  CHAPTER 1

  Pete’s young years were hard. So, unfortunately, was his constitution. He was born and revolved in the West. His parents emigrated from Missouri and settled in the Panhandle of Texas on the Canadian. A flood swept away all they possessed, including Pete, who was two years old at the time and wrapped in an ancient Army overcoat. His crib was a wooden washtub half filled with cornhusks. The flood hurled the washtub into the low fork of a sycamore. The following day a party of searchers investigated the phenomenon of an undamaged washtub right-side-up in a sycamore. Two-year-old Pete was discovered gazing incuriously up at the unremembering sky and sucking his thumb.

  “Hell, it’s alive!” declared one of the search-party.

  Panhandle ranchers were proverbially poor, but they were prolific. Each of the search-party happened to be the sire of one or two young inventions similar to the discovery. The searchers drew lots to determine who would have to feed the lone survivor of the Missourian’s family. The original discoverer drew the unlucky number. He consoled himself with the thought that the washtub was worth something.

  At the age of twelve Pete was doing a man’s work, if the individual who salvaged him could properly be called a man. One Fourth of July Pete’s foster-father came home filled with corn whisky. Pete happened to get in his way and was promptly knocked down. He scrambled up and would have made a dash for safety had not his foster-sister, a spindly little creature with pale blue eyes and a wisp of a pigtail, clenched her hands and sailed into her father. She was fond of Pete. The rancher cuffed her—cuffed her so hard he knocked her down. Because she did not get up and run, Pete thought she was dead. He flamed into a small, avenging fury.

  Snatching his foster-parent’s pistol from its holster, he poked it into something soft and yielding. Whether or not he deliberately cocked the gun and pulled the trigger is neither here nor there. He knew how. Following a muffled explosion, Pete’s foster-father became absolutely useless as a container of corn whisky. Pete was not exactly a worm, but he had turned.

  Retaining the six-shooter, he climbed on to the rancher’s sweat-caked pony and fled. He did not know what else to do. He rode all night. About daybreak he stumbled upon what he thought was a cow camp, many miles north of the Canadian. He was fed and then questioned. He said he had had trouble with his father, had left home, and was not going back. His earnestness amused the outfit. Questioned as to what he did intend to do, Pete replied that he guessed he’d throw in with the outfit as it looked pretty good to him. This caused even more amusement. Pete did not see any humor in the situation.

  When it was suggested that they might not have any use for him, he replied promptly that that was all right—he’d just hunt up another outfit. His nerve and independence won the admiration of one of the most notorious gangs of cattle thieves operating in the Southwest. He was adopted as a sort of mascot. Alert, wiry, and vigorous, he became useful to them. Tonto Charley, the roughest and wildest of the gang, took quite a fancy to Pete, treated him as if he were a grown man. The rest of the outfit did not take Pete seriously.

  Pete became the adopted son of Hardship and Experience. He soon learned the unwritten rules of the game. The more he learned the less he was inclined to talk. Compared to him the Sphinx was a garrulous old woman. Strangely enough, while he would risk life and limb scouting for his outfit, wrangling horses, or rustling cattle, he would no more have thought of stealing anything other than cattle than he would have thought of cutting his throat.

  The outfit had been a bit too industrious in their special line, and had about worn out their welcome in Texas and Arizona. Their business, as they called it, was falling off. Their leader, Hemenway, suggested robbing the pay car of a transcontinental railroad then building across the country. From cattle-rustling to train robbery was but a short step. But Pete would not take it. The outfit was loafing in the shade of a juniper, a few miles north of Fort Apache. It was noon. Hemenway, Claybourne and two Tonto Basin men, Kemp and Slauson, were discussing the proposed robbery.

  Pete, a short distance from them, lay stretched out comfortably on his side, his head supported by his arm. Tonto Charley sat near him, his hat pulled down against the outer glare of the sun. Presently Hemenway rose.

  “What do you say, kid?” He addressed Pete, but he looked at Tonto Charley.

  “Nothin’,” replied Pete.

  Tonto Charley chuckled. The foreman frowned.

  “Ain’t you in on this, Pete?”

  “No.”

  In such a camp, where a word might start a gunfight, and where common physical courage was taken for granted, a mistake was seldom made more than once. Hemenway made two. He discounted Tonto Charley’s intelligence and he questioned Pete’s nerve. Pete’s nerve had never been questioned, even by himself. Tonto Charley realized that Hemenway was striking at him through Pete—forcing a quarrel. Immediately Pete told Hemenway where to go—and it was not to Montreal. Hemenway thought that he had young Pete bluffed, that Tonto Charley would take up the quarrel. Claybourne and the two Tonto Basin men saw Hemenway reach for his gun. They did not see Pete reach for his. But they had seen him, often enough, flip a shot at a lizard and get the lizard. No one of the outfit except Tonto Charley realized that Pete had fired until the gun jumped in his hand and Hemenway doubled up, staggered forward, and sank down. He twitched once or twice and then lay still.

  Claybourne pulled his gun, apparently intending to make a good boy out of Pete, but Tonto Charley had his own ideas about that. He caught Claybourne with a slug just above the belt buckle, even while Hemenway was falling. Kemp and Slauson, sitting cross-legged, did not make a move. Tonto Charley, with Pete now standing beside him, invited them to take a hand. They let silence speak for them. Silence, and their attitudes.

  “He asked for it,” said Tonto Charley, indicating Hemenway with the muzzle of his gun.

  “So did Claybourne,” said Pete.

  After that no one said anything. It was noon. But it seemed chilly. Not because the outfit had lost two men in as many seconds. Rather because Pete, then thirteen, had become full grown in even less time than that. It was a swift, uncanny maturity. Yet natural enough, considering Pete’s associates, and the tragedy was a very reasonable climax to any quarrel involving two such friends as Pete and Tonto Charley.

  “Here’s where we split,” said Tonto Charley.

  “How
about them horses?” Kemp had begun to recover from his surprise.

  “Yes. And Hemenway’s got a money belt on him,” declared Slauson.

  “It was our fight,” said Pete.

  Tonto Charley stepped between Pete and the two Tonto Basin riders.

  “Get the cards, Kemp. One flop, and high man takes everything.”

  “Suits me.”

  Slauson knew that Kemp was handy with the cards.

  The four squatted in the shade of the juniper and cut the cards. The showdown gave Slauson the ace of spades, Pete the ten of diamonds, Kemp the king of hearts, and Tonto Charley the deuce of spades.

  “High man takes everything,” laughed Tonto Charley.

  Disgusted, Pete walked over to his horse and took up the slack in the cinch. Tonto Charley stood watching Kemp and Slauson strip the dead men of their pistols and loose change, and Hemenway of his money-belt.

  “Come on!” called Pete.

  Not until Kemp and Slauson had mounted and had headed south, each with a led horse, did Tonto Charley step toward his own mount. And then he seemed in no great haste to ride. He swung alongside Pete.

  “Three, four yellowlegs and an Apache scout coming down through the timber yonder. They’re from the fort. When they drop down into that draw, we’ll head straight east, up the hill.” Tonto Charley chuckled.

  Pete’s dark eyes flashed. “I don’t see no joke!”

  “You’re doin’ fine. But you listen to what I tell you.”

  Screened by the junipers, they watched the distant soldiers bob along down the rough hillside and disappear into a draw.

  “Now straight for the mountain, and keep goin’,” said Tonto Charley.

  They crossed a ridge, dipped into a hollow, crossed another and higher ridge, and, riding craftily, worked up into the mountain timber. Pete wanted to tell Tonto Charley that Kemp had dealt the ace of spades from the bottom of the pack, but Tonto Charley, in the lead, was setting a swift pace through the trackless and shadowy woodlands. East, he had said. But now they were angling over toward the south. Finally they were headed west, back toward the edge of the timber. Presently they struck into a trail, and Pete did not have to be told it was the trail to Fort Apache. He wondered why Tonto Charley was trailing the very men it seemed best to avoid.

  A few yards back from the open sunlight of the hillside Tonto Charley dismounted and walked out on to a brush covered point of rock. Pete followed, frowning at Tonto Charley’s back. Pete gazed down the slant of the tumbling foothills, cut here and there with gaunt, rock strewn arroyos that widened toward the mesa far below. The tops of the distant junipers shimmered in the hot sunlight. Beyond them the mesa ran out to the thin blue of space. Tiny figures, quite distinct in the thin air, moved about among the juniper clumps. The soldiers had found the bodies of Hemenway and Claybourne.

  Pete realized, with a twitching of his throat, that the soldiers must have seen Kemp and Slauson riding south with the led horses. He scanned the rolling country toward the south. His quick eye picked up the two riders, drifting along at an easy gait, the led horses bobbing beside them. Tonto Charley touched Pete’s arm and gestured toward the soldiers below. They had mounted and three of them were riding south at a sharp trot. The fourth was headed toward Fort Apache.

  “Got it figured out to suit you?” asked Tonto Charley.

  “They’re after Kemp and Joe Slauson—”

  “It’s awful easy to figure,” interrupted Tonto Charley. “About sundown Kemp and Slauson will make camp, and then that Apache trailer and the two yellowlegs will slip up and take ’em. They’ll turn ’em over to the sheriff of Apache County. Kemp and Slauson will swear we bumped off Hemenway and Claybourne. But there’s those two extra horses and saddles, and Hemenway’s gun with his initials on it, and the money belt. That won’t look so good.”

  “Kemp didn’t deal straight,” said Pete stubbornly.

  “Son, I’ve knowed Kemp for over ten years.”

  “You mean you let him get away with that crooked deal?”

  “The same. I didn’t want the stuff. A dead man’s stuff ain’t lucky.”

  “I guess nothing is lucky,” said Pete. “I didn’t figure to get Hemenway. He asked for it.”

  “And you sure was quick and accommodatin’. But he had it coming to him. We all got it coming, in this game.”

  “Not me!” said Pete, quickly. “I aim to pull out—and get a job.”

  Tonto Charley chuckled. “I reckon it’s about time we both pulled out. It’s a right long ride to the river.”

  “What river? You mean Socorro?”

  “The same. And mebbe up the river and over Las Vegas way. The air is cooler up there.”

  Pete gazed at the heavy, battered face of his companion—a face coarse, broad-featured, and hard, but not without humor. He never knew when Tonto Charley was in earnest. Charley seemed to take everything that happened as a joke. He seldom laughed outright, but he seldom said anything that was not followed by a chuckle. Pete could not understand him, and, wisely, did not try to. They were friends. That was enough.

  “Got it all figured out to suit you?”

  “Oh, hell!” said Pete, and mounted his horse.

  They turned and rode silently through the still mountain forest of spruce and fir and pine. Again and again the narrow trail broke down from dark, timbered levels into ragged, rock-walled cañons, purple in the afternoon shadows. Often they rode parallel to the stream bed for a quarter of a mile or so before the trail climbed to the timber country again. Toward evening they came out on to a wide meadow. Across the meadow ran a tiny stream, all but hidden by the rich emerald of lush grass. The tired horses drank, snatched hurriedly at the grass, and plodded on toward the dark edge of the timber beyond.

  Just within the shadows a deer jumped up. Tonto Charley whipped out his six-shooter and fired. The deer leaped high, jackknifed, and crashed against a pine.

  They made a small fire and broiled strips of the tender meat.

  “Tomorrow!” said Tonto Charley, “We’ll be out of this here high country and down where a man can see his own shadow. This high country gives me a chill.”

  “Better feed and water up here than on the flats.” Pete gestured toward the horses, eagerly cropping the thick grass.

  “If they took Kemp and Slauson alive, they’ll hold ’em for the sheriff,” said Tonto Charley. “That Buck Yardlaw, he’s rode down a lot of good horses trying to round up Hemenway’s bunch. You recollec’ Hemenway?”

  “Yes. And mebbe you ain’t forgot Claybourne.”

  “He asked for it. But you needn’t to git smart. You listen to me.”

  “I’m listenin’.”

  “Well, Kemp and Joe Slauson won’t last long after the sheriff gets ’em. The cattlemen down here will see to that. And that means we’re the last of Hemenway’s bunch. Every time we hit a town, word will go back along our trail that Tonto Charley and the kid, Pete, are hangin’ together when they ought to be hangin’ separate. Fellas we used to drink and carouse with will be the first to carry a bone to the sheriff. It always works that way when a gang busts up.”

  “You mean it would be better if we traveled separate?”

  “I sure do.”

  A shade of disappointment flickered across Pete’s lean, young face.

  “All right. I don’t need no fire to keep my feet warm.”

  “It ain’t cold feet, kid,” chuckled Tonto Charley. “It’s plain business. You got a chance. Me, I’ve had it comin’ for quite a spell. You ain’t got started, yet.”

  “You’d make a hell of a preacher,” said Pete.

  But his levity was forced. He knew Tonto Charley was right. Tonto Charley was an old hand, and never reckless except when drunk. A sudden thought flashed through Pete’s mind.

  “Say, Charley, was that break Hemenway made a frame-up to g
et you?”

  Tonto Charley chuckled.

  “You’ll be gettin’ smart enough to hunt your own grazin’ if you keep on. Hemenway had been layin’ for me ever since we had some words about a Mexican girl in Tucson, five or six years ago. But he didn’t want to start anything as long as business was good. You see, he could use me. But when business got bad, he and Claybourne figured to take one flutter at train-robbin’, and then break for the Border, leavin’ the rest of us holdin’ the sack. He knew I was on to him. So he tried to run a whizzer on you, figurin’ you would back down, and mebbe I would have somethin’ to say. Claybourne, not Hemenway, was to get me if. I made a move. But you sure spoiled his play.”

  “Well, that kind of squares it,” said Pete slowly. “I didn’t know it was a frame-up to get you. I figured, when Hemenway started to ride me, you would take a hand. So I was watchin’ him. He always was a whole lot quicker on the draw than you, Charley. So when he pulled, I let him have it. But your gettin’ Claybourne was kind of a surprise.”

  “Sure Clay was faster than me, but I was watchin’ him. And you recollec’ Kemp and Joe Slauson was surprised, likewise. They didn’t know what all the noise was about until it was over. If they had, they’d most like started in and smoked us up plenty.”

  Pete sat cross-legged beside the dead embers of their fire. The air was growing sharp. He shrugged his shoulders. The last long rays of the setting sun shot heavenward, touching the evening sky with shafts of glowing crimson. The tired horses circled on their stake-ropes, nipping at the grass. A night bird swooped across the meadow and vanished in the dusk. Pete realized that a man might have plenty of nerve and still feel mighty lonesome at times. He was glad that he and Tonto Charley were together.

  “If it’s all the same to you, Charley, we’ll ride together.” Then, ashamed lest Charley should think he was afraid to ride alone, “But any time we come to a fork in the trail, all you got to do is to rein your horse the way you want to go.”

  “You’ll do to take along, kid,” said Charley, and he did not chuckle.

  Before the morning mist had lifted from the meadow they again kindled a small fire and broiled strips of the venison. All that day they followed a thin trail across the White Mountains. Toward sundown they rode into a little Mormon settlement tucked away in a wooded valley above the mesa. They were hospitably fed and invited to spend the night there. They camped in the brush back of the tithing house. In the morning they inquired about the road to Holbrook, but once out on the mesa they swung round Springerville and headed for New Mexico. That night they crossed the line and slept in a sheep camp on the edge of the Datils.