PENELOPE SIGNS HER NAME

Yuma swept the poker table aside and sent it clattering and crashing against the wall. The Lone Ranger had no chance to deny the accusation the man from Arizona hurled. Anything he said would have fallen on unhearing ears. Yuma ignored his guns and, lowering his head, charged like an infuriated bull, sweeping down the aisle between the bunks and gathering power and speed as he advanced.

The masked man had no chance to dodge, no place to dodge to. He was trapped between the bunks on each side of the narrow space down which the cowboy rushed. His gun half-drawn, he dropped it back in leather. Nothing but a death slug would stop Yuma. He was blind to any threat of shooting.

Then Yuma struck with the force of a battering ram. The Lone Ranger staggered back from the terrific impact of the heavy shoulder flush against his chest. Intense pain stabbed his own bandaged shoulder, and brilliant lights seemed to dance before his eyes. He barely saw the huge, balled fist that Yuma swung to follow up his charge. Almost without thought, the Lone Ranger turned his head quickly to roll it with the punch and take a glancing blow instead of one that might have smashed his jaw. He fell back several paces, fighting to stay on his feet until his reeling senses could function coherently.

Yuma's face was livid. He swung again, bringing his left up almost from the floor, but this time the masked man dodged the blow, then set himself for defense. He could barely move his left arm. He thought the wound must have been reopened by the awful onslaught. Yuma was reaching out with both hands, trying to wrap his heavy arms around the lithe Lone Ranger and crush him to the floor. The space was far too limited for such maneuvering, so the masked man let his knees collapse and dropped like a plummet while the adversary clutched at empty air. Then the Lone Ranger shot up from his crouch as if his legs were coiled steel springs. He brought his right fist up with the full whipcorded strength of his good arm, augmented by the muscles of the legs. His aim was perfect and his timing likewise. He felt his hard fist crash against the point of Yuma's chin and saw the cowboy's head snap back.

Pain and fury made Yuma careless and too eager. While still off balance from the blow that hurt, he tried to swing a roundhouse left. The Lone Ranger stepped inside the arc of that tremendous swing and jabbed another right to Yuma's nose, then chopped a hard blow to the unprotected jaw.

Yuma, it appeared, could take terrific punishment. Those blows of the Lone Ranger were short, but they were hard. Strong men had often dropped before those jabs, but Yuma kept on fighting. His fists swung wildly while he kept up a continual string of cursing threats.

The Lone Ranger's strength was nearly gone. He admired the ability of Yuma to stand up beneath his rain of rights. He dared not use his left and tear that shoulder wound still further.

"How long," he wondered, "in the name of Mercy, how long can he keep this up?" He knew that any one of the wild blows, if it landed true, would knock him out. Then his campaign would end before it got well started.

Again, and still again, he drove his right fist flush against the big man's face. Blood streamed from Yuma's nose, and a cut was opened over his right eye. He gave ground now, backing toward the door of the bunkhouse, while the Lone Ranger advanced.

How long it might have gone on is hard to say, but Yuma backed against the upturned table, lost his balance, and went over backward. His head smacked hard against the floor. For an instant Yuma tried to rise; though totally unconscious, his stout fighter's heart fighting on. Then his eyes rolled up and he went limp.

Breathing hard, almost gasping, the Lone Ranger crouched beside his fallen enemy. He found that Yuma, though bumped hard, was probably not seriously injured. He opened the door and sucked deep, satisfying drinks of the cool night air until his breathing was more nearly normal and his throbbing head stopped spinning. Then he turned once more to the unconscious man.

"What a fighter," he thought admiringly. "What a man!"

But he must not linger here too long. There was still the all-important business at the ranch house.

He saw a horse standing just outside the bunkhouse. There was a blanket roll strapped behind the saddle, and saddlebags that bulged. He glanced toward the ranch house, but saw no sign that anyone had heard the fight.

"Even if this isn't that man's horse," he decided, "it will have to do for the time being."

He dragged the heavy form of the unconscious man to the side of the horse and then, sparing his throbbing left arm as much as possible, hoisted Yuma across the saddle in a highly uncomfortable position. Yuma's head, shoulders, and arms drooped on one side, as the cowboy's belly rested on the saddle and his legs balanced him on the other side. The masked man used Yuma's own rope to tie him securely in place. The man was going to prove something of a problem, but the Lone Ranger wanted to keep him to question him at length when he recovered consciousness.

Already the masked man had been widely side-tracked in his plan to call on Bryant and Penny for a conference, but one of the qualities that contributed to his later greatness was his ability to revise his plans continually to suit changing conditions, or to reject plans altogether and replace them by new ones.

He wanted Silver near him now, but the stallion was far across the level stretch, concealed at the foot of the mountain.

"If anyone had been near enough to hear," he thought, "the sound of that fight would certainly have brought them. I'll take a chance."

He whistled sharply, and heard a responsive whinny come back to him from the darkness. He stood tense and guarded, waiting for anything his whistle might have brought, but no one came. Pounding hoofs, however, announced the approach of Silver as the stallion beat across the grass. Still no sign of any other presence.

The Lone Ranger didn't know, then, that the solid timber walls of the big rambling house where Penny and her cousins were faced by Sawtell and his men were practically soundproof. The quality that made it impossible for the masked man's whistle or the noise of the fight to be heard inside the house likewise muffled the sounds in the house, so that the masked man didn't hear the pleas and cries of Vince and Jeb Cavendish.

Leading Yuma's horse with its unconscious burden, the Lone Ranger moved away from the lighted bunkhouse and met Silver in the darkness. He fumbled in a pocket for a pencil, then scribbled a hurried message on paper from a saddlebag and tied it to the pommel of his saddle.

He knew that some hard rider had already gone up the Thunder Mountain trail. If it were in the cards for someone to find, talk with, and perhaps release Rangoon, this would have already transpired, and Tonto's mission would be finished.

"Now," he said softly to Silver, "go find Tonto."

He slapped the white horse firmly, repeating the name "Tonto." Silver tossed his head and rushed away.

The masked man made another quick examination of his prisoner. He found him still unconscious, but the pulse was steady, and the breathing normal. Assured that nothing was seriously wrong, he led the loaded horse to the ranch house, walked to one side of the building, and tossed the reins about a post. Then, on soundless feet, he stepped upon the porch. He felt in his pocket and found the silver bullet Penelope had refused. It served to remind him that he owed the girl a debt that would be hard to repay.

He must, he decided, catch Bryant by surprise before the old man could shout for help; must speak quickly, reassure the man and make him listen to the purpose of the call. He opened the outer door without a sound, and then heard Penny's voice.

The girl sat between Lonergan and Lombard at a round table near the fireplace. Sawtell was in another chair a little distant, keeping one eye on a red-hot poker in the coals, the other on two bound men on the floor. Vince was whimpering like a beaten cur, while Penny looked at him with disgust evident in her face.

"I won't never ferget this, Cousin Penny, honest tuh God I won't," said Vince. "As sure as hell yer savin' us from havin' our eyes burned out with that poker."

"I haven't signed this agreement yet," the girl replied.

"But yuh will, you've got tuh, yuh know blamed well that Uncle Bryant is waitin' fer Sawtell tuh take it to him in Red Oak. Hurry up an' sign it."

Lonergan dipped a pen in a bottle of ink and held it toward the girl.

"Here you are," he said suavely, as he pointed to a line at the bottom of a long page of close writing. "Sign right there beneath the others and then we'll sign as witnesses."

Penelope took the pen and tapped the un-inked end meditatively against her small, even teeth.

"Just let me get everything straight," she said. "In the first place, if Uncle Bryant doesn't want to leave his property to us, he doesn't need to. He can make a will, can't he?"

Lonergan nodded and glanced at Sawtell.

"Tell her," the bland-faced man suggested.

Lonergan went into a lengthy discourse on the legality of wills that left estates to others than the blood relations, and told how there had been times in courts of law when those wills had been contested.

"Bryant's one desire," he went on, "is to leave his outfit to someone and have no question about the will being valid. He wants all four nephews and you to sign to the effect that you relinquish all claims whatsoever to the Basin property for a consideration not described." Lonergan didn't make it as simple as he might have done. He seemed to gloat in the opportunity to air his knowledge of legal phrases and quote from his experiences as a lawyer in the East.

"Doesn't it," asked Penny, "make some difference when the signature is secured by threat of torture?"

Lonergan smiled, "Of course."

"If I don't sign you'll use that red-hot iron on Vince and Jeb."

"That would be hard to prove," suggested Lonergan.

Sawtell broke in impatiently.

"Hurry up and sign—we can't wait all night."

"One thing more," said Penny. "What about Wallie, and Mort?"

"Bryant'll get their names signed when we take that paper to town."

Penny still hesitated. She knew everything was topsy-turvy. There were lies and liars on every side; no one could be trusted. She wondered why all the cries hadn't brought old Gimlet from the kitchen. She almost wished that she had left when Yuma wanted her to go with him.

"Look," said Penny suddenly. "I've been listening to what you've said. Now suppose you listen to me for just a minute. I'm going to sign this paper, simply because it won't make a particle of difference to me. If anything happened to Uncle Bryant, I'd want no part of this ranch as long as the place is infested with vermin."

Lonergan showed resentment at this statement, and leaned forward to speak, but a glance at Sawtell changed his mind. The smooth-faced killer held up a silencing hand. Lonergan relaxed.

Penelope looked at Vince.

"You," she said hotly, "turn my stomach! I know very well that you and Mort have been scheming all along. You helped Rangoon kill those Texas Rangers. You're as much to blame for Becky's murder as Mort. You told him he had to shut her up."

Vince looked wide-eyed at his cousin as she went on.

"You're nothing but a little squirt without spunk enough to even look like a man, let alone act like one. You've been whimpering like a whipped cur, trying to arouse a lot of sympathy with your crocodile tears. Well, I knew all along that you were faking. Now don't you feel like a jackass?"

As Penelope warmed to the subject, all the bitterness of the past weeks found outlet in her lashing words.

"Maybe this is Uncle Bryant's desire. If so, it's all right with me, but I'm going to find out what's possessed him to turn on me. If it isn't his idea, I'll find that out, too."

She turned toward Jeb. "As for you, I'm sorry for you. You're a worthless dreamer. You might have been an artist or a writer or a poet, if you hadn't been too lazy to get some education. As it is you're not worth a plugged dime to anyone, least of all to these crooks. As soon as they're satisfied that you can't help them, they'll kill you." Jeb squirmed uneasily in his ropes. "You're little men, both of you, and so are your brothers."

The girl jabbed the pen into the ink and rapidly signed her name to the paper.

"You can have your paper all signed as you want it," she said, almost trembling with the white heat of her rage. "Take it to Bryant, if that's what you're going to do, and tell him that as long as those kids are upstairs, without anyone to take care of them, a six-in-hand can't drag me from here, and as soon as Wallie brings that woman he promised to, there isn't any power on earth can keep me here."

She thrust the paper, signed, toward Sawtell. "Here you are, and have fun while you can, because pretty soon someone is going to ask a lot of questions about six murdered Texas Rangers."

"I'll take that," a new voice said. All eyes turned toward the door. A tall man with lean hips and broad shoulders stood there; a man whose hat was white, whose face was masked.

"Who the hell are you?" barked Lonergan.

The masked man stepped forward, reaching for the paper.

"I'll be damned before you—" started Lombard, as he rose from his chair. A gun appeared as if by magic in the tall masked man's right hand. Lombard fell back before the weapon's threat.

"Who is he?" "Whar'd he come from?" "How'd he git here?"

There was a chorus of amazed exclamations. There were threats: "Yuh won't git away with this"; "Yuh better drop them guns afore we git mad"; "You won't leave this Basin alive." But no one made a move of aggression. The Lone Ranger glanced quickly at the document, folded it, and tucked it in the pocket of his shirt while his gun remained steady, covering the room at large.

"I gathered from what I heard that Bryant Cavendish has gone to Red Oak," he said. "If this paper is for him, none of you need worry, because I'll take it to him."

The expression on Penelope's flushed face was a mixture of admiration and resentment. She stared at the intruder, liking him instinctively in spite of herself. She couldn't understand his part in the grim drama that seemed to be unfolding on a circular stage while she stood in the center.