LITMIR.BIZ

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the animal westward toward the Llano Estacado. So horrible were the sounds that he had paled under his tan. But he headed directly toward the direction of the cries. He knew that some human being was suffering frightful pain.

      Crossing a sun-baked gully, he climbed upward and onto a flat-topped, miniature butte. Here he saw a spectacle that literally froze him with horror.

      Although accustomed to a hundred gruesome sights in that savage land, he had never seen one like this. Staked on the ground, feet and arms wide-stretched, and securely bound, was a man. Or rather, it was a thing that had once been a man. It was a torture that even the diabolical mind of an Indian could not have invented. It was the insane creation of another race—the work of a madman.

      For the suffering wretch had been left on his back, face up to the sun, with his eyelids removed!

      Ants crawled over the sufferer, apparently believing him dead. Flies buzzed, and a raven flapped away, beating the air with its startled wings. The horseman dismounted, took his water bag from his horse, and approached the tortured man.

      The moaning man on the ground did not see him, for his eyes were shriveled. He was blind.

      The youth with the water bag tried to speak, but at first words failed to come. The sight was too ghastly.

      "Heah's watah," he muttered finally. "Just—just try and stand the pain fo' a little longah. I'll do all I can fo' yo'."

      He held the water bag at the swollen, blackened lips. Then he poured a generous portion of the contents over the shriveled eyes and skeletonlike face.

      For a while the tortured man could not speak. But while his rescuer slashed loose the rawhide ropes that bound him, he began to stammer a few words:

      "Heaven bless yuh! I thought I was dead, or mad! Oh, how I wanted water! Give me more—more!"

      "In a little while," said the other gently.

      In spite of the fact that he was now free, the sufferer could not move his limbs. Groans came from his lips.

      "Shoot me!" he cried. "Put a bullet through me! End this, if yuh've got any pity for me! I'm blind—dying. I can't stand the pain. Yuh must have a gun. Why don't yuh kill me and finish me?"

      It was the living dead! The buckskin-clad youth gave him more water, his face drawn with compassion.

      "Yo'll feel bettah afta while," he murmured. "Just sit steady."

      "Too late!" the tortured man almost screamed, "I'm dyin', I tell yuh!"

      "How long have yo' been like this?"

      "Three-four days. Maybe five. I lost count."

      "Who did this thing?" was the fierce question.

      "'The Terror'!" the reply came in a sobbing wail. "'The Masked Terror' and his murderin' band. I was a prospector. A wagon train was startin' across the Llano, and I tried to warn 'em. I never reached 'em. The Terror cut me off and left me like this! Say, I don't know yore name, pard, but——"

      "Call me 'Kid Wolf,'" answered the youth, "from Texas." His eyes had narrowed at the mention of the name "The Terror."

      "Somethin' on my mind, Kid Wolf. It's that wagon train. The Terror will wipe it out. Promise me yuh'll try and warn 'em."

      "I promise, old-timah," murmured the Texan. "Only yo' needn't to have asked that. When yo' first mentioned it, I intended to do it. Where is this wagon train, sah?"

      In gasps—for his strength was rapidly failing him—the prospector gave what directions he could. Kid Wolf listened intently, his eyes blazing-blue coals.

      "I'm passin' in my checks," sighed the sufferer weakly, when he had given what information he could. "I'll go easier now."

      "Yo' can be sure that I'll do all I can," the Texan assured him. "Fo' yo' see, that's always been mah business. I'm just a soldier of misfohtune, goin' through life tryin' to do all I can fo' the weak and oppressed. I'll risk mah life fo' these people, and heah's mah hand on that!"

      The prospector groped for his hand, took it, and tried to smile. In a few moments he had breathed his last, released from his pain. Kid Wolf removed the bandanna from his own throat and placed it over the dead man's face. Then he weighted it down with small rocks and turned to go.

      "Just about the time I get to thinkin' the world is good, Blizzahd," he sighed, addressing his white horse, "I find somethin' like this. Well, seems like we hit out across the Llano, aftah all. Let's get a move on, amigo! We've got work to do."

      The Texan's face, as he swung himself into the saddle, was set and hard.

      "Oh, I'm goin' back to the Rio Grande!

       The Rio!

       For most a yeah, I've been away,

       And I'm lonesome now fo' me Old Lone Stah!

       The Rio!

       Wheah the gila monsters play!"

      It was Kid Wolf's second day on the Llano Estacado, and his usual good spirits had returned. His voice rose tunefully and cheerily above the steady drumming of Blizzard's hoofs.

      Surely the scene that lay before his eyes could not have aroused his enthusiasm. It was lonely and desolate enough, with its endless sweeps dim against each horizon. The sky, blue, hot and pitiless, came down to meet the land on every hand, making a great circle unbroken by hill or mountain.

      So clean-swept was the floor of the vast table-land that each mile looked exactly like another mile. There was not a tree, not a shrub, not a rock to break the weary monotony. It was no wonder that the Spanish padres, who had crossed this enormous plateau long before, had named it the Llano Estacado—the Staked Plains. They had had a good reason of their own. In order to keep the trail marked, they had been compelled to drive stakes in the ground as they went along. Although the stakes had gone long since, the name still stuck.

      The day before, the Texan had climbed the natural rock steps that led upward and westward toward the terrible mesa itself, each flat-topped table bringing him nearer the Staked Plains. And soon after reaching the plateau he had found the trail left by a wagon train.

      From the ruts left in the soil, Kid Wolf estimated that the outfit must consist of a large number of prairie schooners, at least twenty. The Texan puzzled his mind over why this wagon train was taking such a dangerous route. Where were they bound for? Surely for the Spanish settlements of New Mexico—a perilous venture, at best.

      Even on the level plain, a wagon outfit moves slowly, and the Texan gained rapidly. Hourly the signs he had been following grew fresher. Late in the afternoon he made out a blot on the western horizon—a blot with a hazy smudge above it. It was the wagon train. The smudge was dust, dug up by the feet of many oxen.

      "They must be loco," Kid Wolf muttered, "to try and cut across The

       Terror's territory."

      The Texan had heard much of The Terror. And what plainsman of that day hadn't? He was the scourge of the table-lands, with his band of a hundred cutthroats, desperadoes recruited from the worst scum of the border. More than half of his hired killers, it was said, were Mexican outlaws from Sonora and Chihuahua. Some were half-breed Indians, and a few were white gunmen who killed for the very joy of killing.

      And The Terror himself? That was the mystery. Nobody knew his identity. Some rumors held that he was a white man; others maintained that he was a full-blooded Comanche Indian. Nobody had ever seen his face, for he always was masked. His deeds were enough. No torture was too cruel for his insane mind. No risk was too great, if he could obtain loot. With his band behind him, no man was safe on the Staked Plains. Many a smoldering pile of human bones testified to that.

      As the Texan approached the outfit, he could hear the sharp crack of the bull whips and the hoarse shouts of the drivers. Twenty-two wagons, and in single file! Against the blue of the horizon, they made a pretty sight, with their white coverings. Kid Wolf, however, was not concerned with the beauty of the picture.

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