141CHAPTER XJACK GOES TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS
She trailed the bridle reins, went up the porch steps, and drew off her gauntlets. Her hand was outstretched to open the door when her gaze fell upon a large bill tacked to the wall. Swiftly she read it through, and, having read it, remained in suspended motion. For the first time she fully realized the danger and the penalty that confronted her.
ONE THOUSAND DOLLARSWill Be Paid By Thomas L. Morse
ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS
Will Be Paid By Thomas L. Morse
For the arrest and conviction of each of the men who were implicated in the robbery of the Fort Allison stage on April twenty-seventh last. A further reward of $1000 will be paid for the recovery of the bullion stolen.
For the arrest and conviction of each of the men who were implicated in the robbery of the Fort Allison stage on April twenty-seventh last. A further reward of $1000 will be paid for the recovery of the bullion stolen.
This was what she read, and her eye was running over it a second time when she heard the jingle of a spur approaching.
“We’re red-hot after them, you see, Miss Lee,”142a mocking voice drawled. “If you want to round up a thousand plunks, all you’ve got to do is to tell me who Mr. Hold-up is.”
He laughed quietly, as if it were a joke, but the girl answered with a flush. “Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
“If I knew, do you suppose I would tell for five thousand—or ten thousand?”
For some reason this seemed to give him sardonic amusement. “No, I don’t suppose you would.”
“You’ll have to catch him yourself if you want him. I’m not in that business, Mr. Flatray.”
“I am. Sorry you don’t like the business, Miss Lee.” He added dryly: “But then you always were hard to please. You weren’t satisfied when I was a rustler.”
Her eyes swept him with a look, whether of reproach or contempt he was not sure. But the hard derision of his gaze did not soften. Mentally as well as physically he was a product of the sun and the wind, as tough and unyielding as a greasewood sapling. For a friend he would go the limit, and he could not forgive her that she had distrusted him.
“But mebbe you’d prefer it if I was rustling stages,” he went on, looking straight at her.
“What do you mean?” she asked breathlessly.
“I want to have a talk with you.”
“What about?”143
“Suppose we step around to the side of the house. We’ll be freer from interruption there.”
He led the way, taking her consent for granted. With him he carried a chair for her from the porch.
“If you’ll be as brief as possible, Mr. Flatray. I’ve been in the desert two days and want to change my clothes.”
“I’ll not detain you. It’s about this gold robbery.”
“Yes.”
She could not take her eyes from him. Something told her that he knew her secret, or part of it. Her heart was fluttering like a caged thrush.
“Shall we begin at the beginning?”
“If you like.”
“Or in the middle, say.”
“If only you’ll begin anywhere,” she said impatiently.
“How will this do for a beginning, then? ‘One thousand dollars will be paid by Thomas L. Morse for the arrest and conviction of each of the men who were implicated in the robbery of the Fort Allison stage on April twenty-seventh last.’”
She was shaken, there was no denying it. He could see the ebb of blood from her cheeks, the sudden stiffening of the slender figure.
She did not speak until she had control of her voice. “Dear me! What has all that to do with me?”144
“A good deal, I’m afraid. You know how much, better than I do.”
“Perhaps I’m stupid. You’ll have to be a great deal clearer before I can understand you.”
“I’ve noticed that it’s a lot easier to understand what you want to than what you don’t want to.”
Sharply a thought smote her. “Have you seen Phil Norris lately?”
“No, I haven’t. Do you think it likely that he would confess?”
“Confess?” she faltered.
“I see I’ll have to start at the beginning, after all. It’s pretty hard to say just where that is. It might be when Morse got hold of your father’s claim, or another fellow might say it was when the Boone-Bellamy feud began, and that is a mighty long time ago.”
“The Boone-Bellamy feud,” echoed the girl.
“Yes. The real name of our friend Norris is Dunc Boone.”
“He’s no friend of mine.” She flamed it out with such intensity that he was surprised.
“Glad to hear it. I can tell you, then, that he’s a bad lot. He was driven out of Arkansas after a suspected murder. It was a killing from ambush. They couldn’t quite hang it on him, but he lit a shuck to save his skin from lynchers. At that time he was a boy. Couldn’t have been more than seventeen.”
“Who did he kill?”145
“One of the Bellamy faction. The real name of T. L. Morse is——”
“—Richard Bellamy.”
“How do you know that?” he asked in surprise.
“I’ve known it since the first day I met him.”
“Known that he was wanted for murder in Arkansas?”
“Yes.”
“And you protected him?”
“I had a reason.” She did not explain that her reason was Jack Flatray, between whom and the consequences of his rustling she had stood.
He pondered that a moment. “Well, Morse, or Bellamy, told me all about it. Now that Boone has recognized him, the game is up. He’s ready to go back and stand trial if he must. I’ve communicated with the authorities in Arkansas and I’ll hear from them in a day or two.”
“What has this to do with the hold-up?”
“That’s right, the hold-up. Well, this fellow Boone got your father to drinking, and then sprung it on him to rob the stage when the bullion was being shipped. Somehow Boone had got inside information about when this was to be. He had been nosing around up at the mine, and may have overheard something. O’ course we know what your father would have done if he hadn’t been drinking. He’s straight as a string, even if he does go off like powder. But when a man’s making a blue blotter146of himself, things don’t look the same to him. Anyhow he went in.”
“He didn’t. I can prove he didn’t,” burst from Melissy’s lips.
“Be glad to hear your proof later. He ce’tainly planned the hold-up. Jim Budd overheard him.”
“Did Jim tell you that?”
“Don’t blame him for that. He didn’t mean to tell, but I wound him up so he couldn’t get away from it. I’ll show you later why he couldn’t.”
“I’m sure you must have been very busy, spying and everything,” she told him bitterly.
“I’ve kept moving. But to get back to the point. Your father and Boone were on the ground where the stage was robbedeither at the time or right after. Their tracks were all over there. Then they got on their horses and rode up the lateral.”
“But they couldn’t. The ditch was full,” broke from the girl.
“You’re right it was. You must be some observing to know when that ditch is full and empty to an hour. I reckon you’ve got an almanac of tides,” he said ironically.
She bit her lip with chagrin. “I just happened to notice.”
“Some folksaremore noticing than others. But you’re surely right. They came up the ditch one on each side. Now, why one on each side, do you reckon?”
Melissy hid the dread that was flooding her heart.147“I’m sure I don’t know. You know everything else. I suppose you do that, too, if they really did.”
“They had their reasons, but we won’t go into that now. First off when they reach the house they take a bunch of sheep down to the ditch to water them. Now, why?”
“Why, unless because they needed water?”
“We’ll let that go into the discard too just now. Let’s suppose your father and Boone dumped the gold box down into the creek somewhere after they had robbed the stage. Suppose they had a partner up at the head-gates. When the signal is given down comes the water, and the box is covered by it. Mebbe that night they take it away and bury it somewhere else.”
The girl began to breathe again. He knew a good deal, but he was still off the track in the main points.
“And who is this partner up at the canal? Have you got him located too?”
“I might guess.”
“Well?”—impatiently.
“A young lady hailing from thishaciendawas out gathering flowers all mo’ning. She was in her runabout. The tracks led straight from here to the head-gates. I followed them through the sands. There’s a little break in one of the rubber tires. You’ll find that break mark every eight feet or so in the sand wash.”
“I opened the head-gates, then, did I?”148
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“At a signal from father?”
“I reckon.”
“And that’s all the evidence you’ve got against him and me?” she demanded, still outwardly scornful, but very much afraid at heart.
“Oh, no, that ain’t all, Miss Lee. Somebody locked the Chink in during this play. He’s still wondering why.”
“He dreamed it. Very likely he had been rolling a pill.”
“Did I dream this too?” From his coat pocket he drew the piece of black shirting she had used as a mask. “I found it in the room where your father put me up that first night I stayed here. It was your brother Dick’s room, and this came from the pocket of a shirt hanging in the closet. Now, who do you reckon put it there?”
For the first time in her life she knew what it was to feel faint. She tried to speak, but the words would not come from her parched throat. How could he be so hard and cruel, this man who had once been her best friend? How could he stand there so like a machine in his relentlessness?
“We—we used to—to play at hold-up when he was a boy,” she gasped.
He shook his head. “No, I reckon that won’t go. You see, I’ve found the piece this was torn from,and I found it in your father’s coat. I went into his room on tiptoe that same hour. The coat was149on the bed. He had gone downstairs for a minute and left it there. Likely he hadn’t found a good chance to burn it yet.” Taking the two pieces, he fitted them together and held them up. “They match exactly, you see. Did your father used to play with you too when he was a boy?”
He asked this with what seemed to her tortured soul like silken cruelty. She had no answer, none at least that would avail. Desperately she snatched at a straw.
“All this isn’t proof. It’s mere surmise. Some one’s tracks were found by you. How do you know they were father’s?”
“I’ve got that cinched too. I took his boots and measured them.”
“Then where’s the gold, if he took it? It must be somewhere. Where is it?”
“Now I’m going up to the head of the class, ma’am. The gold—why, that’s a dead easy one.Near as I can make out, I’m sitting on it right now.”
She gave a startled little cry that died in her throat.
“Yes, it’s ce’tainly a valuable wash-stand. Chippendale furniture ain’t in it with this kind. I reckon the king of England’s is ace high against a straight flush when it bucks up against yours.”
Melissy threw up her cards. “How did you find out?” she asked hoarsely.
The deputy forced her to commit herself more definitely. “Find out what?”150
“Where I put the box.”
“I’ll go back and answer some of those other questions first. I might as well own up that I knew all the time your father didn’t hold up the stage.”
“You did?”
“He’s no fool. He wouldn’t leave his tracks all over the place where he had just held up a stage. He might jest as well have left a signed note saying he had done it. No, that didn’t look like Champ Lee to me. It seemed more likely he’d arrived after the show than before. It wouldn’t be like him, either, to go plowing up the side of the ditch, with his partner on the other side, making a trail that a blind man could follow in the night. Soon as I knew Lee and Boone made those tracks, I had it cinched that they were following the lateral to see where the robber was going. They had come to the same conclusion I had, that there wasn’t any way of escapeexcept by that empty lateral,assuming it had been empty. The only point was to find out where the hold-up left the lateral. That’s why they rode one on each side of it. They weren’t missing any bets, you see.”
“And that’s why they drove the sheep down to water—to hide the wheel-tracks. I couldn’t understand that.”
“I must ’a’ been right on their heels, for they were jest getting the trotters out of the corral when I reached the place where your rig left the water.151’Course I fell back into the brush and circled around so as to hit the store in front.”
“But if dad knew all the time, I don’t see—surely, he wouldn’t have come right after me and made plain the way I escaped.”
“That’s the point. He didn’t know. I reckon he was sort of guessing around in the dark, plumb puzzled; couldn’t find the switch at all at first. Then it come to him, and he thought of the sheep to blind the trail. If I’d been half a hour later he would have got away with it too. No, if he had guessed that you were in the hold-up, him and Boone would have hiked right out on a false trail and led us into the Galiuros. Having no notion of it at first, he trails you down.”
“And the gold—how did you find that?”
“I knew it was either right around the place or else you had taken it on with you when you went to the head-gates and buried it up there somewhere. Next day I followed your tracks and couldn’t find any place where you might have left it. I knew how clever you were by the way you planned your getaway. Struck me as mighty likely that you had left it lying around in plain view somewhere. If you had dumped it out of the box into a sack, the box must be somewhere. You hadn’t had time to burn it before the stage got back. I drifted back to your kindling pile, where all the old boxes from the store are lying. I happened to notice a brass tack in one near the end; then the marks of the152tack heads where they had pressed against the wood. I figured you might have substituted one box for another, and inside of ten minutes I stumbled against your wash-stand and didn’t budge it. Then I didn’t have to look any further.”
“I’ve been trying to get a chance to move it and haven’t ever found one. You were always coming around the corner on me,” she explained.
“Sorry I incommoded you,” he laughed. “But it’s too heavy for a lady to lift alone, anyhow. I don’t see how you managed it this far.”
“I’m pretty strong,” she said quietly.
She had no hope of escape from the net of evidence in which he had entangled her. It was characteristic of her that she would not stoop to tricks to stir his pity. Deep in her heart she knew now that she had wronged him when she had suspected him of being a rustler. Hecouldnot be. It was not in the man’s character. But she would ask no mercy of him. All her pride rose to meet his. She would show him how game she could be. What she had sown she would reap. Nor would it have been any use to beseech him to spare her. He was a hard man, she told herself. Not even a fool could have read any weakness in the quiet gray eyes that looked so steadily into hers. In his voice and movements there was a certain deliberation, but this had nothing to do with indecision of character. He would do his duty as he saw it, regardless of whom it might affect.153
Melissy stood before him in the unconscious attitude of distinction she often fell into when she was moved, head thrown back so as to bare the rounded throat column, brown little hands folded in front of her, erectly graceful in all her slender lines.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
His stone-cold eyes met hers steadily. “It ain’t my say-so. I’m going to put it up to Bellamy. I don’t know what he’ll do.”
But, cold as his manner was, the heart of the man leaped to her courage. He saw her worn out, pathetically fearful, but she could face him with that still little smile of hers. He longed to take her in his arms, to tell her it would be all right—all right.
“There’s one thing that troubles me. I don’t know how father will take this. You know how quick-tempered he is. I’m afraid he’ll shoot somebody or do something rash when he finds out. You must let me be alone with him when I tell him.”
He nodded. “I been thinking of that myself. It ain’t going to do him any good to make a gun-play. I have a notion mebbe this thing will unravel itself if we give it time. It will only make things worse for him to go off half-cocked.”
“How do you mean it may unravel itself?” she asked.
“Bellamy is a whole lot better man than folks154give him credit for being. I expect he won’t be hard on you when he knows why you did it.”
“And why did I do it?” she asked quietly.
“Sho! I know why you did it. Jim Budd told you what he had heard, and you figured you could save your father from doing it. You meant to give the money back, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I can’t prove that either in court or to Mr. Bellamy.”
“You don’t need to prove it to me. If you say so, that’s enough,” he said in his unenthusiastic voice.
“But you’re not judge and jury, and you’re certainly not Mr. Bellamy.”
“Scrape Arizona with a fine-tooth comb and you couldn’t get a jury to convict when it’s up against the facts in this case.”
At this she brightened. “Thank you, Mr. Flatray.” And naïvely she added with a little laugh: “Are you ready to put the handcuffs on me yet?”
He looked with a smile at her outstretched hands. “They wouldn’t stay on.”
“Don’t you carry them in sizes to fit all criminals?”
“I’ll have to put you on parole.”
“I’ll break it and climb out the window. Then I’ll run off with this.”
She indicated the box of treasure.
“I need that wash-stand in my room. I’m going to take it up there to-night,” he said.155
“Thisisn’ta very good safety deposit vault,” she answered, and, nodding a careless good-night, she walked away in her slow-limbed, graceful Southern fashion.
She had carried it off to the last without breaking down, but, once in her own room, the girl’s face showed haggard in the moonlight. It was one thing to jest about it with him; it was another to face the facts as they stood. She was in the power of her father’s enemy, the man whose proffer of friendship they had rejected with scorn. Her pride cried out that she could not endure mercy from him even if he wished to extend it. Surely there must be some other way out than the humiliation of begging him not to prosecute. She could see none but one, and that was infinitely worse. Yet she knew it would be her father’s first impulsive instinct to seek to fight her out of her trouble, the more because it was through him that it had fallen upon her. At all hazards she must prevent this.
156CHAPTER XIA CONVERSATION
Not five minutes after Melissy had left the deputy sheriff, another rider galloped up the road. Jack, returning from his room, where he had left the box of gold locked up, waited on the porch to see who this might be.
The horseman proved to be the man Norris, or Boone, and in a thoroughly bad temper, as Jack soon found out.
“Have you see anything of ’Lissie Lee?” he demanded immediately.
“Miss Lee has just left me. She has gone to her room,” answered Flatray quietly.
“Well, I want to see her,” said the other hoarsely.
“I reckon you better postpone it to to-morrow. She’s some played out and needs sleep.”
“Well, I’m going to see her now.”
Jack turned, still all gentleness, and called to Jim Budd, who was in the store.
“Oh, Jim! Run upstairs and knock on Miss Melissy’s door and tell her Mr. Norris is down here. Ask if she will see him to-night.”
“You’re making a heap of formality out of this, Mr. Buttinsky,” sneered the cowpuncher.157
Jack made no answer, unless it were one to whistle gently and look out into the night as if he were alone.
“No, seh. She doan’ wan’ tuh see him to-night,” announced Jim upon his return.
“That seems to settle it, Mr. Norris,” said Jack pleasantly.
“Not by a hell of a sight. I’ve got something to say to her, and I’m going to say it.”
“To-morrow,” amended the officer.
“I said to-night.”
“But your say doesn’t go here against hers. I reckon you’ll wait.”
“Not so’s you could notice it.” The cowpuncher took a step forward toward the stairway, but Flatray was there before him.
“Get out of the way, you. I don’t stand for any butting-in,” the cowboy blustered.
“Don’t be a goat, Norris. She’s tired, and she says she don’t want to see you. That’s enough, ain’t it?”
Norris leaped back with an oath to draw his gun, but Jack had the quickest draw in Arizona. The puncher found himself looking into the business end of a revolver.
“Better change your mind, seh,” suggested the officer amiably. “I take it you’ve been drinking and you’re some excited. If you were in condition tosavezthe situation, you’d understand that the young lady doesn’t care to see you now. Do you158need a church to fall on you before you can take a hint?”
“I reckon if you knew all about her, you wouldn’t be so anxious to stand up for her,” Norris said darkly.
“I expect we cayn’t any of us stand the great white light on all our acts; but if any one can, it’s that little girl upstairs.”
“What would you say if I told you that she’s liable to go to Yuma if I lift my hand?”
“I’d say I was from Missouri and needed showing.”
“Put up that gun, come outside with me, and if I take a notion I’ll show you all right.”
Jack laughed as his gun disappeared. “I’d be willing to bet high that there are a good many citizens around here haided straighter for Yuma than Miss Melissy.”
Without answering, Norris led the way out and stopped only when his arm rested on the fence of the corral.
“Nobody can hear us now,” he said brusquely, and the ranger got a whiff of his hot whisky breath. “You’ve put it up to me to make good. All right, I’ll do it. That little girl in there, as you call her, is the bad man who held up the Fort Allison stage.”
The officer laughed tolerantly as he lit a cigarette.
“I hear you say it, Norris.”159
“I didn’t expect you to believe it right away, but it’s a fact just the same.”
Flatray climbed to the fence and rested his feet on a rail. “Fire ahead. I’m listenin’.”
“The first men on the ground after that hold-up were me and Lee. We covered the situation thorough and got hold of some points right away.”
“That’s right funny too. When I asked you if you’d been down there you both denied it,” commented the officer.
“We were protecting the girl. Mind you, we didn’t know who had done it then, but we had reasons to think the person had just come from this ranch.”
“What reasons?” briefly demanded Flatray.
“We don’t need to go into them. We had them, anyhow. Then I lit on a foot-print right on the edge of the ditch that no man ever made. We didn’t know what to make of it, but we wiped it out and followed the ditch, one on each side. We’d figured that was the way he had gone. You see, though water was running in the ditch now, it hadn’t been half an hour before.”
“You don’t say!”
“There wasn’t a sign of anybody leaving the ditch till we got to the ranch; then we saw tracks going straight to the house.”
“So you got a bunch of sheep and drove them down there to muss things up some.”
Norris looked sharply at him. “You got there160while we were driving them back. Well, that’s right. We had to help her out.”
“You’re helping her out now, ain’t you?” Jack asked dryly.
“That’s my business. I’ve got my own reasons, Mr. Deputy. All you got to do is arrest her.”
“Just as soon as you give me the evidence, seh.”
“Haven’t I given it to you? She was seen to drive away from the house in her rig. She left footprints down there. She came back up the ditch and then rode right up to the head-gates and turned on the water. Jim Little saw her cutting across country from the head-gates hell-to-split.”
“Far as I can make out, all the evidence you’ve given me ain’t against her, but against you. She was out drivin’ when it happened, you say, and you expect me to arrest her for it. It ain’t against the law to go driving, seh. And as for that ditch fairy tale, on your own say-so you wiped out all chance to prove the story.”
“Then you won’t arrest her?”
“If you’ll furnish the evidence, seh.”
“I tell you we know she did it. Her father knows it.”
“Is it worryin’ his conscience? Did he ask you to lay an information against her?” asked the officer sarcastically.
“That isn’t the point.”
“You’re right. Here’s the point.” Not by the faintest motion of the body had the officer’s indolence161been lifted, but the quiet ring of his voice showed it was gone. “You and Lee were overheard planning that robbery the day after you were seen hanging around the ’Monte Cristo.’ You started out to hold up the stage. It was held up. By your own story you were the first men on the ground after the robbery. I tracked you straight from there here along the ditch. I found a black mask in Lee’s coat. A dozen people saw you on that fool sheep-drive of yours. And to sum up, I found the stolen gold right here where you must have hidden it.”
“You found the gold? Where?”
“That ain’t the point either, seh. The point is that I’ve got you where I want you, Mr. Norris, alias Mr. Boone. You’re wound up in a net you cayn’t get away from. You’re wanted back East, and you’re wanted here. I’m onto your little game, sir. Think I don’t know you’ve been trying to manufacture evidence against me as a rustler? Think I ain’t wise to your whole record? You’re arrested for robbing the Fort Allison stage.”
Norris, standing close in front of him, shot his right hand out and knocked the officer backward from the fence. Before the latter could get on his feet again the cowpuncher was scudding through the night. He reached his horse, flung himself on, and galloped away. Harmlessly a bullet or two zipped after him as he disappeared.
The deputy climbed over the fence again and162laughed softly to himself. “You did that right well, Jack. He’ll always think he did that by his lone, never will know you was a partner in that escape. It’s a fact, though, I could have railroaded him through on the evidence, but not without including the old man. No, there wasn’t any way for it but that grandstand escape of Mr. Boone’s.”
Still smiling, he dusted himself, put up his revolver, and returned to the house.
163CHAPTER XIITHE TENDERFOOT MAKES A PROPOSITION
Melissy waited in dread expectancy to see what would happen. Of quick, warm sympathies, always ready to bear with courage her own and others’ burdens, she had none of that passive endurance which age and experience bring. She was keyed to the heroism of an occasion, but not yet to that which life lays as a daily burden upon many without dramatic emphasis.
All next day nothing took place. On the succeeding one her father returned with the news that the “Monte Cristo” contest had been continued to another term of court. Otherwise nothing unusual occurred. It was after mail time that she stepped to the porch for a breath of fresh air and noticed that the reward placard had been taken down.
“Who did that?” she asked of Alan McKinstra, who was sitting on the steps, reading a newspaper and munching an apple.
“Jack Flatray took it down. He said the offer of a reward had been withdrawn.”
“When did he do that?”
“About an hour ago. Just before he rode off.”164
“Rode off! Where did he go?”
“Heard him say he was going to Mesa. He told your father that when he settled the bill.”
“He’s gone for good, then?”
“That’s the way I took it. Say, Melissy, Farnum says Jack told him the gold had been found and turned back to Morse. Is that right?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, it looks blamed funny they could get the bullion back without getting the hold-up.”
“Maybe they’ll get him yet,” she consoled him.
“I wish I could get a crack at him,” the boy murmured vengefully.
“You had one chance at him, didn’t you?”
“José spoiled it. Honest, I wasn’t going to lie down, ’Lissie.”
Again the days followed each other uneventfully. Bellamy himself never came for his mail now, but sent one of the boys from the mine for it. Melissy wondered whether he despised her so much he did not ever want to see her again. Somehow she did not like to think this. Perhaps it might be delicacy on his part. He was going to drop the whole thing magnanimously and did not want to put upon her the obligation of thanking him by presenting himself to her eyes.
But though he never appeared in person, he had never been so much in her mind. She could not rid herself of a growing sympathy and admiration for this man who was holding his own against many.165A story which was being whispered about reached her ears and increased this. A bunch of his sheep had been found poisoned on their feeding ground, and certain cattle interests were suspected of having done the dastardly thing.
When she could stand the silence no longer Melissy called up Jack Flatray on the telephone at Mesa.
“You caught me just in time. I’m leaving for Phoenix to-night,” he told her. “What can I do for you, Miss Lee?”
“I want to know what’s being done about that Fort Allison stage hold-up.”
“The money has been recovered.”
“I know that, but—what about the—the criminals?”
“They made their getaway all right.”
“Aren’t you looking for them?”
“No.”
“Did Mr. Morse want you to drop it?”
“Yes. He was very urgent about it.”
“Does he know who the criminals are?”
“Yes.”
“And isn’t going to prosecute?”
“So he told me.”
“What did Mr. Morse say when you made your report?”
“Said, ‘Thank you.’”
“Oh, yes, but—you know what I mean.”
“Not being a mind-reader——”166
“About the suspect. Did he say anything?”
“Said he had private reasons for not pushing the case. I didn’t ask him what they were.”
This was all she could get out of him. It was less than she had hoped. Still, it was something. She knew definitely what Bellamy had done. Wherefore she sat down to write him a note of thanks. It took her an hour and eight sheets of paper before she could complete it to her satisfaction. Even then the result was not what she wanted. She wished she knew how he felt about it, so that she could temper it to the right degree of warmth or coolness. Since she did not know, she erred on the side of stiffness and made her message formal.
“Mr. Thomas L. Morse,“Monte Cristo Mine.“Dear Sir:“Father and I feel that we ought to thank you for your considerate forbearance in a certain matter you know of. Believe me, sir, we are grateful.“Very respectfully,“Melissy Lee.”
“Mr. Thomas L. Morse,“Monte Cristo Mine.
“Mr. Thomas L. Morse,
“Monte Cristo Mine.
“Dear Sir:
“Father and I feel that we ought to thank you for your considerate forbearance in a certain matter you know of. Believe me, sir, we are grateful.
“Very respectfully,“Melissy Lee.”
“Very respectfully,
“Melissy Lee.”
She could not, however, keep herself from one touch of sympathy, and as a postscript she naïvely added:
“I’m sorry about the sheep.”167
Before mailing it she carried this letter to her father. Neither of them had ever referred to the other about what each knew of the affair of the robbery. More than once it had been on the tip of Champ Lee’s tongue to speak of it, but it was not in his nature to talk out what he felt, and with a sigh he had given it up. Now Melissy came straight to the point.
“I’ve been writing a letter to Mr. Morse, dad, thanking him for not having me arrested.”
Lee shot at her a glance of quick alarm.
“Does he know about it, honey?”
“Yes. Jack Flatray found out the whole thing and told him. He was very insistent on dropping it, Mr. Flatray says.”
“You say Jack found out all about it, honey?” repeated Lee in surprise.
He was seated in a big chair on the porch, and she nestled on one arm of it, rumpled his gray hair as she had always done since she had been a little girl, kissed him, and plunged into her story.
He heard her to the end without a word, but she noticed that he gripped the chair hard. When she had finished he swept her into his arms and broke down over her, calling her the pet names of her childhood.
“Honey-bird ... Dad’s little honey-bird ... I’m that ashamed of myse’f. ’Twas the whisky did it, lambie. Long as I live I’ll nevah touch it again. I’ll sweah that befo’ God. All week168you been packin’ the troubles I heaped on you, precious, and afteh you-all saved me from being a criminal....”
So he went on, spending his tempestuous love in endearments and caresses, and so together they afterward talked it out and agreed to send the letter she had written.
But Lee was not satisfied with her atonement. He could not rest to let it go at that, without expressing his own part in it to Bellamy. Next day he rode up to the mine, and found its owner in workman’s slops just stepping from the cage. If Bellamy were surprised to see him, no sign of it reached his face.
“If you’ll wait a minute till I get these things off, I’ll walk up to the cabin with you, Mr. Lee,” he said.
“I reckon you got my daughter’s letter,” said Lee abruptly as he strode up the mountainside with his host.
“Yes, I got it an hour ago.”
“I be’n and studied it out, Mr. Morse. I couldn’t let it go at that, and so I reckoned I’d jog along up hyer and tell you the whole story.”
“That’s as you please, Mr. Lee. I’m quite satisfied as it is.”
The rancher went on as if he had not heard. “’Course I be’n holding a grudge at you evah since you took up this hyer claim. I expect that rankles with me most of the time, and when I take to169drinking seems to me that mine still belongs to me. Well, I heerd tell of that shipment you was making, and I sets out to git it, for it ce’tainly did seem to belong to me. Understand, I wasn’t drunk, but had be’n settin’ pretty steady to the bottle for several days. Melissy finds it out, no matter how, and undertakes to keep me out of trouble. She’s that full of sand, she nevah once thought of the danger or the consequences. Anyhow, she meant to git the bullion back to you afteh the thing had blown over.”
“I haven’t doubted that a moment since I knew she did it,” said Bellamy quietly.
“Glad to hear it. I be’n misjudgin’ you, seh, but you’re a white man afteh all. Well, you know the rest of the story: how she held up the stage, how Jack drapped in befo’ our tracks were covered, how smart he worked the whole thing out, and how my little gyurl confessed to him to save me.”
“Yes, I know all that.”
“What kind of a figure do I make in this? First off, I act like a durn fool, and she has to step in to save me. Then I let her tote the worry of it around while I ride off to Mesa. When Jack runs me down, she takes the blame again. To finish up with, she writes you a letter of thanks, jes’ as if the whole fault was hers.”
The old soldier selected a smooth rock and splashed it with tobacco juice before he continued with rising indignation against himself.
“I’m a fine father for a gyurl like that, ain’t I?170Up to date I always had an idee I was some sort of a man, but dad gum it! I cayn’t see it hyer. To think of me lettin’ my little gyurl stand the consequences of my meanness. No, Mr. Morse, that’s one too much for Champ Lee. He’s nevah going to touch another drop of whisky long as he lives.”
“Glad to hear it. That’s a square amend to make, one she will appreciate.”
“So I took apasearup hyer to explain this, and to thank you for yore kindness. Fac’ is, Mr. Morse, it would have jest about killed me if anything had happened to my little ’Lissie. I want to say that if you had a-be’n her brother you couldn’t ’a’ be’n more decent.”
“There was nothing else to do. It happens that I am in her debt. She saved my life once. Besides, I understood the motives for her action when she broke the law, and I honored them with all my heart. Flatray felt just as I did about it. So would any right-thinking man.”
“Well, you cayn’t keep me from sayin’ again that you’re a white man, seh,” the other said with a laugh behind which the emotion of tears lay near.
“That offer of a compromise is still open, Mr. Lee.”
The Southerner shook his grizzled head. “No, I reckon not, Mr. Morse. Understand, I got nothin’ against you. The feud is wiped out, and I’ll make you no mo’ trouble. But it’s yore mine, and I171don’t feel like taking charity. I got enough anyhow.”
“It wouldn’t be charity. I’ve always felt as if you had a moral claim on an interest in the ‘Monte Cristo.’ If you won’t take this yourself, why not let me make out the papers to Miss Lee? You would feel then that she was comfortably fixed, no matter what happened to you.”
“Well, I’ll lay it befo’ her. Anyhow, we’re much obliged to you, Mr. Morse. I’ll tell you what, seh,” he added as an after-thought. “You come down and talk it over with ’Lissie. If you can make her see it that way, good enough.”
When Champ Lee turned his bronco’s head homeward he was more at peace with the world than he had been for a long time. He felt that he would be able to look his little girl in the face again. For the first time in a week he felt at one with creation. He rode into the ranch plaza humming “Dixie.”
On the day following that of Lee’s call, the mine-owner saddled his mare and took the trail to the half-way house. It was not until after the stage had come and gone that he found the chance for a word with Melissy alone.
“Your father submitted my proposition, did he?” Bellamy said by way of introducing the subject.
“Let’s take a walk on it. I haven’t been out of the house to-day,” she answered with the boyish downrightness sometimes uppermost in her.
Calling Jim, she left him in charge of the store,172caught up a Mexican sombrero, and led the way up the trail to a grove of live-oaks perched on a bluff above. Below them stretched the plain, fold on fold to the blue horizon edge. Close at hand clumps of cactus, thickets of mesquit, together with the huddled adobe buildings of the ranch, made up the details of a scene possible only in the sunburnt territory. The palpitating heat quivered above the hot brown sand. No life stirred in the valley except a circling buzzard high in the sky, and the tiny moving speck with its wake of dust each knew to be the stage that had left the station an hour before.
Melissy, unconscious of the charming picture she made, stood upon a rock and looked down on it all.
“I suppose,” she said at last slowly, “that most people would think this pretty desolate. But it’s a part of me. It’s all I know.” She broke off and smiled at him. “I had a chance to be civilized. Dad wanted to send me East to school, but I couldn’t leave him.”
“Where were you thinking of going?”
“To Denver.”
Her conception of the East amused him. It was about as accurate as a New Yorker’s of the West.
“I’m glad you didn’t. It would have spoiled you and sent you back just like every other young lady the schools grind out.”173
She turned curiously toward him. “Am I not like other girls?”
It was on his tongue tip to tell her that she was gloriously different from most girls he had known, but discretion sealed his lips. Instead, he told her of life in the city and what it means to society women, its emptiness and unsatisfaction.
His condemnation was not proof positive to her. “I’d like to go there for myself some time and see. And anyhow it must be nice to have all the money you want with which to travel,” she said.
This gave him his opening. “It makes one independent. I think that’s the best thing wealth can give—a sort of spaciousness.” He waited perceptibly before he added: “I hope you have decided to be my partner in the mine.”
“I’ve decided not to.”
“I’m sorry. But why?”
“It’s your mine. It isn’t ours.”
“That’s nonsense. I always in my heart, recognized a moral claim you have. Besides, the case isn’t finished yet. Perhaps your father may win his contest. I’m all for settling out of court.”
“You know we won’t win.”
“I don’t.”
She gave him applause from her dark eyes. “That’s very fair of you, but Dad and I can’t do it.”
“Then you still have a grudge at me,” he smiled.
“Not the least little bit of a one.”
“I shan’t take no for an answer, then. I’ll order174the papers made out whether you want me to or not.” Without giving her a chance to speak, he passed to another topic: “I’ve decided to go out of the sheep business.”
“I’m so glad!” she cried.
“Those aren’t my feelings,” he answered ruefully. “I hate to quit under fire.”
“Of course you do, but your friends will know why you do it.”
“Why do I do it?”
“Because you know it’s right. The cattlemen had the range first. Their living is tied up in cattle, and your sheep are ruining the feed for them. Yesterday when I was out riding I counted the bones of eight dead cows.”
He nodded gravely. “Yes, in this country sheep are death to cows. I hate to be a quitter, but I hate worse to take the bread out of the mouths of a dozen families. Two days ago I had an offer for my whole bunch, and to-morrow I’m going to take the first instalment over the pass and drive them down to the railroad.”
“But you’ll have to cross the dead line to get over the pass,” she said quickly; for all Cattleland knew that a guard had been watching his herds to see they did not cross the pass.
“Yes. I’m going to send Alan with a letter to Farnum. I don’t think there will be any opposition to my crossing it when my object is understood,” he smiled.175
Melissy watched him ride away, strong and rugged and ungraceful, from the head to the heel of him a man. Life had gone hard with him. She wondered whether that were the reason her heart went out to him so warmly.
As she moved about her work that day and the next little snatches of song broke from her, bubbling forth like laughter, born of the quiet happiness within, for which she could give no reason.
After the stage had gone she saddled her pony and rode toward the head of the pass. In an hour or two now the sheep would be pouring across the divide, and she wanted to get a photograph of them as they emerged from the pass. She was following an old cattle trail which ran into the main path just this side of the pass, and she was close to the junction when the sound of voices stopped her. Some instinct made her wait and listen.
The speakers were in a dip of the trail just ahead of her, and the voice of the first she recognized as belonging to the man Boone. The tone of it was jubilantly cruel.
“No, sir. You don’t move a step of the way, not a step, Mr. Alan McKinstra. I’ve got him right where I want him, and I don’t care if you talk till the cows come home.”
Alan’s voice rang out indignantly, “It’s murder then—just plain, low-down murder. If you hold me here and let Morse fall into a death trap without176warning him, you’re as responsible as if you shot him yourself.”
“All right. Suits me down to the ground. We’ll let it go at that. I’m responsible. If you want the truth flat and plain, I don’t mind telling you that I wouldn’t be satisfied if I wasn’t responsible. I’m evening up some little things with Mr. Morse to-day.”
Melissy needed to hear no more to understand the situation, but if she had, the next words of Boone would have cleared it up.
“When I met up with you and happened on the news that you was taking a message to Farnum, and when I got onto the fact that Morse, as you call him, was moving his sheep across the dead line,relying on you having got his letter to the cattlemen to make it safe, it seemed luck too good to be true. All I had to do was to persuade you to stay right here with me, and Mr. Morse would walk into the pass and be wiped out. You get the beauty of it, my friend, don’t you?I’mresponsible, but it will be Farnum and his friends that will bear the blame. There ain’t but one flaw in the whole thing: Morse will never know that it’s me that killed him.”
“You devil!” cried the boy, with impotent passion.
“I’ve waited ten years for this day, and it’s come at last. Don’t you think for a moment I’m going to weaken. No, sir! You’ll sit there with my177gun poked in your face just as you’ve sat for six hours. It’s my say-so to-day, sir,” Boone retorted, malevolence riding triumph in his voice.
Melissy’s first impulse was to confront the man, her next to slip away without being discovered and then give the alarm.
“Yes, sir,” continued the cowpuncher; “I scored on Mr. Morse two or three nights ago, when I played hell with one of his sheep camps, and to-day I finish up with him. His sheep have been watched for weeks, and at the first move it’s all up with him and them. Farnum’s vaqueros will pay my debt in full. Just as soon as I’m right sure of it I’ll be jogging along to Dead Man’s Cache, and you can go order the coffin for your boss.”
The venom of the man was something to wonder at. It filled the listening girl with sick apprehension. She had not known that such hatred could live in the world.
Quietly she led her pony back, mounted, and made a wide detour until she struck the trail above. Already she could hear the distant bleat of sheep which told her that the herd was entering the pass. Recklessly she urged her pony forward, galloping into the saddle between the peaks without regard to the roughness of the boulder-strewn path. A voice from above hailed her with a startled shout as she flew past. Again, a shot rang out, the bullet whistling close to her ear. But nothing could stop her till she reached the man she meant to save.178
And so it happened that Richard Bellamy, walking at the head of his herd, saw a horse gallop wildly round a bend almost into his bleating flock. The rider dragged the bronco to a halt and slipped to the ground. She stood there ashen-hued, clinging to the saddle-horn and swaying slightly.
“I’m in time.... Thank God!... Thank God!” her parched lips murmured.
“Miss Lee! You here?” he cried.
They looked at each other, the man and the girl, while the wild fear in her heart began to still. The dust of the drive was thick on his boots, his clothes, his face, but the soil of travel could not obscure the power of his carriage, the strong lines of his shoulders, the set of his broad, flat back, any more than it could tarnish her rarity, the sweetness of blood in her that under his gaze beat faintly into her dusky cheeks. The still force of him somehow carried reassurance to her. Such virility of manhood could not be marked for extinction.
She panted out her story, and his eyes never left her.
“You have risked your life to save mine and my herders,” he said very quietly.
“You must go back,” she replied irrelevantly.
“I can’t. The entrance is guarded.”
This startled her. “Then—what shall we do?”
“You must ride forward at once. Tell the vaqueros that I am moving my sheep only to take them to the railroad. Explain to them how Alan is179detained with the message I sent Farnum. In a few minutes we shall follow with the sheep.”
“And if they don’t believe that you are going out of the sheep business—what then?”
“I shall have to take my chance of that.”
She seemed about to speak, but changed her mind, nodded, swung to the saddle, and rode forward. After a few minutes Bellamy followed slowly. He was unarmed, not having doubted that his letter to the cattleman would make his journey safe. That he should have waited for an answer was now plain, but the contract called for an immediate delivery of the sheep, as he had carefully explained in his note to Farnum.
Presently he heard again the clatter of a horse’s hoofs in the loose shale and saw Melissy returning.
“Well?” he asked as she drew up.
“I’ve told them. I think they believe me, but I’m going through the gorge with you.”
He looked up quickly to protest, but did not. He knew that her thought was that her presence beside him would protect him from attack. The rough chivalry of Arizona takes its hat off to a woman, and Melissy Lee was a favorite of the whole countryside.
So together they passed into the gulch, Bellamy walking by the side of her horse. Neither of them spoke. At their heels was the soft rustle of many thousands of padding feet.
Once there came to them the sound of cheering,180and they looked up to see a group of vaqueros waving their hats and shouting down. Melissy shook her handkerchief and laughed happily at them. It was a day to be remembered by these riders.
They emerged into a roll of hill-tops upon which the setting sun had cast a weird afterglow of radiance in which the whole world burned. The cactus, the stunted shrubbery, the painted rocks, seemed all afire with some magic light that had touched their commonness to a new wonder.
A sound came to them from below. A man, rifle in hand and leading a horse, was stealthily crossing the trail to disappear among the large boulders beyond.
Melissy did not speak, scarce dared to draw breath, for the man beneath them was Boone. There was something furtive and lupine about him that suggested the wild beast stalking its kill. No doubt he had become impatient to see the end of his foe and had ridden forward. He had almost crossed the path before he looked up and caught sight of them standing together in the fireglow of the sunset.
Abruptly he came to a standstill.
“By God! you slipped through, did you?” he said in a low voice of concentrated bitterness.
Bellamy did not answer, but he separated himself from the girl by a step or two. He knew quite well what was coming, and he looked down quietly with steady eyes upon his foe.181
From far below there came the faint sound of a horse breaking its way through brush. Boone paused to listen, but his eye never wandered from the bareheaded, motionless figure silhouetted against the skyline in the ruddy evening glow. He had shifted his rifle so that it lay in both hands, ready for immediate action.
Melissy, horror-stricken, had sat silent, but now she found her voice.
“He is unarmed!” she cried to the cowpuncher.
He made no answer. Another sound in the brush, close at hand, was distracting his attention, though not his gaze.
Just as he whipped up his rifle Melissy sprang forward. She heard the sound of the explosion fill the draw, saw Bellamy clutch at the air and slowly sink to the ground. Before the echoes had died away she had flung herself toward the inert body.
The outlaw took a step or two forward, as if to make sure of his work, but at the sound of running footsteps he changed his mind, swung to the saddle and disappeared among the rocks.
An instant later Bob Farnum burst into view.
“What’s up?” he demanded.
Melissy looked up. Her face was perfectly ashen. “Phil Norris ... he shot Mr. Morse.”
Farnum stepped forward. “Hurt badly, Mr. Morse?”
The wounded man grinned faintly. “Scared worse, I reckon. He got me in the fleshy part of the left arm.”