"Oh, I'll set with the sick any time." Kid squatted on his haunches, after the manner of outdoor men, and began rolling a cigarette. "Keep the boys from gittin' curious. They'll think we're talkin' private out here."
Silence fell, save for the creaking of crickets, the whisper of a cool breeze through the grass next the fence. Kid smoked, his big hat tilted back on his head, his eyes turned thoughtfully up toward the stars. Bud lay quietly with his face on his folded arms, his gun against his cheek, ready to come up shooting at the first breath of need. The cooling coffee sent faint whiffs of torturing fragrance to his nostrils. His eyes, half closed under the pinned-back brim of his hat, regarded Kid with unblinking attention. His ears, like faithful sentinels set on guard by his intrepid spirit, listened for hoof beats down the lane.
Bob came out fairly licking his chops over the enormous supper he had just gorged; took in the situation at a glance, hovered there helplessly for a space and announced that he was going back in and have a game or two of high-five with the boys. He kicked Bud's foot in passing; a hint which Bud could interpret as he pleased, though what Bob meant to signal was his intention to guard against treachery from the house.
Kid asked Bud how he felt, received a mumbled assurance that he was all right, and rolled and lighted another cigarette. A tactful companion was Kid Kern upon occasion; one who knew the Indian art of absolute passivity. It shamed Bud a bit to know that if he had been really suffering as he pretended to be, Kid would have sat right there all night if necessary, with never a complaint.
Then it came—the far-offclupet-clupety-clupetof a shod horse loping up the lane. Bud moved his long body a bit, drawing up one knee for leverage when the moment came to spring erect, and shifting his forehead so that his left hand pressed palm downward on the ground.
"How's she comin', Bud?" Kid poised his cigarette between two stained fingers while he peered down at Bud through the bright starlight. "Worse? Better let me get yuh that powder."
"No use—it's easing up—by spells." In the pauses Bud was listening, gauging the swiftness of the approach. Kid, he could see, had not yet caught the sound that had come clearly to Bud's ear pressed against the sod. His heart began to thump heavily, high in his chest. He could feel his face grow hot with the uprush of blood, and knew it was not fear that rioted within his body, but battle fever instead; the excitement that sends hot young blood leaping when conflict is near.
"Somebody comin'. Butch, I guess." Kid ground his cigarette stub under his heel as he rose.
The action and the announcement together gave Bud the excuse to rise also to a half-crouching position, poised on the balls of his feet like a runner waiting for the signal to go; a posture that would pass in the starlight as the squatting of a man whose interest is not sufficient to bring him to his feet. A full minute they listened to the nearing hoof beats, then the dim outline of a horseman showed in the lane.
"Yeah, that's Butch. I'll go open the gate—er—no, that horse of his is broke to gates, come to think of it."
Bud said nothing. He was watching Butch Cassidy sidle up to the gate post, lean and push back the heavy wooden bolt, nip through as the gate swung open, catch it midway and sidle back, pushing it shut as he went. The horse stood quiet while the bar slid into place, then Butch came riding toward them.
"What's takin' place here? One of them garden parties yuh read about?" Butch laughed and swung a leg over the cantle to dismount.
"Yes. It's my party, Butch." Bud was up and standing so close behind him that Kid, ten feet away and in front of them, could not have shot without hitting both. "Keep your hands up—just like that." He reached forward, twitched Butch's gun from its holster and thrust it into his own.
"Why—what's wrong with Butch?" Kid's voice was surprised, but it had not lost its friendly note.
"Nothing much, only he shot a couple of men and stole a few thousand dollars out of Palmer's cow pasture, and the blame rests on Jelly and me until I take this pelican in and return the money."
"Aw, he's full of prunes, Kid. Don't you b'lieve a word of that." Butch stood with his hands raised—any man will who feels the muzzle of a gun in his ribs—and stared at Kid. "I ain't been near Palmer's place. Are you goin' t' stand fer this kind of a hold-up, Kid, right in yore dooryard?"
"I dunno, Butch, till I see how she lays." Kid's tone took on a silky smoothness. "Seems funny Bud would take the trouble to ride 'way over here just fer a josh to hold you up and accuse you of a thing like that. Must be a little something to it."
"He's crazy, that's all."
"I suppose you didn't leave a couple of horses tied in a draw just across the road from Palmer's fence corner! I suppose I didn't find your tracks, heading this way, when Bob and I struck out to overhaul you? I happen to know how you pumped Skookum to get all the information you could. He doesn't know how much he told you, but it was enough to make you feel sure you could put your hands right on the money the bank lost! Well, I took Delkin and some others out there, so they beat you to it, Butch. The trouble is, they left a lot that belonged to Palmer, and that's what you packed off with you after you'd shot Bat Johnson and Ed White. They were after it too, I suppose. Some of our boys in town scared them till they beat it out of town, and they caught you there at the ledge. You downed them both, and got away with the stuff.
"Kid, I don't think for a minute that you'd go in on a deal of this kind—but I'll bet a horse Butch never gave you a chance! That's playing real square with you, isn't it?"
"No, Bud, it ain't. I never dreamed Butch would pull a thing like this, and him workin' fer me. I hope you don't look on me as bein' capable of rusty work like that, Bud." He took a step forward, then halted. "How about this? Think you c'n trust me to help yuh go through Butch and see if he's got that money? How much was it? If he's got it with him, by Harry, he'll come clean. I hate t' turn in one of my own men, but I'll do it—I'll turn him over to the sheriff myself if there's a scrap of evidence t' hold him on. Can I come and look in his slicker, Bud?"
"I wish you would, Kid." Bud caught Butch by the slack of his coat and pulled him backwards, away from the horse. "I trust you, yes. Sure, I do! But I'll put a bullet through you, Kid, if you try a double-cross."
"That's all right. Can't blame you, Bud. Butch working for me, it does look kinda leery around here. But you can't do two things at once, very handy, and I'm damned if I'll stand for any man of mine pulling off a stunt like this and giving the Frying Pan a black eye with my neighbors."
"Go ahead andlook, why don'tcha?" Butch challenged mockingly. "Sure, you'll try 'n' keep yore standin', Kid—you ain't got a man that don't know you'd quit him cold in a pinch, and save yore own bacon! Go ahead an'look!"
"You bet I'll look!" Kid picked up the reins, ran his hand reassuringly along the shoulder of the brown horse, grasped the horn and gave the saddle a little shake, and began untying Butch's slicker from behind the cantle, his fingers probing into the folds. "How much was it, Bud?"
"I don't know. It was gold, and there must have been several thousand dollars, at a rough guess. Nobody meddled with it—except the man that took it. Three or four regular coin bags, there ought to be."
Kid pulled off the slicker and slapped it on the ground, wide open and empty. Butch carried no saddle pockets, and there was no place on the saddle where a package of any size could be hidden.
Butch laughed unpleasantly.
"There ain't a darned thing, Bud." Kid turned and looked at the two. There was an awkward silence.
"Well, ain't somebody goin' to apologize?" Butch still had that mocking tone. "Bud's had a pipe dream, that's all. Now, I'll tell yuh where I been, and Bud c'n prove it easy enough. I been over to the Meddalark. I admit I went over there t' see Lark about gittin' a job. I stayed to dinner, and all the boys is gone but that pilgrim; yore black horses is in the bronch corral, Bud, and the kid's ridin' a pinto pony around he calls Huckleberry. Need any more proof, or does that convince yuh that I wasthere, all right?" Butch's tone was arrogant, though he was careful to make no offensive movement.
"Oh, you were there, no doubt. That doesn't let you out, Butch. Tell me where you were between four and five this afternoon!"
"Awn the road home," Butch drawled.
Bud twitched off Butch's hat and held it up in his left hand so that the edge of the brim was silhouetted against the stars.
"Look here, Kid. I suppose he'll say he bit that nick out of his hatbrim! Ever see a prettier bullet mark? Just about the size a .45 would make as nearly as I can tell in this light. Just for curiosity, Butch, how did you get that?" Bud's voice, that had been merely grim and unyielding, rang with triumph.
"None of yore damn' business. Is that plain enough, or shall I spell it?"
"No," said Bud softly, "you needn't spell it, Butch."
Followed another silence, which Kid broke placatingly.
"If Butch done what you think he done, Bud, I'm after him like a wolf. But if this is all the proof you got, why—you ain't gotany, that's all." He stopped on the brink of saying more and looked from one to the other.
"Yeah. You ain't gotany," Butch echoed, with that same faint mockery in his voice. "Goin' to hold me here all night? Me and my horse is hungry."
"Didn't anybody see him at Palmer's?" Kid asked doubtfully. And when Bud shook his head, Kid made a similar gesture. "Honest, Bud, I don't see what you're goin' to do about it," he said. "I'm with you if you've got any proof. But—"
"I'll get it," Bud declared harshly, and lowered his gun. "All right, Butch, this time you've got the best of it. But remember, I'll get that proof, and I'll getyou. And I don't mean that I'll kill you, either."
"What the hell do I care what you mean?" Butch took down his arms, rubbing his muscles unthinkingly. "Only—if kids are bound to git underfoot, they're liable to git stepped on. Yuh goin' to give me my gun back? Or are yuh scared to?"
Bud gave him his gun haughtily, butt first according to the range code of good manners. Butch slid it into his holster and reached for the bridle reins.
"Kid, you spread my slicker so you c'n pick it up off the ground," he said, and pulled the reins up along his horse's neck. He mounted, sat looking down at Bud for a minute, gave a grunt eloquent of tolerant scorn and rode away to the stable at a careless lope.
The two stood looking after him until his figure blurred with the deeper shade of the barn.
"Bud, I'm sorry it turned out the way it did," Kid said under his breath. "I believe in my soul Butch done it—but what does that prove? I want to warn yuh, though. You've made an enemy there that ain't liable to forgit yuh. It's a darn good thing I happened to be out here with yuh, boy. Butch don't dare pull nothin' underhand when I'm around, but if you'd tackled him alone out here, it maybe wouldn't 'a' turned out so peaceful." He gave a little inarticulate exclamation. "Say, Bud, next time you bump into Butch, rememberhe packs two guns. He could of got you any time he wanted to t'night. Next time you pull a gun on Butch Cassidy I'd advise yuh as a friend to pull the trigger at the same time. May as well play safe, then it won't be you we'll have to bury."
"I suppose that's a friendly tip, and as such I thank you for it, Kid." Bitterness was all that was left to young Bud at that moment.
"Yes, and I wouldn't give it to everybody, either. Might as well come along in and have some supper, Bud—now yore headache's cured."
But Bud shook his head and said he couldn't swallow a mouthful, so Kid did not urge him. Perhaps he knew what it means when a young man must swallow his pride.
Bob came out to them, and all he learned was that they were going back home that night. Once again Kid did not urge Bud to modify his decision; instead, he approved it.
"Butch will shore be on the peck, now, and it'll be just as well to side-step. Here he comes—you boys can get your horses out, and I'll keep an eye on Butch. Too bad, but there ain't a thing more I can do, or you either."
"No," said Bud dully, "I guess not. I made a fool of myself, that's all."
They were riding down the lane before Bud came out of his black mood of depression, or Bob dared open his mouth to ask a question.
"It's a cinch he stopped and cached the money somewhere along the way," Bud cried hotly, when they had gone carefully over the whole thing together. "What we have to do now is try and find it."
"Yeah, and beat Butch to it," Bob reminded. "Now, I know all this end of the reservation like a book. Butch, he'd hide that money purty close in, I betcha, but not along the trail nowhere. Can't back trail him to-night, but by daylight—" He stopped there for a time. "Tell yuh, Bud, what we better do. Awn a piece here is that crick, and I betcha we could pick up Butch's tracks there where he cut across into the hills. It's about the only place where he could leave the trail without making signs a blind man could read; what's more, it's the only place where he could git into the hills without ridin' an hour er more extry.
"What we better do is you go awn home and git some chuck inside yuh, and take a sleep. I'll bed right down by that crick till daybreak, and pick up Butch's back track. I kin jest about read that jasper's mind, Bud. You put Kid wise, and Kid'll be watchin' Butch like a hawk. It'll be kinda funny if Butch gits a chance to ride back here fer a day er two. Right now is when he's got to take a big chance and leave the money where it's at. When you git ready, you come awn back with some grub. Foller the trail we took comin' over, and I'll meet yuh, Bud, right where that spring comes up under them sandstone cliffs. You know—where we watered our horses. They's feed, and we c'n make camp there if we have to. I know where we c'n crawl under a shelf if it storms, even.
"So you do that, Bud. It'll save time, and we'll find the dough—never you mind about that!"
"If it takes until snow flies, we've got to find it," Bud declared. "Well, I'll tell you when we reach the creek whether I'll do that or not."
Two motley roosters and a black Minorca were craning necks to outcrow one another before the dawn. Out of the chill dark came Bud, the Walking Sorrel swinging automatically along in the long strides of the running walk that gave him his name and made him better than most horses on a long, hard trail. When he stopped, the sorrel's legs trembled with exhaustion. Bud's spurred boots dragged like an old man's on the path to the house, and his head buzzed until the roosters, the frogs and the humming of mosquitoes blended in one muffled, discordant chorus.
As he stepped upon the porch Maw sat up, rubbing her eyes, and got out of bed, dragging a faded, big-flowered kimono over her nightgown and thrusting tiny, bare feet into a shapeless pair of slippers much too large for her. Her muslin nightcap went up to a peak at the crown of her head. She looked like a female goblin fleeing from a midnight rendezvous as she came pattering into the kitchen with a lighted candle held aloft in her hand, her round eyes blinking with sleep.
"My, I bet you're about starved, Buddy! When a boy gets in this time of night, Iknowhe's hungry. I set back a whole berry pie for you, and the cream for it is all whipped and ready. I thought I wouldn't spread it till you come, because if it stands too long the crust gets soggy. And there's plenty of cold fried chicken—I saved you the gizzards, Bud, and three wings. I know how you like them parts. Nev' mind washin' your face. You set right down and I'll have you eatin' in two seconds."
That was one of the reasons why the Meadowlark worshiped Maw.
"Drink this, Buddy. It's last night's milk—poured right off the top of the pan, cream and all."
Slumped into the nearest chair by the table, Bud put out a hand slowly and took up the glass, spilling milk on Maw's white tablecloth and down his shirt front because his hand shook so. But the rich milk refreshed him like a draught of wine, and when he had set down the glass—empty—he turned hollow eyes with some interest toward the plate heaped with chicken fried a golden brown as only Maw could do it. Maw was spreading fresh bread for him, two great slices, and she seemed blessedly unconscious of Bud's wolfish feeding, once he started to eat.
But finally, when Bud had finished the third wing and was biting into the bluish knob of a gizzard, Maw hooked her slipper heels over the top rung of her chair and nodded her head like a witch over her cauldron.
"Things kinda slipped up, I s'pose. They will do that no matter how careful we plan. I heard enough of what you and Skookum was talkin' about last night—"
"Last night?" Bud repeated, looking up in dull amazement. "Is that as long ago as it was, Maw?"
"Well, a course it's most mornin' now, so I s'pose I can say night b'fore last. When every minute is crammed and jammed with happenin's, it does seem to take an awful lot of 'em to make a day. The day has gone real quick for me, too. And there's Margy, sayin' Cranford would be real excitin' alongside this place. She got real put out t'day, because you boys went off first thing this forenoon, and then Butch Cassidy come over and spent most all the time foolin' around with Skookum and didn't talk to her much, and somethin' or other went wrong in her story—she was tellin' me all about it while we washed up the dishes.
"Margy's getting real friendly," Maw went on, after a pause spent in studying Bud's face and in deciding, no doubt, that he was not yet ready to talk of his own affairs. "This afternoon she come right up and put her arm around me and patted me on the shoulder! I didn't s'pose she'd ever get used to me so she could look at me without scringin', but she's got all over that, and it ain't much more'n a week since she come. She's just as sweet as she can be, and she tells me all about everything, real confiding."
"Cranford! Ye gods!" Bud exploded tardily, the full enormity of the outrageous comparison striking him in the middle of his demolishing the plate of chicken. He dropped a clean-picked thigh bone on the heap beside his plate and looked at Maw with a shadow of his old, impudent grin. "If Marge were a man I'd show her some excitement, maybe."
"She's writing a bank-robbery story, Bud, and—maybe I hadn't ought to tell you—she's got you for the hero of it. She—"
"Me for the hero? Good Lord!"
"Well," said Maw, blinking at him across the table, "looks to me as if you'd had about all the adventures she's put you through in her story, except I don't s'pose you've been arrested for the murder and throwed in jail and incarcerated, like Margy had 'em do to you. She says it's awful hard to make up excitin' things, when she come out here expectin' that things would happen right along that she could use fine. She says she's goin' to have the Indians break out and start massacreeing the whites, and she wanted all day to ask you about some secret order; Golden Arrer, she says it is. She wants to make it a religious outbreak of some kind, and either let 'em catch you and start in to torture you, or else have you save a girl from bein' tortured. She tried to get Lark to tell her, but Larkie's kinda queer about some things. She couldn't get a peep outa him. He told her there wasn't no such thing, but of course she knew he was just denyin' it for some reason of his own. She thinks maybe he's mixed up and implicated somehow—maybe a high priest of the order; but I told her I didn't hardly believe he was."
Bud gave a whoop and choked so that Maw climbed down from her chair and came around and thumped him between the shoulders until he could wave her off with weak gestures of refusal. He came to with his face red and blinking tears, but he had no sooner got his breath than he began to laugh.
"I s'pose I've said somethin' funny, but I don't see what." Maw spoke tartly when the first outburst had subsided. "I guess you oughta be in pretty good shape now after gorgin' the way you have. I'll go call Lark, and then I expect maybe you'll see fit to tell us what's happened, and what brings you home this time in the morning, lookin' like a string of suckers and eatin' like you'd starved for a week. And all I can say," she stopped to say pettishly, "is that small matters amuse small minds. If I used a word wrong, that'smybusiness!" She scuttled off before Bud could explain.
Maw was further shocked to find Bud emptying the pantry of cooked food when she returned to the kitchen. Four loaves of fresh baked bread reposed neatly beside half a baked ham, and the cookie jar was in his arms.
"For the love of Moses!" snapped Maw. "Didn't you get enough to eatyet?"
Behind her, Lark glanced appraisingly at the devastated table and grinned. The pile of chicken bones beside Bud's plate was enough, to say nothing of the remnant of pie with the whipped cream scraped off in streaks.
"For the time being, maybe; but I may possibly want to eat again, Maw, before Marge has me put in jail and incarcerated!" Bud was still badly in need of sleep, and Maw's tone had not been conciliating.
"I ain't responsible for that word, Bud Larkin. Margy used it herself, and if it don't meet with your approval, it's none ofmyfuneral. Here's Lark, wantin' to know what you've been up to, and why you come draggin' your feet into the house this time of night. Are you goin' to take all them cookies, Bud? I can't make any more till I get some sour cream. I churned every bit that I had."
"You did? Fine! Bob's out in the hills, and fresh butter will go dandy with this bread. You know, Maw, there's only one real bread-maker in the world, and she's just about four feet high and cross as a she bear with toothache."
"I ain't no such a thing! Do you s'pose you could carry a pie if I wrapped it up good?"
"Sure. I'll carry it inside, however. Then Iknowit will be well wrapped. Lark may want to carry one. How about it, Lark? Want to go hunting with me, after I've had an hour or so of sleep?"
Lark hitched up his belt, picked up Maw and set her on a corner of the table. Then, ignoring her indignant protests, he began his preparations significantly in the gun closet, choosing what weapons he would take. Bud eyed him from under straight brows while he wrapped the bread in one of Maw's choicest dish towels which she kept for "comp'ny", when some range woman would insist upon helping her with the dishes.
"You won't need a shotgun—and I'll just omit that hour of sleep. Maw's pie is a real rejuvenator."
"It ain't no such a thing! Bud, ain't you goin' to tell what you've been up to or where you've been? My land, I never saw such carryin's on!"
"Nothing exciting, Maw. Nothing that Marge could use in that story of hers. Come on, Lark."
"Well, so-long, Lark." Bud held his nervous buckskin to a prancy circling while he and Lark indulged in one of those last-minute dialogues without which two persons seem unable to part in complete satisfaction. "If you can get Jelly off to one side, you might tell him that Bob and I are going to stick to the trail like a burr to a dog. And of course you'll know what to say to Delkin. Use your own judgment about telling him the facts."
"You better bed down somewhere and take a snooze," Lark advised perfunctorily. "I'll go 'long and meet Bob. I know these hills better than anybody, I guess. You go awn into town and git into bed somewhere. Then you can attend the inquest if they hold one. Mebbe they might not, seein' it's a clear case, s' far as they know. You go awn, Bud, and let me handle this deal."
"No. This is my job, Lark. I'll take that rifle of yours, though. I was so afraid Maw would pump something out of me and tell it to Marge that I rushed off without anything much except the grub. I wanted it cooked, so we won't need to make a smoke. No, you go on in and say I came back home and you sent me out on the range. And, Lark, if I don't bring Butch in and turn him over to the sheriff, it won't do any good whatever to say anything to Delkin and the others. They'll believe what they please—and that won't be very favorable to Jelly and me. Just let it ride; and don't worry about Bob and me, will you? No telling how long we'll be out. One of us will ride in to the ranch if it's necessary—and I'd a good deal rather handle it without interference if it's all the same to you."
"Oh, all right, if you feel that way about it, Bud. You shore got me up early enough—jest to ride a piece down the road with yuh! Go ahead and handle it without interference then! Mebbe later on you'll be darn glad of a little plain old help! Needn't think Butch is goin' to be easy to take—he'll go down harder 'n cod-liver oil. But all right—have it yore way; you will anyhow." Whereupon, Lark put spurs to his horse and loped on down the trail towards Smoky Ford, talking to himself. He had been coolly pushed aside, robbed of a share in what promised to be a risky piece of business. Impudent, he called it, and forgot how he had deliberately pushed Bud to the front and encouraged him to use his own judgment.
No, Lark would have done it differently; followed old Bill's methods more closely. Old Bill would have taken his riders and gone boldly after Butch, and made what he would have called a clean-up over at the Frying Pan. Bud might believe that Kid was ignorant of Butch's plans, but Lark did not. It would surprise him to discover that Kid was in on the deal. Still, Bud might wake up to facts and realize that after all an older head might hold a few ideas worth considering.
Bud, however, was not awake to much of anything save the fact that he was beginning to lose interest in anything but sleep; and that the buckskin was a tricky brute in the hills and not to be compared with the Walking Sorrel. The buckskin had a way of climbing hills in leaps that gave no thought to secure footing, but left him winded at the top. His manner of descending a steep slope was quite as reckless and consisted of a series of slides interspersed with dancing sidewise and taking fright at various objects. Bud had saddled him because he happened to be in a corral where he was handy, but he was wishing now—when he roused sufficiently to wish for anything except sleep—that he had taken the time to catch a horse out of the pasture. It might have proved quicker in the long run.
So, slipping, sliding, fighting the buckskin and guarding as best he could his burden of food, Bud arrived in the course of time at the spring beneath the sandstone cliffs. By that time he was indifferent to everything. It would have taken Butch Cassidy himself to rouse Bud to the fighting point. He was glad, in a dull, apathetic way, that he had made the trip from the ranch so that Bob could eat before he got as hungry as Bud had been. He managed also to picket the buckskin in the middle of good grass, and to put the supplies up on a shelf of rock away from small prowlers. After that Bud dropped down in the shade of the cliff, pulled his hat over his eyes, gave one huge sigh and dropped like a plummet into the oblivion of dreamless slumber.
At the Palmer ranch black Sam was shuffling back and forth across the kitchen, clearing away the débris of a scanty breakfast well-cooked, where nine men had eaten silently and gone their ways; all except Gelle, who had volunteered to remain on guard over Palmer until the sheriff was ready to take him away to the county seat. The coroner had just arrived, and was down in the cow pasture looking over the scene of the double killing and arguing with the sheriff in the intervals of rolling a fresh chew of tobacco relishfully from cheek to cheek.
Sam turned scared eyes toward Lark before he remembered his manners and ducked his head in what passed for a bow. Gelle, on a bench before the door, grinned cheerful greeting.
"You musta heard the news and got up b'fore breakfast," Gelle bantered. "Bud git in last night?"
Lark swung down and sat on the bench beside his "top hand"—as Gelle loved to consider himself.
"Bud got in this morning before daylight. Hauled me outa bed and started me out thinkin' I was goin' to git some excitement, mebbe. Then he hazed me awn in whilst he took out across country to meet Bob."
"Which means, I guess, that they didn't have no luck last night." Gelle's voice betrayed his disappointment.
"Depends on what you call luck," Lark retorted. "That fool kid rode over to the Fryin' Pan, laid out in the yard with Kid Kern till Butch come ridin' in, then up and sticks a gun in Butch's ribs and tells him to come clean with that money he'd stole outa the pasture here. What's more, the darn chump got away with it, and come home without a bullet hole through him. I dunno how it strikes you, Jelly, but I'd call thatluck."
"And didn't he git the money?"
"Naw." Lark stopped while he lighted a cigarette. "He got the laugh."
"How's that? I been awn the anxious seat all night, Lark, worryin' about Bud and that damn' gold of Palmer's. Aw, he can't hear. I've got him tied to the bed back in another room. And the coon's only about half there. Go awn, Lark. I'm achin' to know what happened."
"That's jest the trouble, Jelly. Nothin' atall happened. Kid, he sided in with Bud and said if Butch had come over here and robbed Palmer's cache he'd turn him over to the sheriff himself. Bud thinks he meant it, but I dunno. Butch didn't have nothin' on his saddle but his slicker, and he give Bud the laugh. That's about all there was to it, fur as I could make out. Bud, he come shackin' along home about three this morning, et everything in sight and packed off what's left to feed Bob with.
"Bob stayed out in the hills. They got the idee they can back-track Butch and find out where he cached the stuff. But I dunno—like lookin' fer a needle in a haystack, to my notion. My Jonah, what a mess! How'd you bust yore rib, Jelly? Bud said you'd done it, but he never said how. Gimme some facts, fer gosh sake!"
By the time Gelle had told all he knew, had heard or surmised, Delkin, Bradley, the sheriff and the coroner came walking up from the pasture, still arguing. They greeted Lark, then drifted back to the subject of the two dead men. The sheriff sensed the work of a third man there, but the others insisted that the killing had been an impromptu duel, the coroner holding that the position in which the men lay had no bearing upon that point, since death was not instantaneous in either case and both had evidently staggered a few feet before falling.
"Kinda funny they'd both be facin' the same way—toward that ledge where you folks got your money," the sheriff pointed out, with a stubborn tilt to his chin. "If they went down fightin' each other, wouldn't they be likely to fallfacin'each other? They hadn't started to run, neither of 'em. Looks to me like they both went down shootin' at somebody up on that ledge. You can think what yuh please about it—that's whatIthink."
"There couldn't have been anybody on the ledge," Delkin stated positively. "Bud Larkin was with us; Jelly, here, was at the house with a broken rib; Palmer and the old man were tied up in the bedroom and the coon was here in the kitchen. The four Meadowlark boys had left town ten minutes behind the two Palmer men, and not more than five minutes ahead of us. They heard the shooting as they rode up. The four will swear that Jelly and the coon were here at the house—and as a matter of fact, the rest of us arrived so soon after the shooting that it would have been physically impossible for these two to get back up here."
"Well," retorted the sheriff, quickly, "are these all the men there is in the world, Mr. Delkin?"
"All that could possibly have known anything about what was on the ledge. Bud Larkin found the money and came straight in after us, leaving Jelly to guard the old man that works here. We came right back, got the money and took it on in to town, still leaving Jelly on guard out here. He brought his prisoner to the house—a very wise thing to do, I may say—and so was here when Palmer came, and while capturing him he broke a rib, as you know. You can ask the doctor here whether he would be able, with that broken rib, to run from the pasture up here in, say, one minute."
"Couldn't have done it without a broken rib," stated the coroner, expectorating a generous amount of tobacco juice. "They shot each other. No reason why they shouldn't, is there? They were both after the money, and each man wanted to get there first. Be funny if theydidn'tfight over it. Guess we better hold an inquest and thrash this thing out before a jury. How soon can you get a jury together, Stilson?" The coroner must have been out of humor with the sheriff, because usually he addressed him familiarly as Jim.
"Hour, maybe. That quick enough? You get your witnesses together, and a fewfactsto show, and I'll have the jury ready to listen to 'em quick enough to ketch 'em before they melt." He probably referred to the facts.
Lark, sitting quietly on the bench during the discussion, wondered why no one mentioned Palmer's money (or what was tacitly conceded to be Palmer's money) which had been left in the cache and was now missing. Delkin and Bradley seemed to avoid any unnecessary reference to money. Lark was on the point of mentioning the one great inducement to murder, the one thing that would call a man to the ledge. He was even tempted to tell what he knew of Butch Cassidy.
But while the others wrangled his caution came whispering and urging him to wait. If Delkin and Bradley failed to mention the mysterious disappearance of Palmer's gold, it was for one reason. They were grateful to Bud and to Gelle and meant to protect them. Lark appreciated that spirit even while he resented their suspicions. Both emotions held him silent after the first impulse to speak had passed. They knew all about that money being gone, he reflected. If they saw fit to cover up the loss before the sheriff, it would ill become him to drag the thing to the surface and tell the sheriff something that might throw suspicion—or worse—upon the Meadowlark. He joggled Gelle unthinkingly with his elbow, cautioning him to silence, and brought a yelp of pain from that tightly bandaged young man, and a stealthily vicious jab afterwards to show that Gelle had not missed Lark's meaning.
There followed the usual commonplace running to and fro on horses sweating under the urge of their riders' haste to be somewhere else immediately. The coroner's inquest was called, and practically all of Smoky Ford bustled out to Palmer's ranch and squatted on run-over boot heels and drew diagrams in the dust with little sticks, explaining gravely to any who would listen that the robbery, the murder, and the killing of Bat Johnson and Ed White took place in this or that particular manner.
All I can say is, Marge should have been there with her notebook; two or three notebooks, rather.
Figuratively speaking, the various Sherlocks placed the noose on Palmer's neck a dozen times for a dozen different reasons. They openly mourned that Bat and Ed were past hanging, and there was not a man present who had not known all along that Palmer was at the bottom of the whole thing. So much for the loyalty of neighbors of that type when a man of Palmer's type is called to account for his sins.
The inquest might well be called an anticlimax, since the citizens of Smoky Ford had the thing all settled in their minds before the investigation was officially begun. Palmer puzzled and disappointed them and came near to a lynching, that day, merely because he refused to testify and would only say, with baleful self-possession, that since they were all set on laying the guilt on him, they could go ahead and think what they pleased; his lawyer would have something to say about it when the thing came to a trial. (It was at this time that Palmer edged close to death.)
The sheriff, being just a bit keyed up by opposition, made a clean sweep of it and took black Sam along with Palmer, and the old man Blinker as well. They might or might not be implicated in the crime, but at least they should prove useful as witnesses.
By mid-afternoon the inquest was over and the sheriff had left for the county seat with his three prisoners, leaving his two deputies ostensibly in charge of Palmer's ranch pending a more satisfactory arrangement. In reality, the sheriff had some hope of solving the mystery of the shooting of two men in broad daylight and within sound of the house, and he had left two men where one would have been sufficient, with secret instructions to make a careful search for some clew to an unknown member of the gang.
The last shovelful of moist, rocky soil had been carelessly tossed upon Bat Johnson's heaped grave, and the two rough mounds marked by stakes driven into the ground, each bearing a name and date burned hastily with a hot iron. The burial party, in haste to join their fellows, were riding through the gate on their way to town when Maw appeared.
Maw was mad. Never before since her arrival at the Meadowlark a few years before had she been treated as Bud and Lark had treated her that morning. Never before had they failed to tell her all that happened or was about to happen, and Maw did not propose to stand it much longer. She had waited until nine o'clock and then had ordered old Cap and Charlie hitched to the beloved "top buggy" which Lark had given her, and she had bundled Marge and a lunch basket in beside her and started for town. They needn't think, said Maw, that she was going to sit and fold her arms and act like a fool just because they treated her like one. Wherefore she challenged the nearest horseman, who was eyeing Marge with interest.
"How do? See anything of Bud Larkin around here?" Maw was pretty fair at reading signs, and the trampled yard just across the fence with jumbled tracks leading through the gate had told her a story of events.
"No, mom, Bud ain't been here t'day atall."
"Lark been here? Bill Larkin?"
"Yes, mom, Lark was here and he left right after the inquest." The horseman fiddled with his reins and kept his horse backing and sidling, showing off before Marge.
"Inquest! For the love of Moses, has old Palmer been killed at last?" Maw sucked so hard upon her new teeth that she almost swallowed them.
"No, mom, he's been took to jail. It's Bat Johnson an' Ed White the cor'ner has been settin' on. They was shot yeste'day."
Maw opened her mouth to speak further of her astonishment, then closed it abruptly, took the buggy whip from its socket and struck old Charlie smartly across the rump. Maw's face had gone the color of rancid tallow. There, conjured vividly before her by unreasoning fear, rode the vision of young Bud staggering into the kitchen hollow-eyed and ravenous; wolfing food sufficient for two ordinary appetites and going off with a sackful of supplies.
"I do hope I'll get some decently exciting material out of this," said Marge, all in a flutter. "Do you suppose something worth while has actually taken place, and I'll—"
"Put up that everlastin' notebook!" snapped Maw. "Things ain't picturesque when they're happenin' to your own!" She pulled the indignant horses from a lope as expertly as a man could have done, and sent them trotting their best down the road to town. "I've got to find Lark and see what's to be done—and it ain't a bit kind or p'lite to use the troubles of your own folks, Margy, to put in stories. If's Buddy's on the dodge for killin' a couple of men, you ain't goin' to put him into no story—you mark what I tell you. Buddy don'twantto be no heero. And if he don't want to be, he sha'n't be. Time I put my foot down, I guess."
"I'd make Palmer the murderer, of course," Marge placated absently. "What's he been taken to jail for, do you suppose?"
"I dunno—and I don't care. Buddy's on the dodge. I knew it when he cleaned out the pantry without sayin' a word about where he was goin'!"
Maw sucked in her teeth, tapped both horses across their broad backs with the whip, and went lurching on down the road to town, leaving a cloud of dust behind her.
Five days may not seem long as a rule, but Bud's nerves were ragged with the strain of searching foot by foot the likely places along the trail Butch Cassidy had taken; with eating just enough to allay the sharpest hunger pangs, and with sleeping where dark overtook him, with no pillow save his saddle—which is mighty uncomfortable even though it may sound picturesque to those who have not tried it. Bob grew daily more lugubrious, but Bud began to talk rather wildly of riding again to the Frying Pan, getting Butch Cassidy by the throat and choking the truth out of him—a reckless notion which appealed to him more and more as the fruitless quest continued. He began to imagine how it would seem to go galloping up the lane, meet Butch and lash out at him with biting words until they fought. A vengeful dream that grew upon him.
On this fifth day Bob had ridden early to the Basin for more food; the baked ham being no more than a wistful memory, the cookies likewise and the four loaves of bread a dwindling, dried-out fragment. It was insufferably hot down in the canyon where he was dispiritedly searching the craggy walls for safe hiding places and thinking, among other things, that the country between Palmer's ranch and the Frying Pan held places of concealment for all the gold coin the world contains. Probably he was right. There surely was an ungodly amount of rough ledges and cliffs and heaped bowlders along the route indicated by the occasional hoofprints they identified as Butch's horse. In five days they had covered perhaps twice as many miles.
Off to the southwest a ragged blue-brown ridge of storm clouds crept slowly over the high peaks. A swashing rain would render their quest more hopeless still, for they would lose the tracks that now guided them sketchily from gully to bare ridge perhaps and into another canyon. The outlook was not cheerful, and the heat radiating from the rocks became unbearable.
It was then that Bud, climbing to a promising splinter of rock thrust upward like a crude needle from the broken ledge beneath it, sighted the cool, still pool sunk between banks of rock and gravel so that from the canyon floor it was invisible. Some sunken stream had risen there for a look at the sky, perhaps. Bud gave a hoarse whoop, forgetting caution in his sudden joy, and immediately began to climb down as eagerly as if he had sighted the gold.
The frivolous buckskin had long since lost all desire for prancing or taking the steep hills in jackrabbit leaps. He stood half asleep in the shade of a rock, with trickles of sweat running down thigh and shoulder; a tamed horse that had learned to conserve his energy and put aside his play. Bud mounted and rode to the pool though it was almost within pistol range.
Side by side he and the buckskin drank their fill before Bud stripped and went into it in a long, clean dive from a rock thrust up into the sunshine and so hot it curled his toes with pain during the few seconds he stood there poised for the jump. The water was cold, the shock to his fevered skin a gorgeous sensation of sheer physical thrill. Bud went deep, tilted and shot to the surface and spouted happily, the cobwebs washed from his brain, the gnawing rancor from his soul. For the moment at least he was his normal, care-free self; hungry, but enjoying to the full this glorious swimming pool set apart from the haunts of men, passed by a dozen times or a hundred, perhaps, without discovery.
And then, swimming and diving, floating and treading water and splashing in pure devilment, he heard some one laugh; a chuckling sort of subdued cackle which Bud knew quite well. By treading water and craning his neck he could see the spot where he had left his clothes, and Butch was there, sitting with his knees drawn up and his ungloved hands clasped around them, smoking and grinning between puffs, with his hat pushed back on his head and the knot of his neckerchief askew under his ear—where he would maybe wear a knot of another kind one day, Bud thought balefully. Butch looked a very good sort of fellow, a pal perhaps who had no whim for a bath that day. But he was not at all like that when he spoke.
"Divin' for it, Bud?" he fleered. "Better claw around there on the bottom, why don't yuh? Gold sinks, yuh know; or don't yuh? I savvy you've had lots of schoolin', but that don't mean you got good sense. What time yuh expect Bob back with the grub? Oughta be showin' up, now, most any time. I heard him say when he left he'd git here b'fore three o'clock. It's way past that now, by the sun." He squinted upward, then spat reflectively toward the pool.
"Of course you'll stay and eat with us," Bud invited urbanely. "Bob promised to bring some fresh eggs and a couple of chickens."
"Yeah, I know he did. I heard 'im." Butch's narrow, light blue eyes were studying Bud's black head, sleek as a wet muskrat, with some curiosity. He had expected a blasphemous series of epithets—and, fifteen minutes sooner, he probably would have heard them. He had not reckoned upon the steadying effect of that cold plunge.
"Then of course you'll stay." (Privately, Bud was certain that Butch was not to be shaken off before he had accomplished his purpose; and, frankly, Bud believed that murder was his purpose.)
"Might, seein' you insist. I'm purty well hooked up with grub, but mykew-seen don't include chicken. How yuh goin' to cook it, Bud?"
"Broil mine—and rub it with butter, salt and pepper now and then. How you want yours?"
"Sounds good t' me. I'll take the same."
To gain time for thought, Bud curved in his body and dived, expecting that he would come up to meet a .45 slug somewhere in his brain; between the eyes, he guessed—since Butch was called a good shot. As may be surmised, Bud did considerable thinking under water, but he could not think of anything better than he was already doing, since his manner was puzzling Butch and what puzzled Butch Cassidy also worried him. Still, he might shoot, and there was just one way to find out. Bud came up, shook the water from his eyes and saw that Butch was apparently much interested in the pinned-back hatbrim.
"Where'd yuh make the raise, Bud? I been kinda curious about that pin."
Bud hesitated. There is a fiction that two men must never let a good woman's name pass between them, but there was nothing secret about the pin—except before Marge. Every cowpuncher who went to dances in that country should have recognized it.
"Grandma Parker's," he lied shortly, and dived again as if he enjoyed diving.
When he came up, Butch had laid aside the hat and was looking speculatively at Bud.
"'Course, I could shoot yuh," he mused aloud. "Lots a things I could do. S'pose it'll be a bullet. Ain't yuh about ready to come out? Bob'll likely be startin' supper 'bout now. Come awn—git into yore clothes." Butch spoke as he would have admonished a small boy.
Because there was nothing else that he could do Bud came out of the pool, nipping over the hot gravel to where his clothes lay in a heap ten feet from where Butch sat smoking. Butch had moved while Bud was under water, and Bud's gun and belt had moved with him; also Bud's big clasp knife that was useful for so many things.
Bud dressed as unconcernedly as if the man sitting there in the shade had been Bob. Butch spun Bud's hat to him—without the cameo pin,—and eyed Bud sharply when he picked it up and looked at the flopping brim with the two blackened pinholes. Bud looked up at him, his eyes black with anger.
"Pretty small, Butch! I knew you were a thief, but I did have some respect for you for taking a chance, anyway. A stunt like this is so low-down you'd have to climb a ladder to scratch a snake on the belly!" He stared a moment longer and put on his hat. To move toward Butch would have been one way of committing suicide, and even in anger Bud was no fool.
"Yeah—one more reason why I'll kill yuh, Bud. Some day." Butch got up, dusting off his trousers with downward sweeps of his palms—close to his gun, Bud saw with a curl of the lip.
"Yes? Well, you'll have to go some unless you play safe and do it now."
"I'll be willin' t' go when the time comes," Butch retorted. "Move awn—my mouth's waterin' fer chicken."
They moved on, Bud in the lead. Lark's rifle, he saw, was gone from the saddle. A foolish thing he had done, and a costly, to go swimming in that pool as carelessly as if he were down in the Basin pasture. He could find no excuse for it in his belief that he had the hills to himself that day. After so long a time he and Bob had both come to the conclusion that Kid Kern was watching Butch so closely that there would be no attempt made at present to retrieve the loot, and that they were therefore perfectly safe to search where they would.
At Butch's command, Bud dismounted some distance from the spring where they had made a makeshift camp. They approached the place on foot and so came upon Bob when he was least looking for callers, the supposition being that Bud would search until close to sundown before coming to camp. It was Butch's casual tones that brought Bob facing them in blank astonishment.
"I got a gun ag'inst Bud's backbone," Butch announced in a cheerful, conversational manner. "He'll git it, right plumb through the liver, first crooked move you make. Toss yore gun into the spring. It won't hurt the water none."
"Get him if you can, Bob," Bud countermanded. "Let the damned skunk shoot if he wants to; he will, anyway."
Bob looked at Bud, glanced over his shoulder into Butch's narrowed eyes, drew his gun and threw it into the spring with a muttered oath. Butch grinned.
"Got a knife? Throw that in too. All right, boys, let's go awn and have that chicken dinner. I an' Bud's been talkin' about it all the way over."
"'Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred thereby,'" Bud quoted under his breath with a grim humor not lost upon Butch, who overheard him.
"Nh-nh. This is goin' to be stalled chicken an' hatred thereby," he drawled. "An' I bet a dollar I'll hate harder 'n the both of yuh put t'gether. Wanta bet?"
The two ignored him and set about cooking their dinner, knowing that Butch would kill the man who made a hostile motion.
"Lessee. This is the first time you've had a fire sence you been down here," Butch observed pleasantly. "I'd a dropped in awn yuh b'fore, but it looked like purty slim pickin's. Then this mornin' I heard Bob say chicken, so I plumb knowed you was goin' to have comp'ny fer dinner."
"Say-ay," drawled Bob, after further small talk of the sort, "I'd ruther be shot than talked t' death, Butch."
"Yeah—but I'd ruther talk," Butch grinned. "Pass over the pepper 'nd salt, will yuh, Bud?"
"Certainly," said Bud politely, though his eyes were murderous.
They ate and were filled, but two of the trio did not enjoy the meal. Butch persisted in desultory talk, friendly on the surface but with a sting beneath. Now and then Bob grunted, while Bud relapsed into absolute silence.
"Can't figure out no way that'll work, Bud," Butch told him impudently, when the three were smoking afterwards—Butch performing nonchalantly the art of rolling and lighting a cigarette almost entirely with one hand. "Y' see, in the first place, I got yore guns. Y' won't jump me, so that lets you out. Anyway, I got t' be goin' in a minute. Main reason I give m'self an invite to supper was t' tell you fellers I'm shore tickled at the way yo're combin' these canyons. Y' see, I dunno but what yuh might run onto somethin' way yo're goin' about it, you shore ain't leavin' no stones unturned.
"When you've crawled all over these hills, mebbe you'll believe what I told yuh over to the Fryin' Pan, Bud; that I never got no money over to Palmer's place. Still, I dunno. Yo're so damn' pig-headed you won't believe nothin' you don't want to. Well, go ahead an' look. Look yore damn' eyes out, fer all me. You won't find nothin'. An' don't fergit I'll be right there, close hand by, all the time. So-long—shore enjoyed that chicken!"
While he talked, Butch had backed toward the bushes that grew near. At the last moment he drew something from his shirt pocket, looked at it, gave a snort of scornful amusement and tossed the object so that it fell between Bud's feet. Then he disappeared.
Bud stooped, picked up the cameo pin and turned it absent-mindedly in his fingers. His sign of the Golden Arrow. The red blood of youth crept upward and dyed his cheeks at the thought of the ignominy he would have suffered had he been obliged to go and confess to Bonnie Prosser that he had lost her pin; that Butch Cassidy had taken it away from him! In the pressure of events since that day when he had ridden blithely across the reservation with the cameo pin worn proudly above his forehead, he had not thought so much about it. He had fancied himself invulnerable to the young archer's barbed darts. Now—now he was suddenly aware of a great hunger, a longing that engulfed even his hatred for Butch.
"Hell!" said Bob, thinking of his gun lying at the bottom of the spring.
"Hunh?" said Bud, thinking that he had time in plenty to ride to Prosser's ranch before dark.
"Hell, you damn' fool!" Bob looked at him with his mouth drawn down at the corners like a child about to cry.
"Oh, sure," Bud agreed, without having the faintest idea of what had been said.
Bob's mouth opened, closed again very slowly. He was staring from Bud's face to the brooch in Bud's hand, and at the fingers softly caressing the carved face of the woman.
"Looks like her," said Bob with much sarcasm.
"A—a little." Bud's forefinger closed tenderly upon the profile.
"Say, come out of it!" growled Bob. "What about Butch?"
"Butch? Why, Butch will get killed if he crosses my trail again. Why?" Young Bud's eyes turned surprisedly toward Bob.
"Goin' to keep up the hunt, knowin' he's p'pared to jump us the minute we find it?"
"Why, sure! You don't think Butch cuts any figure with me, do you?" (Plenty of time—and he could get there before dark, if he hurried.)
"No—'course he don't!" cried a mocking voice somewhere among the rocks.
Bud started, closed his fingers upon the brooch and turned toward the voice. The softness had left his eyes, which snapped with their old fire.
"You know it, Butch! You heard what I said." Strange how the flinging of that cameo pin at his feet brought Bonnie so vividly before him that even his quarrel with Butch seemed irrelevant, a matter of secondary importance.
Now he knew that the illuminating truth had come upon him at the pool when he picked up his hat and saw that the brooch was gone. It was like losing Bonnie herself—and of course he had always known, deep in his heart, that he meant never to lose Bonnie Prosser out of his life; that some day—but the time of easy assurance was past, and it had taken the rough hand of Butch Cassidy to tear away the film from his eyes, just as he had torn the pin from Bud's hat.
"See you later, Butch!" he called defiantly, and started on a run for his horse.
"Yeah—yo're damn' right!" Butch's mocking laughter followed him, echoed and was flung back again and again from the farther wall of the canyon.
"Got your notebook handy, Marge?" Young Bud, looking altogether different, though not so handsome, in a tailored suit left over from college, and a new straw hat that gave no excuse for wearing cameo pins in the brim, crossed the lobby of Fort Benton's best hotel to where Marge was sitting beside Maw staring out at the shifting crowds with puckered brows, her thoughts no doubt dwelling upon picturesque effects. "This is Miss Bonnie Prosser, and I thought you might like to make a note of the fact that she is the high priestess in the temple where I worship; the goddess of the Golden Arrow, and—"
"For the love of Moses, what kinda talk is that, Bud Larkin? Bonnie's too sweet and pretty a girl to be made fun of right in public, like this. I been waitin' for a chance to git you two girls acquainted," cried Maw, from the depths of a leather rocking chair.
"Why—why—she'sexactlylike my heroine!" cried Marge, her eyes dancing with excitement. "I wrote the sweetest love scene just before we left home—"
"Too late, too late," crowed Bud, his lips curving into the smile of a happy boy. "I beat you to it, Marge."
"Now, hush," drawled Bonnie, in a voice amazingly low and sweet and vibrant—just the voice one would want to hear from that smooth young throat and lips formed for laughter. "I'd love to be your heroine, Miss—may I call you Marge? I've so wanted a girl like you to come into the range country and give me a sympathetic ear now and then. Ever since I first heard about you I've been planning to come over and steal you. We live right next to the reservation, and there's the dearest old squaw I want you to write up. And I know so many places where I want to take you. When this trial is over, I want you to come home with me. We're going to be the best of friends. I always know, the moment I look at a person. Don't you?"
"Them girls don't need you, Buddy," Maw shrewdly observed. "Set down here where I can talk to you. Lean over here. Are you and Bonnie engaged?"
"Yes, ma'am," Bud confessed meekly. "Have been, Maw, for almost a month."
"Well, I ain't a mite su'prised, and I'm real glad. Set down, can't you? Let 'em alone till they get acquainted. I want to talk to you private. Now. What kinda luck did you have, Buddy? Are you goin' to be able to give that money back to Palmer—or the bank, or whoever it belongs to?"
All the joy went out of Bud's face. He shook his head, his lips pressed tight.
"Who told you, Maw?"
"Lark told me. Who else do you think?Youwouldn't, I notice. I was so scared and worried when you stayed out in the hills like you did, Buddy, that I thought Lark oughta get you out of the country some way. I thought you was on the dodge for killin' them Palmer men, mebbe. So Lark told me what it was all about. Butch is in town, did you know it?"
Bud lifted his shoulders in a gesture of bitter defeat.
"I didn't know it, but I can't do anything, anyway. I saw Kid, and he told me he's been watching Butch and he hasn't got a thing on him. I'm certain Butch did it, but—Maw, there isn't a gopher hole between Palmer's and the Frying Pan that I haven't searched. Kid claims he combed the ranch too. If he turned up anything, he's keeping it mighty quiet—but I don't believe he has, I think Butch has simply outguessed us."
"Well, don't you have no trouble with Butch. You didn't bring no gun, did you, Buddy?"
"Butch took my gun away from me when he caught me in swimming." His eyes evaded hers. "You heard about that, I suppose."
"Yes, I did—and I heard too that Butch give your gun and Lark's rifle to Kid, and had him send 'em over home. Bob took 'em back down to you, so you needn't to think you can lie to me, Buddy. Don't you pack that gun around this town, or you'll get yourself into trouble, sure. You think what that would mean to Bonnie. I'm real glad she's got some say in the matter now, Bud. She'll hold you down—I'm sure I can't!"
"What do you expect me to do if Butch makes a crack at me? Stand and take it?" Bud's eyes grew stubborn.
"Butch won't make no crack at you. Kid told Lark he'd had a talk with Butch, and Butch promised him faithful he'd keep his own side the road. He ain't goin' to crowd you, Buddy, and you mustn't go glowerin' around edgin' him up to a fight. Them eyes of yourn git terrible stormy when you're all wrought up. You think about that nice girl and forget Butch."
"You dragged me away from two nice girls, Maw, and opened the disagreeable subject yourself."
"I know I did, but I was kinda lonesome for you, Bud. I ain't seen anything of you skurcely since that money was stole. Lark says Palmer's goin' to hold the bank responsible for it if it ain't returned. Palmer claims there was six thousand dollars, and he just as good as accused Delkin of takin' it himself. It'll likely come out at the trial. Lark says if the bank does have to stand good, he'll pay Delkin himself ruther than have 'em think—"
"And admit that Jelly and I took the money! I thought Lark had a little sense. Maw, if Lark does that, I'll choke the truth out of Butch Cassidy if I have to do it right under the judge's nose!"
"Now, now, Buddy, don't you go and git on your high horse again! You know as well as I do that Lark's soft-hearted as any old woman you ever saw. He can't bear to have Delkin feel—"
"Fine way to salve his feelings and sharpen his belief that Jelly and I are thieves! Where's Lark? I want to have a talk with him."
Maw stood up and looked around the lobby and sat down again with smug satisfaction.
"Lark ain't here. I dunno where he is, Bud. He was talkin' about ridin' out to some ranch or other to look at some cattle they wanted to sell. You wait and see how things works out at the trial. I heard some one sayin' the jury's most all chose, and the show'll commence in the mornin'. They say that Melrose feller that Palmer's got to keep him from gittin' hung is a wonder, Buddy. It's kinda s'spicioned around that he's got a pretty strong defense. I don't see how he can have. Can you?"
Bud brought his wandering glance from the two girls sitting in a corner with their heads together in confidential whisperings. He looked at Maw and cleared the impatience from his eyes. After all, who was more loyal than Maw?
"Palmer has an alibi, you know, and Bat Johnson and Ed White are conveniently gone where they can't turn State's evidence, even if they wanted to. A good lawyer can do wonders with a situation like that, Maw. Where's Lightfoot? He came with you, didn't he?"
Maw gave a sudden laugh, turned her new teeth sidewise in her mouth and necessitated some expert manipulations behind her handkerchief.
"Consarn them teeth! I've a good mind to throw 'em out the window. Lightfoot got right out of the hack as we was comin' from the depot and started in drawin' pitchers of that Injun camp up there on the hill. I wouldn't be a mite su'prised if the sheriff had to go up there after him when it comes his turn to testify in court. Buddy, you oughta take him over onto the rese'vation some time. He never seen any Injuns in Smoky Ford—and I never told him why the Injuns all hate that place so. Thought I'd leave that to you. There! See that big, fine-lookin' man comin' across the street, Buddy? That's Palmer's lawyer. They say the county attorney would give a good deal to know what he's goin' to spring on 'em to-morrow. Here comes the girls. Ain't they pretty and sweet? I bet they're up to somethin', the way their eyes is dancin'!"
Arms twined around each other, schoolgirl fashion, the two girls came up and perched on either arm of Maw's great upholstered chair. That buried Maw from sight of everything, so they laughed and accepted the chairs Bud was placing for them. Bonnie leaned forward, took one of Maw's tiny hands in her own and patted it.
"What shall be done to punish a young man who tells lies to an innocent young lady from the East?" she asked gravely. "I have just heard some awful whoppers which a certain person told Marge. And Marge," she said impressively, "is my best friend. I have heard about the Iowa frogs and—"
"I surrender." Bud interrupted her and threw both hands in the air.
Maw gave him a quick look, sucked in her teeth apprehensively as if she were afraid of losing them into her lap, and glanced at Bonnie's hand that had one finger extended and pointing like a gun at Bud.
"Yes, disarm the prisoner, Maw," said Bonnie. "I've got the drop."
Maw reached out and got the gun tucked inside Bud's waistband, where it had been hidden from sight; looked at it, blinking tears from her round eyes, and shoved it down beside her in the big chair.
"You may take down your arms and march ahead of us to that drug store on the corner. Two maidens in distress want lemon soda. Will you come, Maw?"
"No," said Maw in a voice that shook perceptibly, "I don't believe I will. You childern run along and—and have a good time!"
"Listen, Maw. We'll bring you some—some—" Bonnie leaned and whispered in Maw's ear.
"Yes—yes—all right—yes-s—" Maw's hand closed convulsively over the gun.
"And thank the good Lord for that!" Maw breathed fervently, while she watched the three cross the street. "My, my, what turrible liars men do make of us women—keepin' 'em outa trouble." She got up, looked shyly around to see if any there observed her deformity, and waddled away to her room, the gun hidden in a fold of her skirt.