CHAPTER XVII.SuicideThe next thing that I knew I was lying on my back listening to someone screaming, above the voices of Sam and Mrs. Ricker. I realized that those awful sounds were coming from my own throat. I tried to stop them; but I could not. I put my hands to my throat to make it stop the noise. Sam’s voice came, clear and strong then—real, like a light in the dark.I sat straight up. The screams ceased. “What,” I managed, “is the matter?”“Everything on God’s earth, that could be,” Sam answered. “But here, Mary. Drink this. Get some sleep. Nothing to be done, now. We’ll need you, to-morrow. Some water, Mrs. Ricker——”He shook a powder into my mouth. Mrs. Ricker held a glass of water to my lips.When I opened my eyes again, it was gray dawn. I saw that I was in Mrs. Ricker’s room. She was sitting by the window tatting. Yes, tatting; darting the shuttle back and forth, back and forth, with her long, white fingers. I watched her for a full minute before memory seized me, and I cried out with the pain of it.“Sh‑h‑h,” she warned me, in a whisper. “You’ll wake Martha. She is asleep here on the couch.”I got out of bed, shook my skirts down and fastened my corsets under my dress. I felt in my pocket. The ball of handkerchief was still there. I went into the hall bathroom, washed my face and hands, and drained the last crumb of tobacco down with the water out of the wash-bowl. I washed the handkerchief, scoured the bowl, and went back to Mrs. Ricker’s room.As I opened the door, she again warned me against waking Martha.“Was the shock too much for her?” I asked, going and standing beside Mrs. Ricker so that we might talk in whispers. She stopped to pick a knot out of her thread before she answered me.“I didn’t allow her to go upstairs. She followed Chad out of the house and saw him shoot himself. He died within ten minutes. It was terrible for Martha. I had to hold her, while Sam gave her the narcotic——”“No, no,” I protested. “What—what are you saying? Not Chad? What was it you said about Chad——”“He walked out and shot himself, through the head.” She pulled the thread looser on her shuttle.I rushed out of the room, away from her. I staggered down the stairs into the kitchen.Sam, Hubert Hand, and John all jumped up from their chairs and started toward me. John reached me first, and put an arm around me.“Chad——” I began, but I couldn’t get any further.“There, there, Mary. Pour her some coffee, dad. Quick! Here, sit here. Turn on that fan, Hand. Get some water——”“No, no. Tell me. Mrs. Ricker said—— It isn’t true. It—it can’t be true. Not our Chad——”Sam answered, gruffly, to keep the choke out of his voice. “It is a damn shame, Mary; but, it is true. The boy shot himself, not fifteen minutes after we found her. Wait,” he went on quickly, “before you thinkanything. I want to tell you what I have told the others. It is God’s truth. That poor boy is as innocent of any connection with the murder as I am.”“Sam!” I managed, and hid my ugly, twisted old face down in my arms.I will say that the men did pretty well, just sitting quiet, and leaving me alone, and letting me have my cry out. It seemed to me I never was going to be able to stop; but they didn’t bother me with comforting, they let me get clear through to the sniffling and swallowing stage. I was the first one to speak.“What,” I said, “are we going todo?”“We are going to do a lot, Mary,” Sam said. “We are going to keep Chad’s name clean. Sure,” in answer to my protest, “we all know. But, just the same, I’m mighty thankful that I have his alibis for him, myself. A suicide looks bad, you know. That is, it would until we find Canneziano. This is his work——”“But, Sam,” I said, “if he wasn’t let out of San Quentin until yesterday morning, he couldn’t possibly have got ’way up here that same evening.”“We’ve told Sam that, a thousand times,” Hubert Hand said.“All right, all right,” Sam said. “But if I ever get that long distance call through, you’ll find that Canneziano was released a day or two early. She met him yesterday——”“How’d he get up here, Sam?” I questioned. “You remember there were no tracks on the road except the sedan tracks——”Hubert Hand snapped me short. “Did you have a passenger up from Rattail, yesterday, John?”Sam spoke, before John could answer. “Son,” he said, “did you, by any chance, as a favor to one of the girls, bring that skunk here yesterday?”“I did not, dad.”“He got here, then, as I’ve said all along. Horseback, across the deserts. And he murdered the girl. By God, he’ll hang for it, if it takes my last dollar. He killed Chad, too, as much as if he’d shot him down. We aren’t overlooking a couple of murders, not here on the Desert Moon. Not right yet. She went out to meet him yesterday, I tell you. She brought him into the house, for some purpose; through the back way and up into the attic.”“Without anybody seeing or hearing them?” Hubert Hand questioned.“Nobody was looking nor listening, as I remember. You know damn well that, with the doors shut, nothing can be heard from room to room in this house—let alone upstairs to downstairs. I tell you, he killed her there on the stairs, and he made his get-away——”“If you think that,” I said. “Why aren’t you out hunting him?”“Hell!” Sam exploded. “Why ain’t I out hunting last night’s lightning? The girl had been dead anyway two or three hours—more likely longer, when we found her. He had that head start on us. And he could ride. God, how that skunk could ride; no mercy for a horse! He’s gone. He went straight across the deserts, hell bent for Sunday. He’ll need food. He’ll need water, worse. I’ve telegraphed to every town within two hundred miles of here. They are watching. I’ve ’phoned every ranch. I’ve kept that ’phone hot for six solid hours. I’ve got posses at every water-hole——”“Listen, Sam,” I said. “You shouldn’t have doped me up with that sleeping powder. Because, unless after he murdered her, he walked downstairs, with none of us seeing or hearing him, and into the living-room or the kitchen, and put the key in my pocket, Canneziano is not the guilty man.”Sam’s pipe fell out of his mouth. I shivered. During all of his talk, I had clear forgotten about those pipe ashes, dropped all over the beaded bag.It was Hubert Hand who put the question to me about the key. He made me feel guilty. My explanation to them that the key had been in the pocket of my dress, the dress I had been wearing since morning, yesterday, had the feeling of a confession.“Still,” Hubert Hand said, when I had finished, “that does not, necessarily, disprove Sam’s theory. If Canneziano was let out of prison in time to get here yesterday, he could have murdered her, as Sam insists, and he could have given the key to some one of us to put in your pocket. Chad, for instance, or——”“No!” Sam thundered. “That boy, I tell you, is as innocent as I am.”The telephone bell rang.Hubert Hand and John followed Sam into the living-room. I stayed where I was. I had to have a minute to think. The ashes on the bag? The key in my pocket? Sam?“Mary Magin,” I told myself, “for twenty-five years, ever since Sam Stanley took you, a snivelling, pride-broken, deserted bride, into his house, and gave you a chance to make a life for yourself, you have never seen him do a mean trick to man, woman, child, or beast. You never even heard of a questionable nor an unkind action of his. And you never will, for the simple reason that the ingredients for anything but honor and decency aren’t in him. If they were, he would not be Sam Stanley, any more than bean soup would be bean soup if it was made out of gooseberries and ginger. That being the one certainty you have, at this minute, you had better hang on to it tight; stop thinking and guessing; keep your mouth shut; and you won’t go far wrong. Good resolutions are easy to make. So is lemon meringue. Both are almost impossible to keep.”I went right on thinking. If Sam, I thought, had found it necessary to murder Gabrielle Canneziano, he had probably done it to keep something worse from happening. Sickened at myself, for that thought, I found another way of thinking, not much better.It did seem to me, remembering the pipe ashes on top of the bag, that Sam must have been there on the stairs at some time after she had been murdered and before I had found her. He must, then, be keeping some secret concerning the murder. It did look as if, considering his talk, he must be shielding the murderer, with every ounce of his horse-sense and ingenuity, both of which he had in plenty. But who would he shield to that extent? Chad, alive or dead? No. Martha? Yes. But Martha could not have done it. John? Not unless there was something to it than one of us dreamed of. Hubert Hand, or Mrs. Ricker? No. Danny? I thought not. Myself? I couldn’t be sure.The men came back into the kitchen. Sam looked ten years older than he had looked ten minutes before.“It was San Quentin,” he said to me. “Canneziano was positively not released from there until nine o’clock yesterday morning.”“That,” I said, “lets him out.”“And,” Hubert Hand said, “lets every man-jack of us here on the place, in.”Habit was too strong for Sam. “ ‘Well in,’ ” he quoted, with a groan.
The next thing that I knew I was lying on my back listening to someone screaming, above the voices of Sam and Mrs. Ricker. I realized that those awful sounds were coming from my own throat. I tried to stop them; but I could not. I put my hands to my throat to make it stop the noise. Sam’s voice came, clear and strong then—real, like a light in the dark.
I sat straight up. The screams ceased. “What,” I managed, “is the matter?”
“Everything on God’s earth, that could be,” Sam answered. “But here, Mary. Drink this. Get some sleep. Nothing to be done, now. We’ll need you, to-morrow. Some water, Mrs. Ricker——”
He shook a powder into my mouth. Mrs. Ricker held a glass of water to my lips.
When I opened my eyes again, it was gray dawn. I saw that I was in Mrs. Ricker’s room. She was sitting by the window tatting. Yes, tatting; darting the shuttle back and forth, back and forth, with her long, white fingers. I watched her for a full minute before memory seized me, and I cried out with the pain of it.
“Sh‑h‑h,” she warned me, in a whisper. “You’ll wake Martha. She is asleep here on the couch.”
I got out of bed, shook my skirts down and fastened my corsets under my dress. I felt in my pocket. The ball of handkerchief was still there. I went into the hall bathroom, washed my face and hands, and drained the last crumb of tobacco down with the water out of the wash-bowl. I washed the handkerchief, scoured the bowl, and went back to Mrs. Ricker’s room.
As I opened the door, she again warned me against waking Martha.
“Was the shock too much for her?” I asked, going and standing beside Mrs. Ricker so that we might talk in whispers. She stopped to pick a knot out of her thread before she answered me.
“I didn’t allow her to go upstairs. She followed Chad out of the house and saw him shoot himself. He died within ten minutes. It was terrible for Martha. I had to hold her, while Sam gave her the narcotic——”
“No, no,” I protested. “What—what are you saying? Not Chad? What was it you said about Chad——”
“He walked out and shot himself, through the head.” She pulled the thread looser on her shuttle.
I rushed out of the room, away from her. I staggered down the stairs into the kitchen.
Sam, Hubert Hand, and John all jumped up from their chairs and started toward me. John reached me first, and put an arm around me.
“Chad——” I began, but I couldn’t get any further.
“There, there, Mary. Pour her some coffee, dad. Quick! Here, sit here. Turn on that fan, Hand. Get some water——”
“No, no. Tell me. Mrs. Ricker said—— It isn’t true. It—it can’t be true. Not our Chad——”
Sam answered, gruffly, to keep the choke out of his voice. “It is a damn shame, Mary; but, it is true. The boy shot himself, not fifteen minutes after we found her. Wait,” he went on quickly, “before you thinkanything. I want to tell you what I have told the others. It is God’s truth. That poor boy is as innocent of any connection with the murder as I am.”
“Sam!” I managed, and hid my ugly, twisted old face down in my arms.
I will say that the men did pretty well, just sitting quiet, and leaving me alone, and letting me have my cry out. It seemed to me I never was going to be able to stop; but they didn’t bother me with comforting, they let me get clear through to the sniffling and swallowing stage. I was the first one to speak.
“What,” I said, “are we going todo?”
“We are going to do a lot, Mary,” Sam said. “We are going to keep Chad’s name clean. Sure,” in answer to my protest, “we all know. But, just the same, I’m mighty thankful that I have his alibis for him, myself. A suicide looks bad, you know. That is, it would until we find Canneziano. This is his work——”
“But, Sam,” I said, “if he wasn’t let out of San Quentin until yesterday morning, he couldn’t possibly have got ’way up here that same evening.”
“We’ve told Sam that, a thousand times,” Hubert Hand said.
“All right, all right,” Sam said. “But if I ever get that long distance call through, you’ll find that Canneziano was released a day or two early. She met him yesterday——”
“How’d he get up here, Sam?” I questioned. “You remember there were no tracks on the road except the sedan tracks——”
Hubert Hand snapped me short. “Did you have a passenger up from Rattail, yesterday, John?”
Sam spoke, before John could answer. “Son,” he said, “did you, by any chance, as a favor to one of the girls, bring that skunk here yesterday?”
“I did not, dad.”
“He got here, then, as I’ve said all along. Horseback, across the deserts. And he murdered the girl. By God, he’ll hang for it, if it takes my last dollar. He killed Chad, too, as much as if he’d shot him down. We aren’t overlooking a couple of murders, not here on the Desert Moon. Not right yet. She went out to meet him yesterday, I tell you. She brought him into the house, for some purpose; through the back way and up into the attic.”
“Without anybody seeing or hearing them?” Hubert Hand questioned.
“Nobody was looking nor listening, as I remember. You know damn well that, with the doors shut, nothing can be heard from room to room in this house—let alone upstairs to downstairs. I tell you, he killed her there on the stairs, and he made his get-away——”
“If you think that,” I said. “Why aren’t you out hunting him?”
“Hell!” Sam exploded. “Why ain’t I out hunting last night’s lightning? The girl had been dead anyway two or three hours—more likely longer, when we found her. He had that head start on us. And he could ride. God, how that skunk could ride; no mercy for a horse! He’s gone. He went straight across the deserts, hell bent for Sunday. He’ll need food. He’ll need water, worse. I’ve telegraphed to every town within two hundred miles of here. They are watching. I’ve ’phoned every ranch. I’ve kept that ’phone hot for six solid hours. I’ve got posses at every water-hole——”
“Listen, Sam,” I said. “You shouldn’t have doped me up with that sleeping powder. Because, unless after he murdered her, he walked downstairs, with none of us seeing or hearing him, and into the living-room or the kitchen, and put the key in my pocket, Canneziano is not the guilty man.”
Sam’s pipe fell out of his mouth. I shivered. During all of his talk, I had clear forgotten about those pipe ashes, dropped all over the beaded bag.
It was Hubert Hand who put the question to me about the key. He made me feel guilty. My explanation to them that the key had been in the pocket of my dress, the dress I had been wearing since morning, yesterday, had the feeling of a confession.
“Still,” Hubert Hand said, when I had finished, “that does not, necessarily, disprove Sam’s theory. If Canneziano was let out of prison in time to get here yesterday, he could have murdered her, as Sam insists, and he could have given the key to some one of us to put in your pocket. Chad, for instance, or——”
“No!” Sam thundered. “That boy, I tell you, is as innocent as I am.”
The telephone bell rang.
Hubert Hand and John followed Sam into the living-room. I stayed where I was. I had to have a minute to think. The ashes on the bag? The key in my pocket? Sam?
“Mary Magin,” I told myself, “for twenty-five years, ever since Sam Stanley took you, a snivelling, pride-broken, deserted bride, into his house, and gave you a chance to make a life for yourself, you have never seen him do a mean trick to man, woman, child, or beast. You never even heard of a questionable nor an unkind action of his. And you never will, for the simple reason that the ingredients for anything but honor and decency aren’t in him. If they were, he would not be Sam Stanley, any more than bean soup would be bean soup if it was made out of gooseberries and ginger. That being the one certainty you have, at this minute, you had better hang on to it tight; stop thinking and guessing; keep your mouth shut; and you won’t go far wrong. Good resolutions are easy to make. So is lemon meringue. Both are almost impossible to keep.”
I went right on thinking. If Sam, I thought, had found it necessary to murder Gabrielle Canneziano, he had probably done it to keep something worse from happening. Sickened at myself, for that thought, I found another way of thinking, not much better.
It did seem to me, remembering the pipe ashes on top of the bag, that Sam must have been there on the stairs at some time after she had been murdered and before I had found her. He must, then, be keeping some secret concerning the murder. It did look as if, considering his talk, he must be shielding the murderer, with every ounce of his horse-sense and ingenuity, both of which he had in plenty. But who would he shield to that extent? Chad, alive or dead? No. Martha? Yes. But Martha could not have done it. John? Not unless there was something to it than one of us dreamed of. Hubert Hand, or Mrs. Ricker? No. Danny? I thought not. Myself? I couldn’t be sure.
The men came back into the kitchen. Sam looked ten years older than he had looked ten minutes before.
“It was San Quentin,” he said to me. “Canneziano was positively not released from there until nine o’clock yesterday morning.”
“That,” I said, “lets him out.”
“And,” Hubert Hand said, “lets every man-jack of us here on the place, in.”
Habit was too strong for Sam. “ ‘Well in,’ ” he quoted, with a groan.