CHAPTER VIIITHE MAN OF MYSTERY
The cold that dried the new-fallen snow to powder sent the mercury down until it broke all records.
While the improvident did, indeed, wonder what they had done with their summer wages, the thrifty contemplated their piles of wood and their winter vegetables with a strong feeling of satisfaction.
Speaking colloquially, the Toomeys were “ga'nted considerably,” and in their usual state of semistarvation, but were in no immediate danger of freezing, owing to the fact that Toomey had succeeded in exchanging a mounted deer head for four tons of local coal mined from a “surface blossom,” which was being exploited by theGritas one of the country’s resources.
Vastly delighted with his bargain, until he discovered that he no sooner had arrived from the coalhouse with a bucket of coal than it was necessary for him to make a return trip with a bucket of ashes, Toomey now hurled anathemas upon the embryo coal baron. It was not empty verbiage when he asserted that, by spring, at the rate he was wearing a trench to the ash can, nothing but the top of his head would be visible.
Mrs. Toomey, however, was grateful, for she felt that if there was one thing worse than being hungry it was being cold, so she stoked the kitchen range with a free hand and luxuriated in the warmth though it necessitated frequent trips outside in Toomey’s absence.
Mrs. Toomey was returning from the ash can whenshe saw Mormon Joe going into his shack on the diagonal corner. She slackened her trot to a walk and watched while he unlocked the door, as though to read from his back something of his intentions in regard to the loan Kate had promised so confidently.
It had seemed too good to be realized, so she had not told Jap of their meeting. She must not count on it, however—she had been disappointed so often that she dreaded the feeling. Ugh! What frightful cold! Mrs. Toomey ran into the house and forgot the incident.
Later in the afternoon Toomey came home in high spirits.
“They got in!” he announced. “I hardly thought they’d start, such weather. It’s twenty-five below now and getting colder.”
“Who?” inquired Mrs. Toomey, absently.
“The show people.”
“Oh, did they?”
“Might as well take it in, mightn’t we?” in feigned indifference.
“How can we? It’s a dollar a ticket, isn’t it?”
For answer he produced two strips of pink pasteboard from his waistcoat pocket.
“Jap?” wonderingly.
“Yes’m.”
“Where did you get the money?”
“I raised it.”
“But how?”
He hesitated, looking sheepish.
“On the range.”
Mrs. Toomey sat down weakly.
“The cook stove! You mortgaged it?”
“I had to give some security, hadn’t I?” he demanded with asperity.
“Who to?”
“Teeters. I got five dollars.”
Mrs. Toomey found it convenient to go into the pantry until she had regained control of her feelings.
It was twenty-eight degrees below zero when the doors of the Opera House were opened to permit the citizens of Prouty to hear the World Renowned Swiss Bell Ringers and Yodlers.
The weather proved to be no deterrent to a community hungry for entertainment, and they swarmed from all directions, bundled to shapelessness, like Esquimaux headed for a central igloo. Infants in arms and the bedridden in wheel chairs, helped to fill the Opera House to its capacity, emptying the streets and houses for a time as completely as an exodus.
While the best people, among whom were the Toomeys, occupied the several rows of reserved chairs and smiled tolerantly upon the efforts of the performers, and the proletariat stamped and whistled through its teeth and cracked peanuts, a man muffled to the ears by the high collar of a mackinaw coat, his face further concealed by the visor of a cap and ear-laps, rode to the top of the bench, drew rein and looked down upon the lights of Prouty.
It was not a night one would select for traveling on horseback, unless his business was urgent. However, the man’s seemed to be of this nature, for he rode behind a large signboard which advertised the wares of the Prouty Emporium, dismounted, tied his horse to the prop that held the signboard upright, and with a show of haste took a coil of rope from his saddlehorn, an axe—the head of which was wrapped in gunny sacking—and a gun that swung in loops of saddle thongs at an angle to fit comfortably in the bend of the rider’s knee.
He did not follow the road, but took a shorter cut straight down the steep side of the bench to the nearest alley, through which he ran as noiselessly as a coyote. He ran until he came to Main Street, which the alley bisected. In the shade of the Security State Bank he peered around the corner and listened. The street was deserted, not even a dog or prowling cat was visible the entire length of it.
The man crossed it hurriedly, looking up and down and over his shoulder furtively, like some cautious animal which fears itself followed. In the protection of the alley he ran again until he came to Mormon Joe’s tar-paper shack setting square and ugly in the middle of the lot—an eyesore to the neighbors.
The door was locked, but it was the work of a second to tear off the axe-head’s covering and pry it open. He stepped inside and closed the door quietly. Lighting the candle he took from his pocket, with his hand he shielded the flame from the one window, and looked about with a glance that took in every detail of the shack’s arrangement.
A single iron bedstead extended into the room and a soogan and two blankets, thin and ragged from service, were heaped in the middle. There was no pillow, and a hard cotton pad constituted the mattress. An empty whiskey bottle stood by the head of the bed.
A small pine table that at most might have cost a couple of dollars set against the wall by the window. The starch box that served as a chair was shoved under the table, and another box in the corner did duty as a washstand. There was a cake of soap and a tin basin upon the latter and a grimy hand towel hung close by from a spike driven into the unplaned boards. Facing the door was a sheet-iron camp stove, rusty and overflowing withashes. The rickety, ill-fitting pipe was secured with the inevitable baling wire.
After his swift survey, the man stepped to the washstand and let a few drops of melted candle grease drip upon one corner. In this he held the candle until it hardened in place. Then he went to work with the businesslike swiftness of skill and experience.
He laid the shotgun on the stove and untwisted the baling wire which held the stovepipe, giving a grunt of satisfaction when he found the wire was longer than he had anticipated. He stooped and gathered some kindling that was under the stove, singled out two or three sticks that suited him, and then he laid them across the top of the stove and rested the barrel of the shotgun upon them. After all was complete, he stepped back against the door and squinted, gauging the elevation. It was to his satisfaction. With supple wrist and quick movements he uncoiled the small cotton rope he had brought with him and took two turns around the trigger of the shotgun. The rest of the rope he passed around a rod in the foot of the bed, which gave a direct back pull on the trigger, and thence he carried it over the upper hinge of the door, which opened inward, and finally down to the knob and back again to the foot of the bed, where he secured it.
All was executed without a superfluous movement, and a panther could not have been more noiseless. But the man was breathing heavily when he had finished, as hard as though he had been exercising violently. He stepped to the washstand to blow out the candle, but before he did so he gave a final rapid survey of his work. His eyes glittered with sinister satisfaction. Evidently it suited him. He held his numbed fingers over the flame of the candle to warm them before he extinguished it.
Reaching for the axe, he pried the window from its casing and set it quietly against the wall. He leaned the axe beside it and cursed under his breath when he tore a button from his mackinaw as he squeezed through the narrow opening. He dropped lightly to the ground and, crouching, ran for the alley. Where it crossed Main Street he stopped and listened, then peered around the corner of the White Hand Laundry. The street was still empty.
While he stood, the sound of laughter came faintly from the Opera House. His heart was pounding under his mackinaw. On the other side of the street red and violet lights were shining through the frosted windows of “Doc” Fussel’s drug store. They looked warm and alluring, and he hesitated.
A whinny pierced the stillness. It was his horse pawing with cold and impatience behind the signboard. He looked up at the indistinct black object on the bench, then back wistfully at the red and violet lights of the drug store. He had an intense desire to be near some one—some one who was going carelessly about his usual occupation.
He crossed over and went into the little apothecary. The clerk was sitting on the back of his neck with his feet to a counter listening to the phonograph. “Has anybody here seen Kelly?” the machine screeched as the stranger entered. The clerk got up and went to the tobacco counter.
“Hell of a night,” he observed, languidly.
“Some chilly,” replied the stranger, indicating the brand he wanted.
“It’ll be close to forty below before morning,” passing out the tobacco.
“Everybody’s gone to the show but me,” plaintively.
“A drug clerk might as well be a dog chained up in a kennel.” He stopped the phonograph and changed the needle.
The stranger sat down beside the stove and placed his feet on the nickel railing. He left the collar of his mackinaw turned up, but untied his ear-laps. They looked rather foolish, dangling. His eyes were shadowed by the visor of his cap, so that really only his nose and cheek bones were visible. He glanced at the big clock on the wall frequently, and at intervals wiped the palms of his hands on the knees of his corduroy trousers as though to remove the moisture.
The clerk was putting on “When the Springtime Comes, Gentle Annie” when the opening door let in a breath from the Arctic and a tall person wearing new overalls, a coat of fleece-lined canvas and a peak-crowned Stetson. He had a scarf wound about his neck after the fashion of sheepherders.
“Hello, Bowers! Sober?” inquired the clerk, casually.
“Kinda. What you playin’?”
The clerk told him.
“Got a piece called 'The Yella Rose o’ Texas Beats the Belles o’ Tennessee'?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Got—'Whur the Silver Colorady Wends its Way'?”
The clerk replied in the negative.
“Why don’t you git some good music?”
“Why aren’t you at the show?”
“Too contrary, I reckon. When I’m out in the hills I’m a hankerin’ to see somebody. When I git in town I want to git away from everybody. I’m goin’ out to-morrow.”
“Where you going?”
“Hired out to Mormon Joe this evenin’.”
The stranger stirred slightly.
“I’ll look around a little—I don’t want nothin’,” said Bowers.
“Help yourself,” replied the clerk, amiably, so the sheepherder stared at the baubles of cut glass on the shelf with a pleased expression and hung over the counter where the rings, watches and bracelets glittered. Then he examined a string of sponges carefully—sponges always interested him—they suggested picturesque scenery and adventures. He lingered over the toilet articles, sniffing the soaps and smelling at the bottles of perfume, trying those whose names he especially fancied on the end of his nose by rubbing it with the glass stopper. Then he sat down on the other side of the stove from the stranger and spelled out the queer names on the jars of drugs, speculating as to their contents and uses. He never yet had exhausted the possibilities of a drug store as a means of entertainment.
A few minutes after ten the advance guard came from the Opera House—laughing. The World’s Greatest Prestidigitator had dropped the egg which he intended taking from the ear of Governor Sudds where it had broken into the ample lap of Mrs. Vernon Wentz of the White Hand Laundry. The cold, however, promptly put a quietus upon their merriment and they scuttled past, bent on getting out of it as quickly as possible.
There were two customers for cigars, and the Toomeys. Toomey bought chocolates while Mrs. Toomey held her hands to the stove and shivered.
“Come on, Dell.” Toomey’s glance as he took the candy included the stranger.
“How’re you?” he nodded carelessly.
They were to be the last, apparently, for when their footsteps died away the street again grew silent.
The clerk planted his feet on the nickel railing and stared at the stove gloomily.
“I’d have to keep this store open till half-past 'leven if I was dyin’,” he grumbled.
“But you ain’t,” said Bowers, cheerfully.
Bowers smelled strongly of sheep, once the heat warmed his clothing. On the other side of the clerk the odor of smoke and bear grease emanated from the stranger. The clerk moved his chair back from the stove and advised the latter:
“Your soles is fryin’.”
He seemed not to hear him, for his eyes were upon the clock creeping close to eleven, and he watched the swaying pendulum as though it fascinated him. There was no conversation, and each sat thinking his own thoughts until the stranger suddenly pulled down the side of his collar and listened. The clerk eyed him with disfavor. The squeaking of footsteps in the dry snow was heard distinctly. The stranger got up leisurely and went out with a grunt that was intended for “good evening.”
“Sociable cuss,” Bowers commented ironically.
“Smelt like an Injun tepee,” said the clerk, sourly.
“It’s a wonder to me fellers don’t notice theirselves,” Bowers observed. “But they never seem to.”
A weaving figure was making its way down the middle of Main Street. A thick-coated collie followed closely. The swaying figure looked like a drunken gnome in its clumsy coat and peak-crowned hat in the cold steel-blue starlight. It stopped uncertainly at the alley, then went on to the end of the block and turned the corner.
The Toomeys had lost no time in retiring after the entertainment, for the house, upon their return, was like a refrigerator. Almost instantly Toomey was slumbering tranquilly, but Mrs. Toomey had symptoms which she recognized as presaging hours of wakefulness. The unwonted excitement of being out in the evening had much to do with her restlessness, but chiefly it came from thinking of the cook stove. Of course she could see the force of Jap’s argument as to the necessity of keeping up appearances by being seen in public places and spending money as though there was more where that came from, yet she wondered if it really deceived anybody.
And supposing Teeters foreclosed the mortgage! It seemed as though they were slipping week by week, day by day, deeper into the black depths at the bottom of which was actual beggary. Her nervousness increased as her imagination painted darker and darker pictures until she longed to scream for the relief it would have afforded her. The single hope was Mormon Joe’s Kate and her promise, and that was too fantastic and farfetched to dare count on. It was not logical to suppose that a man whom Jap had quarreled with and insulted would come to their rescue even if he could afford to do so, which she doubted.
How still it was—the eloquent stillness of terrible cold! The town was soundless. Chickens humped in their feathers were freezing on their roosts, horses and cows tied in their stalls were suffering, and, as always, she visualized the desolate white stretches where hungry coyotes, gaunt and vigilant, padded along the ridges, and horses and cattle, turned out to shift for themselves, huddled shivering in the gulches and under the willows.
She knew from the snapping and cracking of lumber and metal about the house that it was growing colder,and she drew the covers closer. Oh, what a country to live in! Whatever was to become of them! Her teeth chattered.
She thought she heard footsteps and raised her head slightly to listen. Faint at first, they were coming nearer. Whoever was out a night like this, she could not imagine. The person was walking in the middle of the road and his progress was uneven, stopping sometimes altogether, then going forward. Abreast the house the sound of heels grinding in the snow that was dry as powder was like the scrunching and squealing of the steel tire of a wagon in bitter weather.
They passed, grew fainter, finally stopped altogether. Mrs. Toomey moved closer to her husband. There was comfort in the nearness of a human being.
A shot! Her heart jumped—her nerves twanged with the shock of it. “That hit something!” The thought was almost simultaneous. The sound was more like an explosion—deadened, muffled somewhat—as of a charge fired into a bale of hay or cotton. For the space of a dozen heartbeats she lay with her mouth open, breathless in the deathly silence of the frozen night.
A scream! It must have reached the sky. Piercing, agonized—the agony of a man screaming with his mouth wide open—screaming without restraint, in animal-like unconsciousness of what he was doing.
“Jap!” She clutched his arm and shook him.
The screams kept coming, blood curdling, as if they would split the throat, tear it, and horrible with suffering.
“Jap!” She sat up and shook his shoulder violently.
“Wha’s the matter?” he asked, sleepily.
“Did you hear that shot? Listen!”
“Some drunk,” he mumbled.
“He’s hurt, I tell you! Hear him!”
“Drug store’s open.”
“Oughtn’t you to go to him?”
“Lemme be—can’t you?” He again breathed heavily.
The screams kept coming, but each a little fainter. Either the man was moving on or the pain was lessening. Mrs. Toomey’s heart continued to thump as she lay rigid, listening. She wanted to get up and look through the window, but the floor was cold and she could not remember exactly where she had left her slippers. Anyway, somebody else would go to him. It was a relief, though, when he stopped screaming.
Others whom the cries of agony awakened applied the same reasoning to the situation, with minor variations. “Tinhorn” in particular was disturbed because of their nearness. He raised his head from under a mound of blankets and frowned into the darkness as he wondered if, as Prouty’s newly elected mayor, he would be criticized should he fail to go out and investigate. He was so warm and comfortable!
“Guess I’d better get up, Mamma.”
His wife gripped him as if he was struggling violently, although his Honor was lying motionless as an alligator.
“You shan’t—you’ll get pneumonia and leave me and the children without any insurance! You’ve no right to take chances. Let somebody else go that hasn’t any future.”
There was that side to it.
“Some hobo most like.” The future statesman turned over. “Tuck my back in, Mamma.”
Mr. Sudds was awakened, and his first impulse was to rush to the man’s assistance, but he was not sure where to find matches, and it took him such an unconscionable time to dress that by the time he got there—
Scales was restrained by the arms of his fragile wife who threatened hysterics if he left her. Between love and duty Mr. Scales did not hesitate with the thermometer at forty below zero, and the knowledge that loss of sleep unfitted him for business.
So Mormon Joe, screaming in his agony, staggered up the alley, leaving a crimson trail behind him, the sheep dog following like a shadow. He had nearly reached Main Street when he lurched, groped for a support, then fell to his knees. The hot drops turned to red globules in the snow as he kept crawling, gasping, “Oh, God! Won’t somebody come to me?” The dog walked beside him as he dragged himself along, perplexed and wondering at this whim of his master’s.
Mormon Joe was leaning against the side of the White Hand Laundry, his head fallen forward, when Bowers and the drug clerk got to him. The collie was licking his face for attention, but the warm caressing hand—now red and sticky—was lying in the snow, limp and unresponsive.
Mormon Joe had “gone over”—dying as he had lived—a man of mystery.
CHAPTER IXTHE SUMMONS
Bowers had offered to take Lingle, the Deputy Sheriff, to the sheep camp, which he was sure he could find easily from the directions Mormon Joe had given him when he hired him, but, as it proved, the herder had been over-sanguine.
They were hungry and tired from long hours in the saddle, and the breath frozen on their upturned collars testified to the continued extremity of the weather when for the hundredth time they checked their horses and tried to get their bearings.
“I’m certain sure that Mormon Joe said to ride abreast that peak and about a half mile to the left of it turn in to a ‘draw’ runnin’ northeast by southwest, and ride until I come acrost the wagon.”
“Don’t see how a child could miss the way from that description,” replied Lingle, sarcastically.
“I think I see a woolie movin’.” Bowers squinted across the white expanse and the deputy endeavored to follow his gaze, but could see nothing but dancing specks due to a mild case of snow blindness. “Yep—that’s a woolie. I’m so used to ’em I kin tell what a sheep is thinkin’ from here to them mountains.”
Reining their horses at the top of a “draw” a quarter of an hour later they looked down upon the sheep wagon in a clearing in the sagebrush, together with the tepee and cook tent. Urging their horses down the steep side theydismounted and went inside the latter, where soiled breakfast dishes sat on the unplaned boards which served as a table. In the way of food there was only a can of molasses and a half dozen biscuits frozen solid.
“Real cozy and homelike,” Lingle commented, as he tried to pour himself some cold coffee and found it frozen. “I’ll look around a bit and then go up and tell her.”
“I’d ruther it ud be you than me,” Bowers observed grimly. “Can’t abide hearin’ a female take on and beller. I don’t like the sect, noway. You kin bet I don’t aim to stay no longer than she kin git another herder, neither.”
But Lingle was already out of hearing of the querulous voice of the misogynist, and peering into the tepee which was as Mormon Joe had left it he noted that it contained an unmade bed, and extra pair of shoes, and a few articles of wearing apparel—that was all.
The door of the sheep wagon was unlocked, yet he hesitated a moment before opening it. Its examination was in line with his duty, however, so he opened it and looked about with a certain amount of curiosity. The bare, cold stillness of it went to his marrow.
There was something pathetic to him in the pitiful attempts at home making shown in the few crude decorations. A feminine instinct for domesticity evidenced itself in the imitation of the scalloped border of a lace curtain made in soap on the glass of the small window in the back of the wagon, in a pin cushion of coarse muslin worked in blue worsted yarn, in the bouquet of dried goldenrod in a bottle, in the highly colored picture of an ammunition company’s advertisement pinned to the canvas wall. A snag of a comb and a brush were thrust in a wooden strip near the small cheap mirror.
Above the bunk two loops of wire were suspended froman oak bow of the wagon top, which obviously was where the occupant kept her rifle. There was a tiny stove by the door and a cupboard beside it, the shelves of which were crowded with books whose titles made the sheriff’s eyes open. A Latin grammar, a Roman history, the “Story of the French Revolution,” mythology, and many others that might as well have been Greek for all the meaning their titles conveyed to the deputy.
“Whew!” he whistled softly. He had no idea that Mormon Joe’s Kate had any education. He had the impression that she was, in his own phraseology, “a tough customer.” Mormon Joe must have taught her, he reflected. There never was any doubt about his learning when it suited him to display it. The discovery increased the sheriff’s curiosity to see the girl.
Continuing his investigations, he opened one of the drawers that pulled out from beneath the bunk, and closed it hastily—but not too soon to see that the undergarments it contained were made of flour sacks which had been ripped, laundered and fashioned clumsily by a hand unused to sewing. In the drawer on the other side there were clippings giving recipes for improving the complexion, hair treatments, care of the teeth and nails, and other aids to beauty.
Lingle smiled as he glanced at them. Evidently she had traits that were distinctly feminine. In addition, there were writing materials and a packet of letters addressed in a masculine hand that looked unformed and youthful. They were tied with a pink ribbon, and had the appearance of having been read frequently. Lingle fingered the packet uncertainly and then threw it back in the drawer impatiently.
“Thunder!” he muttered, “I ain’t paid to snoop through a woman’s letters.”
On the southern slope of a foothill where the snow lay less deep than on the northern and eastern exposures, Kate stood on the sunny side of a brown boulder leaning her shoulder against it as she watched the sheep below her nibbling at the spears of dried bunch grass which thrust themselves above the surface. Her rifle stood against a rock where she could reach it easily, and her horse fed near her, pawing through the snow, like an experienced “rustler.”
She was dressed to meet the weather in boys’ boots and arctics, woolen mittens, riding skirt of heavy blue denim, the fleece-lined canvas coat of the sheepherder, and a coonskin cap with ear-laps. Her face wore an expression that was both sad and troubled as she mechanically watched such sheep as showed a disposition to stray, and kept an eye out for coyotes.
Save in her sleep, her quarrel with Mormon Joe had not been out of her mind since, three days before, she had stood shivering at the door and watched him vanish through the sagebrush. Now, in addition, she was worried over his absence. She had kept supper waiting until long after her usual bedtime and to-day she had worn a trail to the top of the hill, watching, and still had seen no sign of him. Poignant regret for what she had said and shame for her ingratitude overwhelmed her. Along with the feelings was a fear lest he refuse to forgive her and insist upon her leaving. Then, too, there was her promise to Mrs. Toomey.
Kate was confronted with her first problem. She had threshed it out, turned it over and over, finally arriving at the conclusion that she must keep her promise at any cost to herself. A promise was a promise, and she had given her hand on it. Her regard for her word was a dominant trait in Kate. Mormon Joe had fostered thisideal by words and his own example. So she had slowly made up her mind that having given her word she would not recall it, though it would be a high price to pay for a principle if it cost her his friendship and protection.
Kate intended to plead with him; to beg his forgiveness upon her knees, if necessary; to put her arms about his neck and make him understand how much she loved him. She had taken everything for granted heretofore, as her right because he had given it so readily, but all would be different if only he would forget what she had said and give her another opportunity, and if he would let her keep her promise to Mrs. Toomey she would herd sheep until she had saved the amount in a herder’s wages.
This was her plan after sleepless hours and three days of thinking. Until their quarrel Kate never would have doubted that she could have her way without much difficulty, but then she had not met the cool polite stranger with the adamant beneath his polished exterior. The girl wondered if the whimsical unselfish friend and comrade ever would come back to her. The doubt of it set her chin quivering.
Kate trudged through the snow to turn back the sheep that Bowers had seen, and at the top of the hill stopped and gave a cry of relief and gladness. A thin blue thread of smoke was rising from the “draw” and she wondered how anyone could have come without her seeing them. She looked at the sun and calculated that she could shortly be starting the sheep back to the bed-ground, and her spirits rose immeasurably as she sent the strays scampering back to the others and returned to the small warmth which the sunny side of the rock afforded.
Kate was leaning against the boulder conjecturing as to whether it was Mormon Joe or the herder who hadarrived, when Lingle rode around the side of the hill and came upon her suddenly.
Immediately the deputy’s face set in lines of sternness. He had been rehearsing his part in the dialogue which was to follow and believed he had it sufficiently well in hand to play the act admirably. This murder was the first big case he had had since being appointed deputy. It was a great opportunity and he meant to make the most of it, for if handled creditably it might prove a stepping-stone to the sheriff’s office. The element of surprise he knew was most effective and he was counting upon it to obtain valuable admissions. In the scene, as he visualized it while riding, he was to advance gimlet-eyed, throw open his coat and confront her with the badge which made the guilty tremble.
“Guess you know what I’m here for, Madam,” he was to say significantly and harshly.
But like most prearranged things in life it all went differently. When he was close enough to see well his jaw dropped automatically. There was no more resemblance between the girl who straightened up and smiled upon him and the hard-featured woman he had pictured as “Mormon Joe’s Kate,” than there was between himself and the horse he was riding.
Younger by years than he had anticipated, she radiated wholesomeness, simple friendliness and candor. A strand of soft hair had slipped from beneath her cap and lay upon a cheek that was a vivid pink in the cold atmosphere; she had the clear skin of perfect health and her lips were red with the blood that was close to the surface, while the gray eyes with which she regarded him were frank and steady as she gazed at him inquiringly.
Lingle tugged at his hat brim instinctively.
“I thought you were a coyote when the sheep beganrunning,” she said, good-naturedly. “They’ve been bothering a lot this cold weather.”
Lingle mumbled that he “presumed so.”
“I suppose you are the new herder?”
“I came out with him,” the deputy replied evasively.
“Didn’t Uncle Joe come?” Kate’s face fell in disappointment.
Lingle shifted his weight and looked elsewhere.
“He’s in town yet,” he answered.
Lingle knew instinctively that she thought Mormon Joe was drinking heavily.
Then, fixing her troubled eyes upon him she asked hesitatingly:
“Did he—say when I could expect him?”
The merciless hound of the law, who had dismounted, shuffled his feet uneasily and looked down to see if his badge was showing.
“Er—he didn’t mention it.” In the panic which seized him he could not frame the words in which to tell her, and he felt an illogical wrath at Bowers—the coward—for not coming with him. For a moment he considered resigning, then walked over to where her horse was feeding to collect himself while her wondering gaze followed him.
Lingle ran his hand along the horse’s neck, the hair of which was stiff with dried sweat, lifted the saddle blanket and looked at its legs, where streaks of lather had hardened. He regarded her keenly as he turned to her.
“You been smokin’ up your horse, I notice.”
“I ran a coyote for two miles this morning—emptied my magazine at him and then didn’t get him.” The truth shining in her clear eyes was unmistakable.
Lingle broke off a handful of sagebrush and used it as a makeshift currycomb, while Kate, a little surprised atthe action, picked up the bridle reins when he had finished the gratuitous grooming and started the sheep moving.
“I’ll feed back to camp slowly. Don’t wait for me—you and the herder eat supper.”
“Anything I can do, ma’am?”
“Oh, no, thank you.”
Bowers met the deputy at the door of the cook tent, his eyes gleaming with curiosity.
“Did she beller?”
Lingle sat down morosely and removed his spurs before answering.
“I didn’t tell her.”
“What!” Bowers fairly jumped at him. “What’s the matter?”
“She might as well eat her supper, mightn’t she?” defiantly.
“Do you know what I think?” Bowers pointed a spoon at him accusingly. “I think your nerve failed you. All I got to say is—you’re a devil of an officer.”
“Maybe you’d like to tell her,” sneeringly.
“I shore ain’t afraid to!” bristling. “I don’t like to listen to a female’s snifflin’, and I say so, but when it comes to bein’afraidof one of ’em—” Bowers banged the pan of biscuits on the table to emphasize the small esteem in which he held women. “What fer a looker is she?” he demanded.
“You’d better eat your supper before she gets here.”
“Bad as that?”
“Worse,” grimly. “I ain’t got educated words enough to describe her.”
They had eaten by the light of the lantern, when they heard Kate coming.
She lifted the flap of the tent and smiled her friendly smile upon them.
“Goodness, but I’m glad I don’t have to cook supper! I haven’t had anything warm since morning.”
Bowers stood with the broom in his hand, staring, while Kate removed her cap and jacket. Then he cast an evil look upon the deputy, a look which said, “You liar!”
As she made to get the food from the stove he interposed hastily:
“You set down, Ma'am.”
Lingle gave him a look which was equally significant, a jeering look which said ironically, “Woman hater!”
Bowers colored with pleasure when she lauded his “cowpuncher potatoes” and exclaimed over the biscuits.
When Kate had finished she looked from one to the other and beamed upon them impartially.
“It’s nice to see people. I haven’t seen any one for six weeks except Uncle Joe,” wistfully. “I wish he had come back with you—it’s so lonesome.”
There was an immediate silence and then Bowers cleared his throat noisily.
“Night 'fore last was tol'able chilly in your wagon, I reckon?”
Her face sobered.
“It was—terrible! I couldn’t sleep for the cold, and thinking about and pitying the stock on the range, and anybody that had to be out in it. I was glad Uncle Joe was safe in Prouty—there was no need for us both to be out here suffering.”
Again there was silence, and once more Bowers came to the rescue with a feeble witticism, at which he himself laughed hollowly:
“I hearn that a feller eatin’ supper with a steel knife got his tongue froze to it, and they had a time thawin’ him over the tea kettle.”
Kate rose to clear away and wash the dishes, but Bowers motioned her to remain seated.
“You rest yourself, Ma'am. I was a pearl diver in a restauraw fer three months onct so I am, you might say, a professional.”
“Uncle Joe and I take turns,” Kate laughed, “for neither of us likes it.”
“That’s the best way,” Bowers agreed, breaking the constrained silence which fell each time Mormon Joe’s name was mentioned. “More pardners has fell out over dish-washin’ and the throwin’ of diamond hitches than any other causes.”
When, to Kate’s horror, Bowers had wiped off the top of the stove with the dishcloth and removed some lingering moisture from the inside of a frying pan with his elbow, she said, rising:
“I’m up at four, so I go to bed early. You can sleep in Uncle Joe’s tepee,” to Lingle, “and you needn’t get up for breakfast when we do. I suppose,” to Bowers, “you’ll want to start in to-morrow, so I’ll go with you and show you the range we’re feeding over.” With a friendly good night she turned towards the entrance.
Lingle rose with a look of desperation on his countenance.
“Just a minute.” There was that in his voice which made her turn quickly and look from one to the other in wonder.
Lingle had a feeling that his vocal cords had turned to wire, they moved so stiffly, when he heard himself saying:
“Guess I’ll have to ask you to take a ride with me to-morrow.”
“Me?” Her eyes widened. “What for?”
The yellow flame flickered in the smudged chimney ofthe lantern on the table, a bit of burning wood fell out from the front of the stove and lay smoking on the dirt floor in front of it. Bowers stood rigid by the basin where he had been washing his hands, with the water dripping from his fingers.
In a frenzy to have it over the deputy blurted out harshly:
“Mormon Joe’s been murdered!”
The girl gave a cry—sharp, anguished, as one might scream out with a crushed finger.
Bowers advanced a step and demanded fiercely of Lingle:
“Don’t you know nothin’—not no damned nothin’?”
Kate’s face was marble.
“You mean—he’s dead—he won’t come back here—ever?”
“You’ve said it,” the deputy replied, huskily.
Kate walked back unsteadily to the seat she had just vacated and her head sank upon her folded arms on the table. She did not cry like a woman, but with deep tearless sobs that lifted her shoulders.
The two men stood with their hands hanging awkwardly, looking at each other. Then Bowers made a grimace and jerked his head towards the tent entrance. The deputy obeyed the signal and went out on tip-toe with the sheepherder following.
“She’s got guts,” said Bowers briefly.
“She’ll need ’em,” was the laconic answer.
CHAPTER XTHE BANK PUTS ON THE SCREWS
In the initial excitement it had seemed a simple matter to apprehend the murderer of Mormon Joe with such clues as were furnished by the axe, the rope, the shotgun and the button, which were found in the snow beneath the window. But investigation showed that the axe and rope were no different from scores of other axes and ropes in Prouty, and it was soon recognized that the solution of the case hinged upon the ownership of the gun and the finding of a motive for this peculiarly cowardly and ingenious murder.
But no one could be found to identify the gun, nor could any amount of inquiry unearth an enemy with a grudge sufficiently deep to inspire murder.
Although the room was packed to the doors, nothing startling was anticipated from the coroner’s inquest; and while Kate had been summoned as a witness it was not expected that much would be learned from her testimony. The crowd was concerned chiefly in seeing “how she was taking it.”
But curiosity became suspicion and suspicion conviction, when Kate, as white as the alabastine wall behind her, admitted that she and Mormon Joe had quarreled the night before the murder, and over money; that she knew how to set a trap-gun and had set them frequently for mountain lions; that she could ride forty miles in a few hours if necessary. The sensation came, however,when the coroner revealed the fact that under the dead man’s will she was the sole beneficiary. Her denial of any knowledge of this was received incredulously, and her emphatic declaration that she had never before seen the shotgun carried no conviction.
The coroner and jury, after deliberation, decided that there was not sufficient evidence to hold her, but the real argument which freed her was the cost to the taxpayers of convening a Grand Jury, and the subsequent proceedings, if the jury decided to try her.
Kate would as well have been proven guilty and convicted, for all the difference the verdict of the coroner’s jury made in the staring crowd that parted to let her pass as she came from the inquest. She had untied her horse with the unseeing eyes of a sleep-walker and was about to put her foot in the stirrup when Lingle came up to her.
“I’m goin’ to do all I can to clear you,” he said, earnestly, “and I got the mayor behind me. He said he’d use every resource of his office to get this murderer. I believe in you—and don’t you forget it!”
She had not been able to speak, but the look in her eyes had thanked him.
Two days later, Kate was disinfecting the wound of a sheep that an untrained dog had injured when a note from the Security State Bank was handed her by one of Neifkins’ herders. It was signed by its President, Mr. Vernon Wentz, late of the White Hand Laundry, and there was something which filled her with forebodings in the curt request for an immediate interview.
It was too late to start for Prouty that day, but she would leave early in the morning, so she went on applying a solution of permanganate of potassium to the wound and sprinkling it with a healing powder while she conjectured as to what Wentz might want of her.
In her usual work Kate found an outlet for the nervous tension under which she was still laboring. It helped a little, though it seemed impossible to believe that she ever again would be serene of mind and able to think clearly. Her thoughts were a jumble; as yet she could only feel and suffer terribly. Remorse took precedence over all other emotions, over the sense of loneliness and loss, over the appalling accusation. Her writhing conscience was never quiet. She would gladly have exchanged every hope of the future she dared harbor for five minutes of the dead man’s life in which to beg forgiveness.
In the short interval since the coroner’s inquest public opinion had crystallized in Prouty, and Kate’s guilt was now a certainty in the minds of its citizens.
“She done it, all right, only they can’t prove it on her.” Hiram Butefish merely echoed the opinion of the community when he made the assertion, upon seeing Kate turn the corner by the Prouty House and ride down the main street the day following the delivery of Mr. Wentz’s summons.
Suffering had made Kate acutely sensitive and she was quick to feel the atmosphere of hostility. She read it in the countenances of the passersby on the sidewalk, in the cold eyes staring at her from the windows, in the bank president’s uncompromising attitude, even in the cashier’s supercilious inventory as he looked her over.
Kate had entered the wide swinging doors of the bank simultaneously with Mr. Abram Pantin, at whom Mr. Wentz had waved a long white hand and requested him languidly to be seated. Since he already had motioned Kate to the only chair beside the one he himself occupied in his enclosure, it was clear there was no way for Mr. Pantin to accept the invitation unless he sat on the floor. It chafed Pantin exceedingly to be patronized by one whoso recently had done his laundry, but since his business at the bank was of an imperative nature he concealed his annoyance with the best grace possible and waited.
Temporarily, at least, Mr. Wentz had lost his equilibrium. From washing the town’s soiled linen to loaning it money was a change so sudden and radical that the rise made him dizzy; he was apt, therefore, to be a little erratic, his manner varying during a single conversation from the cold austerity of a bloodless capitalist to the free and easy democracy of the days when he had stood in the doorway of his laundry in his undershirt and “joshed” the passersby.
Mr. Wentz had a notion, fostered by his wife, that he was rather a handsome fellow. True, years of steaming had given to his complexion a look not unlike that of an evaporated apple, but this small defect was more than offset by a luxuriant brown mustache which he had trained carefully. His hair was sleek and neatly trimmed, and he used his brown eyes effectively upon occasions. His long hands with their supple fingers were markedly white, also from the steaming process. Being tall and of approximately correct proportions, his ready-made clothes fitted him excellently—as a matter of fact, Vernon Wentz would have passed for a “gent” anywhere.
Not unmindful of the presence of Mr. Pantin, of whom he secretly stood in awe, although he knew of his own knowledge that Pantin sheared his collars, Wentz swung about in his office chair and said abruptly:
“Didn’t expect I’d have to send for you.”
Kate’s troubled eyes were fixed upon him.
“I had nothing to come for.”
It pleased Mr. Wentz to regard her with a smile of tolerant amusement.
“Don’t know anything about finance, do you?”
“I’ve never had any business to attend to. I will learn, though.”
Wentz smiled enigmatically. Then, brusquely:
“We might as well come to the point and have it over—do you know them sheep’s mortgaged?”
“I knew,” hesitatingly, “that Uncle Joe had borrowed for our expenses, but I didn’t know how he did it.”
“That’s how he did it,” curtly. “And the mortgage includes the leases and the whole bloomin’ outfit.”
“But he only borrowed a few hundred,” she ventured.
“We require ample security,” importantly.
“What is it you want of me?” Kate’s voice trembled slightly. The import of the interview was beginning to dawn upon her.
Wentz cleared his throat and announced impressively:
“There was a meeting of the directors called yesterday and it was decided that the bank must have its money.”
She cried aghast:
“I haven’t it, Mr. Wentz!”
“Then there’s only one alternative.”
“You mean ship the sheep?”
Wentz stroked his mustache.
“That’s about the size of it.”
“But sheep are way down,” she protested. “It would take almost the two bands at present to pay off the debt and shipping expenses.”
“That’s not our funeral.”
“And the leases are of no value without stock for them.”
Mr. Wentz lowered his silken lashes and suggested smoothly as he continued to caress the treasured growth gently:
“Neifkins might be induced to take the leases off your hands at a nominal figure.”
Mr. Pantin cooling his heels at the outer portals smiled. He knew what Kate did not—that Neifkins was one of the directors.
“But the notes are not due until early next summer—after shearing. Uncle Joe told me so.”
“True,” he assented. Then with a large air of erudition: “The law, however, provides for such cases as this. When the security of the mortgager is in jeopardy through incompetence or other causes he can foreclose immediately.”
Kate paled as she listened.
“But there’s no danger, Mr. Wentz,” she protested breathlessly. “Your money’s as safe as when Uncle Joe was living. I understand sheep—he said I was a better sheepman than he was because I had more patience and like them. I’ll watch them closer than ever—day or night I’ll never leave them. I’ll promise you! I’ve got a good herder now and between us we can handle them.”
Mr. Wentz shrugged a skeptical shoulder.
“You couldn’t convince the directors of that. There’s none of ’em wants to risk the bank’s money with a woman in that kind of business.”
“But can’t you see,” she pleaded, “that it’s ruin to ship now? It will wipe me out completely. Put some one out there of your own choosing, if you can’t trust me, but don’t make me sell with the bottom out of the market!”
“You’ve got the bank’s decision,” he responded, coldly.
“Please—please reconsider! Just give me a chance—you won’t be sorry! I only know sheep—I’ve never had the opportunity to learn anything else, and I’ve noplace to go but that little homestead back in the hills. I’ve no one in the world to turn to. Won’t you give me a trial, and then if you see I can’t handle it—”
“It’s no use arguin’.” Wentz brought both hands down on the arms of the chair in impatient finality. “We’re goin’ to ship as soon as we can get cars and drive to the railroad, so you might as well turn them sheep over and stop hollerin’.”
Kate rose and took a step forward, her hands outstretched in entreaty:
“Once more I ask you—give me a little time—I’ll try and raise the money somewhere—ten days—give me ten days—I beg of you!”
“Ten years or ten days or ten minutes—’twould be all the same,” his voice was raucous as he, too, stood up. He looked at her contemptuously. “No; it’s settled. The bank’s goin’ to take over them sheep, and if there’s anything left after the mortgage is satisfied you’ll get it.” He indicated that the interview was over. “Step in, Pantin.”
For the second time within the week Kate went out in the street stunned by the blow which had been dealt her: She stood uncertainly for a moment on the edge of the sidewalk and then began slowly to untie the bridle reins.
“Here’s a message that came for you yesterday; we had no way of getting it to you.” The girl from the telephone office was regarding her curiously.
Kate turned at the sound of a voice beside her, and took the message which had been telephoned from the nearest telegraph office.