"But I rode over here especially to bring you back with me to stay a while, a long while, as long as you like and longer." Thus Sally Jane, looking injured.
Hazel shook her head. "Can't, dear. Honestly, I'd like nothing better than to go a-visiting, but I've just got to look after the ranch."
Sally Jane gazed at her friend a moment in silence, then: "You don't really have to stay here, Hazel. You only think you do. You'd much better come over and stay with us. You know I'd love to have you, and this is no place for you all alone by yourself this way. Suppose——"
"Who'd hurt me?" interrupted Hazel. "Anyway, I'm not going to be driven off my own ranch by anybody. I'm going to stay here until I find a buyer for the place."
"But that may be a year," objected Sally Jane.
"It may be several years. Money's awfully tight just now, the Hillsville cashier said, the last time I was over."
"I don't care, somebody—some man ought to be here. Can't you get Ray back earlier than usual?"
Hazel shook her head. "I don't want to, Sally Jane. He went east to Missouri to visit his folks, and I'm not going to spoil his good time. He'll be back in time for the spring round-up, though."
"That won't be till next month," objected Sally Jane. "Anything might happen in the meantime. Land alive, just look at this afternoon!"
"Well, look at it. Not a thing happened to hurt, did it? Lord, Sally Jane, men are the easiest things in the world to handle when you know how."
"You don't give them half enough credit," said Sally Jane dryly. "Scratch a man and you'll catch a savage every time. Beasts!"
"Rats!" remarked Hazel, and gave her head a toss and turned her attention to practical things. "Lookat this clean floor!Lookat the dirt they tracked in! Oh, the devil! I could swear!"
She fetched a fresh bucket of water and began to scrub the floor anew.
"I'm going," announced Sally Jane. "Once more, Hazel, won't you change your mind and visit with us for a while?"
Hazel shook her head. "I only wish I felt able to. But you don't have to go yet. Stay to supper, do. Let the male parent get his own supper for a change. It won't hurt him. And there'll be a fine old moon to-night about eight."
"I promised Dad French bread for to-night, or I would. I can't disappoint him. So long. Ride over first chance you get."
When Sally Jane was gone, Hazel hurried to finish the scrubbing of the floor. When she had wrung out the last mop rag and hung it to dry behind the stove, she fed the chickens and horses, took the ax and bucksaw, went out to the woodpile and sawed and split a man's size jag of stove wood and kindling.
In the red glory of the sunset she returned to the house with her arms piled high with wood. She made sufficient trips to fill the woodbox, then started a fire in the stove, put on the coffeepot and ground up enough coffee for four cupfuls. She liked coffee, did Hazel Walton.
Bacon and potatoes were sputtering in their respective pans on the stove before it was so dark that she was forced to light the lamp.
She had slipped back the chimney into the clamps and was waiting for it to heat so that she could turn up the wick when the faintest of creaks at the door made her look up.
She did not move, just stood there staring stupidly at the bareheaded man that blocked the open doorway. For the bareheaded man was Dan Slike, his harsh face rendered even less prepossessing than usual by a week's stubble of beard. A six-shooter was in Dan Slike's hand, and the barrel was pointing at her breast.
"Don't go makin' any move toward that rifle on the hooks back of you," said Dan Slike, slipping into the room and closing the door behind him. "If you do, I'll have to beef you. I don't wanna hurt you—I ain't in the habit of hurting women, but by Gawd, if it comes to me or you, why it'll just naturally have to be you. Dish up that grub a-frying there on the stove. I'm hungry. Get a move on."
At that she turned in a flash and reached for the Winchester. She had it barely off the hooks when Dan Slike was beside her. With his left hand he seized the gun barrel and shoved it upward. And as he did so, he smote her across the top of the head with his pistol barrel.
A rocketing sheaf of sparks danced before her eyes and her knees gave way. She sank to the floor in a dazed heap. He dragged the Winchester from her failing grasp as she fell.
He began to work the lever of the rifle with expert rapidity. A twinkling stream of cartridges twirled against his chest and fell to the floor. Carefully he gathered all the cartridges and dropped them into the side pocket of his coat. The unloaded rifle he leaned against the door jamb.
Hazel slowly raised her body to a sitting position. She clung to a leg of the table for support. She passed a hand very tenderly across the top of her head. She felt a little nauseated.
Dan Slike, watching her with hard, bright eyes, strode to the stove and poured himself out a cup of coffee. He spaded in a spoonful of sugar and stirred the mixture meditatively. But he did not cease to watch her.
"You'll be all right in about ten minutes," he said calmly. "I didn't hit you so awful hard. I didn't go to. Gawd, no! I figure always to be as gentle with a woman as I can. No sense in bein' rougher than you got to be, I say."
He drank the coffee slowly, with evident enjoyment.
"Nothing like coffee when your cork's pulled," he rambled on, sloshing round the last of the coffee in the bottom of the cup. "It beats whisky, but now that I've had the coffee I don't care if I do. Got a bottle tucked away somewhere, li'l girl?"
She was still unable to speak. Her mouth had an odd, cottony feeling. She shook her head in reply to his question.
"Is that so?" he said in the chatty tone he had been using. "I guess maybe you're mistaken."
He set the cup down on the table, reached down and twisted his fingers into her hair. With a yank that brought the tears springing to her eyes, he said:
"About that bottle now—ain't you a mite mistaken? What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?"
Again he pulled her hair, pulled it till the tears ran down her cheeks, and she moaned and cried in purest agony.
"C'mon!" directed Dan Slike. "Quit your bluffin', you triflin' hussy! You ain't hurt a-tall. And I can't stay here all night while you sit on the floor and beller. Stand up on your two legs and bring me that bottle. And no monkey business either. Say, have you got a six-shooter? Answer me, have you?"
"No! No! I haven't! I haven't another gun." She told him this lie in such a heart-breaking tone that he was constrained to believe her.
"I'll have to take your word for it," he grumbled. "But you remember, girl, the first false move you make with a knife or anything else, I'll blow you apart. Damn you, get up!"
With which he gave her hair such a terrific twist that the exquisite pain expelled all her initial fear of him, and she leaped at him like a wildcat, her nails curving at his eyes.
Dan Slike dodged backward, set himself and swung his right fist without mercy. He was no boxer. The accurate placing of blows was beyond him. So it was that the swing intended for her jaw landed on her cheekbone, a much less vulnerable spot. Nevertheless the smash was enough to send her spinning sidewise over a chair and piled her sicker and dizzier than before in a corner of the room.
She lay still and panted.
"You see how it is," he pointed out. "You ain't gainin' a thing by fighting me. Might as well be sensible first as last. But lemme tell you if you keep on a-fussin' at me thisaway, I'll sure have to be rough with you."
He sat down on the edge of the table and rolled a cigarette. Lighting it he drew in a slow luxurious lungful.
"One thing I gotta say for your sheriff," he observed behind a barrier of smoke, "he gimme plenty of tobacco while I was his guest. I can't say but he took right good care of me—for a sheriff."
His incarceration having deprived Dan Slike of conversational opportunities, he was now experiencing the natural reaction. He was talking too much.
"Fed me well too," he resumed. "Oh, I ain't complainin'. I—Hell, your grub's beginnin' to burn. I'll just move those frypans back. Feelin' any better, girl?"
He came and stood over her, hands on hips, and looked down at her grimly. She shrank away, her wide eyes fixed upon him in fright and loathing.
It was evident that he found his survey of her satisfactory, for he kicked her in the side. Not hard. Simply as an earnest of what lay in store for her in case she chose to continue contumacious. "Get up," he commanded.
The nausea and most of the dizzy feeling had evaporated. She was perfectly able to get up, but it was intolerable that she should do the bidding of her uncle's murderer. She continued to lie still.
"Get up!" he repeated, and kicked her again—harder.
She got up, gasping, a hand at her side. She felt as though one of her ribs was broken. His long fingers fastened on the tender flesh of her shoulder. He shoved her across the room. She brought up against the stove. Instinctively she thrust out a hand to save herself. Her bare palm smacked down upon the hottest stove lid.
She sprang back with a choked cry and clapped the burned hand to her mouth.
Dan Slike laughed merrily—for him. "Serve you right. You're too damn pernickety, anyway. Aw, whatcha blubberin' about, cry-baby? Dontcha know enough to put some bakin' soda on the burn and tie a rag round it? Ain't you got any brains a-tall? Pick up that kettle! Just pick it up!"
Her unburned hand fell away from the kettle. She had seen the six-shooter flash out at his last words. She knew now that this man meant what he said. He would kill her, even as he had killed her uncle.
With a shudder that began at her knees and ended at the nape of her neck she went to the cupboard and took out a carton of baking soda.
"Here," he said roughly, when he saw that she was making a poor job at bandaging, "here, you can't tie that one-handed. Lemme."
He bandaged the hand, made fast the bandage with a too-tight knot. He obviously lingered over the business, deriving pleasure from her state of terror.
It has been shown that Hazel was not lacking in courage. Indeed, she had more than the average woman's share of it. But this man staggered her mentally. She did not know what he would do next and was in a panic accordingly.
"Scared stiff," he remarked, as he twirled her about and headed her toward the stove. "You don't like me a-tall, do you? Nemmine. Lessee how your grub tastes."
She had set the table for herself before he came in. He sat down at her place, his eyes bright upon her. Fumblingly she filled a plate with bacon and fried potatoes. She brought him another cup of coffee and placed the condensed milk and the sugar within his reach.
"Spoon," he said shortly.
She took the one from the cup he had just drunk from and handed it to him. He caught her wrist. The spoon fell with a clatter.
"You're so scared of me, you can't hardly breathe," he said calmly. "I don't like li'l girls to be scared of me, so you can just get you another plate and cup and saucer and sit down there on the other side of the table and eat your supper with me."
To eat supper with her uncle's murderer! Here was a grotesque jape of fate. It was unthinkable. Absolutely. The man divined something of what was passing in her mind.
"All in the line of business, li'l girl," he said, with a backward jerk of his head toward the front room where he had killed her uncle. "I didn't have a thing against him—personally."
"There were dishes here on the table," she babbled hysterically. "They found them here after—after—showing how he'd fed you first, and——"
"Sure he fed me," he interrupted. "I was hungry, hungrier than I am now. Alla same, you gotta eat supper with me. I want you to, and I always get what I want."
He twisted her wrist to emphasize his wish. She uttered a little moan. "Don't! Oh, don't hurt me any more! I'll do what you want."
Beaten, body and soul, she went to the cupboard and got herself plate and cup and saucer, knife and fork and spoon. Her six-shooter was in the next room, hanging in a holster on the wall. A loaded shotgun stood at the head of her bed. But it is doubtful that even if the weapon had been within short reach, she would have dared attempt to use either. Dan Slike had scared her too much.
She sat down opposite the man and tried to eat. It required every atom of will power to induce her throat muscles to permit her to swallow. Dan Slike watched her with savage satisfaction. He found the situation intensely amusing. To murder her uncle and later eat a meal with the niece. What a joke!
"I haven't forgotten about that bottle," he remarked suddenly, pushing back his chair. "You thought it had slipped my mind, I guess, didn't you? I always have a drink after meals, or my victuals don't set good."
Without a word she went to the cupboard and brought back a bottle of whisky. He took it from her and held it up against the lamplight.
"This is only half full," he said severely. "You got another round somewhere?"
It was fright and not the lie that made her stammer. "Nun-no."
Oddly enough, he saw fit to believe her. Perhaps it was because he had just eaten and was at bodily ease with the world. She stood before him, arms limp, eyes on the floor. He drew the cork from the bottle and took a long pull.
"Good whisky," he vouchsafed between the third and fourth drags. "I'll take what's left with me—if you don't mind."
He was going then! Her poor terrified heart beat with a trifle more spirit. She looked up. Their eyes met.
"Don't look so happy!" he snarled. "Maybe I'll take you with me!"
He eyed her discomfiture with a sinister look. He uttered a short bark of a laugh. "Dontcha fret. I ain't got time to fuss with any female. Not that I would, even if I had time, so don't go flatterin' yourself any. Women ain't in my line. You're all a squalling bunch of Gawd's mistakes, every last one of you, and you can stick a pin in that. Women? Phutt!"
So saying, Dan Slike turned his head slightly and spat accurately through the open draft into the stove. An engaging gentleman, Mr. Slike!
"I saw two mules and a horse in the corral when I came by," he resumed, dandling the whisky bottle on his knee. "Looks like a good horse—better than the one I left up in the timber. I'll ride your horse and lead the other. Where do you keep your saddle and bridle? In the shed, huh? Aw right, you can show me when we go out. Listen, I expect to-morrow some time you'll have a few gents a-callin' on you. Yeah, to-morrow. It'll likely take those Golden Bar citizens till about then to pick up my trail. You needn't to look too hopeful. Those jiggers don't know they're alive. I saw 'em scatterin' off hell-bent the wrong way before I ever started this way, you bet. Why, hells bells, I even topped a horse behind a corral with the woman right in the house gettin' supper, and she never knowed it. Tell you, girl, I'm slick. And if I didn't have more sense in the tip of my finger than all those fellers and their li'l tin sheriff and his li'l tin deputies, I'd be a heap ashamed of myself. Say—about that sheriff; I heard folks talkin' in the street this afternoon and they said the sheriff had skedaddled because he'd murdered a sport named O'Gorman. A fi-ine sheriff he is, to slop around turnin' tricks like that. A fi-ine sheriff, and you can tell him I said so."
He drove in the cork with the heel of his hand and slipped the bottle into a side pocket of his coat. Standing up, he tapped her smartly on the shoulder. "Get me that hat over there on the hook. I left town in such a hurry I clean forgot to fetch mine along."
Silently she brought the hat.
"Why do you women always wear hats too big for you?" he grumbled, after trying it on. "I couldn't keep this thing on my head."
She had brought an Omaha newspaper from town that day. It lay outspread on the table. He tore off a half page, plaited it neatly and stuffed the thickened strip in behind the sweatband of the hat.
"It will fit me now," he said briskly, pulling on the hat. "Gimme those cantenas and saddle pockets hanging on the wall."
She obeyed stumblingly. Into the cantenas, from her store of provisions, he packed bacon, coffee, a sack of flour a third full, a tin can full of salt, another can filled with matches, a salt pack full of sugar, several cans of tomatoes and peaches, a frying-pan and a small can of lard. In the saddle pockets he stowed away the twelve boxes of rifle cartridges, the six boxes of revolver cartridges and a knife, fork and spoon. The long-bladed butcher knife he nonchalantly slipped down his boot-leg.
"I'll tie the coffee pot on the saddle," he said, buckling the billet of a cantena flap. "It's too wet to go in here. Can't take a chance on spoiling my flour. C'mon, le's go find the saddle."
"You see," said Dan Slike, as he topped his mount, "I ain't really been hard on you. I didn't ask you for a nickel. I only took what I needed. And if you hadn't fought me like you did, I wouldn't have laid a finger on you. Think of that and be happy."
He whirled the horse and rode away toward the lower ground behind the house, the coffeepot clacking rhythmically against the barrel of the Winchester Hazel had vainly hoped he would forget to take with him.
Hazel remained standing beside the corral gate. Suddenly she was conscious of a great weariness. She was as one who has traveled a day's journey without food. Her arms and legs were leaden. Her head ached, her body ached, her spirit ached.
With dragging steps she returned to the house. From the cupboard she brought forth the bottle of whisky she had lied to save and poured a stiff four fingers into a teacup. She drank off the liquor in three gulps. But she was so spent that, other than a fit of coughing, there was no effect.
The lamp was burning low and fitfully, filling the kitchen with a smell of burning wicking. She had forgotten to refill it that morning. She put away the whisky bottle, turned out the lamp and filled it by the faint light from an opened draft-chink. But in reaching for the chimney, she knocked it to the floor and broke it.
Apathetically, every movement mechanical, she found another chimney and adjusted it in the clamps. A smell of burned hair suddenly filled her nostrils. A lock of hair had fallen against the lamp chimney. She put her hand to her head. Her hair was in a slovenly tangle over one ear. She did it up any way and skewered it fast with a few pins.
Crunch! The remains of the lamp chimney crackled under foot. She brought out the dustpan and brushed and swept up the pieces. She carried the broken glass out to the trash pile. When she returned to the kitchen, there was a man standing in the middle of the room.
Nothing had the power to surprise her now. She would not have been amazed had the devil himself popped into the room. The man turned at her entry. He was Rafe Tuckleton. He glowered down at her. She shut the door and put away the dustpan and brush behind the wood-box.
"What do you want?" she asked lifelessly.
"Who's been here?" he demanded, pointing an accusing finger at the table. "Two plates, two cups, two saucers—who you been entertaining?"
Entertaining! Good Lord! Hazel sat down on the wood-box and laughed hysterically.
He was around the table and confronting her in three strides. "Who's been here?" he kept at her.
"Dan Slike," she said with a spasmodic giggle.
"You're a liar," he told her promptly. "Dan Slike didn't come this way. He—he went another way. There's a posse on his trail now. You've had Bill Wingo here, that's whatsamatter."
"I haven't," she denied, wagging her head at him. "Dan Slike was here, I tell you."
"The hell he was. You must think I'm a fool. Bill Wingo's been here, I tell you. Think I don't know, huh, you deceivin' hussy! Trying to make small of me, carryin' on with other men, huh?"
She said nothing. It is doubtful if she heard him, for all his roaring voice and gesturing fists. Billy Wingo!HerBilly—once. He had loved her too—once. What a queer, queer world it was. Everybody and everything at cross-purposes. Yet there was a reason for it all. Must be. Even a reason for Rafe. She looked up at Rafe. He was glaring down at her with a most villainous expression on his lean features.
"How long has Bill Wingo been gone?" he demanded.
"It wasn't Bill," she insisted doggedly. "It was Dan Slike, and he's been gone maybe half an hour."
"Say, whatsa use of lyin' to me? You're an odd number, by all accounts, but you ain't so odd you could sit here and eat and drink and carry on with your uncle's murderer. You can't tell methat."
She was regarding him with curious eyes. "I thought you always said Dan Slike didn't kill my uncle?"
"Well—uh—you see, everybody else seems to think he did. And—ah—maybe I was wrong. Anyway, say I was. For all I know to the contrary, he did kill your uncle. What's fairer than that, I'd like to know? You think he killed Tom Walton, don't you?"
She continued to stare at Rafe. "I know he did."
"Then how do you expect me to believe you ate supper with him? You're foolish. You had Bill Wingo here, and we'll settle this Wingo business right now. You see, don't you, how you can never marry the feller? This Tip O'Gorman murder has queered him round here for keeps. Sooner or later he'll hang for it. You'd look fine wouldn't you, the widow of a——"
"Don't say it," she cut him short. "Billy Wingo is no murderer. He fights fair, which is more than I can say for you. However, you can set your mind at rest. I'm not likely to marry Billy Wingo, or anybody else."
"Then what do you care whether I call him a murderer or not, if you don't love him?" he probed. "I thought a while back you had taken my advice and busted it off with Bill, but now after hearin' what you tried to do to Nate Samson, and all that ammunition and grub you bought to-day, the day after Tip was killed, why I began to think maybe you was startin' in to play the Jack again. I told you last fall I was gonna have you myself. You ain't forgot it, have you?"
His eyes, savage and mean, held hers steadily. "I come over here, to-night to get you. I'm taking you back with me to-night to my ranch. To-morrow you can marry me or not. It'll be just as you say."
"You're taking me to your ranch!" she gasped. "Me?"
He nodded. "You, nobody else."
She laughed harshly without a note of hysteria. "You're two hundred years behind the times. Men don't carry off their women any more."
"Here's one that will," he told her. "You're going with me, y'understand. And you needn't stop to wash your face or change into petticoats either. I'm not letting you out of my sight. If you wanna take any extra duds along, you can wrap 'em up. What's the answer—you going willing or will I have to tie you up in a bundle?"
"You idiot, even your friends wouldn't stand you turning such a trick as this! I'll bet you couldn't get your own men to help you. That's why you had to come alone."
His suddenly bloating features gave evidence that her shot had told. Bending down, he shook her shoulder roughly. And now for the first time she smelt his breath. It was rank with the raw odor of whisky. So that was what had given him the wild idea of carrying her off by force. The man was drunk. Sober, he was bad enough. Drunk, he was capable of anything.
She reached stoveward for the lid lifter. Rafe seized her wrist and jerked her sidewise.
"None of that!" he snarled. "Gonna get your clothes or not?"
"I'll get them," she said calmly. "Let go of my wrist."
If she could win into the next room where the six-shooter was hanging on the wall, it might be possible to—but he did not release her wrist.
"I'll go with you," he told her with a leer. "You're too slippery a customer to trust alone."
As he turned with her, the lamplight fell full on his face, and she saw that his eyes were bloodshot! He also saw something that had hitherto escaped his notice. He saw the whisky bottle on the shelf in the cupboard. She had neglected to close the cupboard door.
"I'll have a short drink first," he said, and dragged her to the cupboard.
He was holding her left-handed. She was on the wrong side to reach his gun. Nevertheless she swung her body in front of him and snatched wildly at the pistol butt.
He did not divine her intention but thought she was trying to keep him away from the whisky. The result was the same, for he wrenched her back with a twist that started the tears in her eyes.
Holding the bottle in one hand, he drew the cork with his teeth, spat it out and applied his lips to the bottle neck. He swallowed long and generously. Hazel saw his Adam's apple slide up and down a dozen times. At such a rate the man would be a fiend in no time.
"Let me get my clothes," she begged.
Anything to get him away from the liquor. But Rafe was not so easily separated from his old friend.
"Wait a minute," he said peevishly, lowering the bottle and fixing her with his bloodshot gaze. "Don't be in such a hurry. Here, have one yourself."
He thrust the bottle toward her. She took it from him, held it to her mouth and then the bottle seemed to slip from her fingers. She snatched at it, juggled it a split second and—the bottle smashed in bits on a corner of the stove.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she cried, quite as if she had not contrived the catastrophe on purpose.
"I'll make you sorrier!" Rafe exclaimed and without more ado cast both arms around her.
He was striving to kiss her and she, face crushed against his rough shirt, fought him like the primeval female every woman becomes in like circumstances. Her right hand clawed upward at his face. Her left arm, doubled between their two bodies, she strove to work free so that she could grab his gun.
Rafe received three distinct clawings that considerably altered the appearance of one side of his face, before he was able to confine those active fingers.
"Here!" he bawled in a fury. "I'll fix you!"
He tried to seize her by the throat and his thumb slipped by mistake into her mouth. She promptly clamped down hard on the thumb. With a yell, Rafe released his grip on her body and worked a thumb and ring finger into her cheeks in a frantic effort to force open her locked jaws.
Suddenly she opened her mouth. Rafe sprang back a yard, shaking a bleeding thumb and swearing, and as he sprang she dragged the six-shooter from his holster.
Her palm swept down to cock the gun. But Rafe was as quick to see his danger as Dan Slike had been. He made a long arm as he hurled himself at her and knocked the barrel to one side at the moment of the shot. Before she could fire again, he had torn the weapon from her grasp and flung it across the room.
"You tried to murder me!" he panted. "You tried to murder me!"
She dived headlong beneath his arm, but he caught the slack of her overalls as she went by and dragged her to a standstill. She immediately butted him in the stomach with her head. He stumbled back but caught her arm. Her head flashed down and her teeth fastened on his wrist. Again he broke the grip of her teeth by the application of ring finger and thumb to her cheeks, and then he reached purposefully for her throat and began to strangle her in dead earnest.
She kicked and thrashed about like a wild thing in a trap,—as indeed she was. Her nails scratched desperately at his arms. She might as well have been petting him. Tighter and tighter became the choking grasp of those long fingers. She could not breathe. Her temples were bursting. Her head felt like a balloon. With her last flare-up of failing strength, she kicked him on the knee-cap.
He jumped back against the wall, dragging her with him, and began to shake her as a dog does a rat. And then the old Terry clock did that for which it surely must have been originally made. For, as his shoulders struck the wall, his head knocked away the support of the bracket that held the clock. Involuntarily he ducked his head. It was the worst thing he could have done, giving, as it did, the clock an extra foot to fall. It fell. One corner struck him fairly on the temple and knocked him cold as a wedge.
When Hazel's reeling senses had reëstablished their equilibrium, she found herself on the floor, lying across the inert legs of Rafe Tuckleton. She raised herself on her two arms and looked at him. He was breathing very lightly. It occurred to her that it would not worry her overmuch if he breathed not at all.
She dragged herself on hands and knees to where he had thrown his six-shooter. She picked it up and threw out the cylinder. Evidently Rafe was accustomed to carry his hammer on an empty chamber, for there were four cartridges and a spent shell in the cylinder. She ejected the spent shell, crawled back to the senseless Rafe and plucked two cartridges from his belt.
She loaded those two empty chambers and cocked the gun. Then she pulled herself up into a chair at the table, and leaning across the cloth, trained the six-shooter on Rafe's stomach.
And as she sat there watching a senseless man through the gunsights, it suddenly seemed to her that she was not one person, but two,—herself and a stranger. And the Hazel Walton that had gone through the evening's adventures was the stranger. She herself apparently stood at one side observing. But she saw the room and its contents with new eyes, the eyes of the stranger. It was a most amazing feeling, and she was oddly frightened while it lasted.
Slowly the feeling passed as her muscles renewed their strength, and her jangled nerves steadied and quieted. She came back to herself with a jerk as Rafe Tuckleton stirred and put his hand to his head. She saw the hand come away covered with blood. That side of Rafe's head being in the shadow she had not previously noted that it had sustained a shrewd cut.
Rafe groaned a little. He rolled over and sat up, his chin sagging forward on his chest. He moved his head and looked at her vacantly. The blood ran down his cheek and dripped slowly off his chin.
The light of reason glared of a sudden in Rafe's eyes. She could see that he was absorbing the situation from every angle.
"I'll give you five minutes to pull yourself together and get out," she announced clearly. "If you're still here by the time I've counted three hundred I'll begin to shoot."
Rafe started to go by the time she reached sixty. With the six-shooter pointing at the small of his back, her finger on the trigger, step by step she drove him out of the house to where he had left his horse.
Hazel watched him ride away and after a little become at one with the moonlit landscape. She walked back to the house. She felt that she was taking enormous strides. In reality she was stepping short and staggering badly. She went into the kitchen. She closed the door, dropped the bar into place and fell into the nearest chair.
"My God!" she said aloud, "I wonder what will happen next?"
"I tell you I ain't satisfied," nagged the district attorney.
"Say something new," growled that amiable person, Felix Craft.
"If you fellers weren't blinded by a pretty face, you'd see it like I do."
"The girl said those cartridges were for her own personal use," pointed out Sam Larder, scratching a plump ear. "I believe that girl."
"You can't believe any girl most of the time," denied the district attorney.
"And where a girl's feller is concerned, you can't believe her any of the time. Sam, can't you understand a girl will lie just for the fun of it, if she hasn't any other reason. It's female nature to act that way. You've got to take it into consideration and make allowances accordingly, when dealing with a woman. You can't trust 'em, damn 'em, one li'l short inch."
Sam grinned at Felix. "Ain't he got a pleasant nature."
"Milk of human kindness has curdled in him complete," declared Felix.
"Never you mind about any milk of human kindness. I ain't got a smidgin of it with a girl like Hazel Walton, the lying hussy."
"Do you know, Arthur," said Sam solemnly, "I don't believe you like that lady."
"I don't," admitted the district attorney, and wondered why both men laughed.
"Be a Scotchman," advised Sam Larder, "and give her the benefit of the doubt."
"I'd like to give her a good swift week or two in jail," snarled the district attorney. "That would bring her to her senses. That would make her talk."
"Well, you can't do it," said Felix, weary of the argument. "So why waste your breath?"
"Tell you what I can do," said the district attorney, brightening with hope. "I can go out to Walton's and question her some more."
"Good Gawd, ain't you had enough ridin' for one day?" said Sam.
"I'm good for a li'l bit more."
Felix laughed. "I had to laugh to-day. First time you ever went out with a posse, I guess. Guess they must have thought you were crazy."
"I know damwell Shotgun and Riley Tyler thought so," declared Sam. "They kept a-looking at you almighty hard."
The district attorney nodded. "They're a suspicious pair, those two. I'll give you fellers credit. If it hadn't been for you, I'd never have been able to bluff it through! I don't think anybody suspects anything out of the way."
"Only that you're a damfool, Arthur. And they don't suspect that. They're absolutely sure of it."
"Alla same," said Felix, "it's a good thing Sam Prescott wasn't along. It would have been just like him to make out those tracks we followed were a day old instead of one hour."
"I was worried some," admitted the district attorney, "when Shotgun Shillman said they were too old to be the marks of Dan Slike's horse."
"That didn't bother me," declared Felix. "I knew it would be all right if we could contradict him fast enough and loud enough before anybody else could agree with him. Folks are like sheep thataway. They'll most always believe the boys makin' the most noise. No, Shotgun didn't bother me any. What made me feel like scratching my head was where the tracks crossed the stage trail. There were the hoof-marks and wheeltracks of the stage overlying the horse-tracks we were following. I drew a long breath when I had 'em blotted out, you can gamble on that."
"Was that why you rode ahead and twisted your horse round and round on the trail so funny?"
"Sure that was why. Why else do you suppose?"
"I never thought of the stage passing," said the district attorney.
"No, you wouldn't, of course not. I don't see, Arthur, when you made those tracks so careful in the first place you couldn't have kept off the stage trail. It wasn't necessary, and it mighty near put the kibosh on the whole deal."
"I wanted to end the trail in the west fork of the Wagonjack," defended the district attorney. "It seemed like a good place."
"It was—only for the stage trail being in the way," said Felix warmly. "If that infernal Wildcat Simms had come up half-a-minute earlier he'd seen how those horse tracks lay, same as I did. Oh, lovely! Wouldn't it have been a joke?"
"Well, it ended all right, anyway," offered the district attorney pacifically.
"I didn't like to have that Slike jigger get off that-away," grumbled Sam Larder. "I'd like to see him hung, the lousy murderer! I wish we could have worked it some other way."
"There wasn't any other way," the district attorney hastened to assure him. "We couldn't risk having Slike tried. He'd have snitched on Rafe Tuckleton, sure as fate. It was the only thing for us to do, and you know it."
Sam nodded. "I know, but——" He left the sentence unfinished.
"Now that we've got Dan out of the way," the district attorney pattered on, "we've got to glom onto Bill Wingo, and the sooner the quicker. Me, I'm going out to Walton's to-night and question Hazel some more. You boys don't have to go, you know. I can get hold of somebody, I guess."
"We'll go," said Sam Larder decidedly. "I ain't a heap attracted by your methods with the ladies, and I intend to see the girl gets a square deal."
"Me too," chimed in Felix Craft.
The district attorney was none too well pleased and showed it. "I'll get two other jiggers then," he grumbled.
"Why not another posse?" suggested the sarcastic Mr. Larder. "Us three might not be able to handle her by ourselves."
"Suppose Bill Wingo is there, then what? We took a big bunch before and——"
"And got damwell laughed at by the whole town for our trouble," snapped Sam. "Serves us right. Wild goose chase, anyway, and to-night will be another. C'mon, if you're goin'."
The moon was high in the heavens when the three men came to the mouth of the draw leading to the Walton ranch. A quarter-mile up this draw they came upon a man standing beside a horse. This man they surrounded immediately. He proved to be the town marshal, Red Herring, engaged in the prosaic business of tightening a slipped cinch.
"What are you doing here," demanded the district attorney.
"Same thing you're doing," the marshal returned sulkily.
"It ain't necessary for you to be watching the Walton ranch," said the crotchety district attorney.
"I got as much right to the reward as the next one, I guess," flared the marshal. "If I wanna watch the ranch, I guess I got a right to do that too. You don't want to cherish any idea that you own the earth and me too, Artie Rale!"
"Well, you can ride along with us if you want to," condescended the district attorney.
"Thanks," said the marshal, with sarcasm, "I kind of thought I would, anyway."
Two hundred yards short of the bend in the draw that concealed the ranchhouse from view the district attorney's horse which was leading, snorted at something that lay across his path, and shied with great vigor, coming within a red hair of throwing the district attorney off on his ear.
The district attorney swore and jerked the animal back. Then he dismounted hurriedly and ran forward to view at close range the object that had startled the horse.
The three others pulled up and followed his example.
"My Gawd!" shrilled the district attorney. "It's Rafe Tuckleton!"
It was indeed Rafe Tuckleton. There he lay on his back, his legs and arms spread-eagled abroad, his body displaying the flattened appearance a corpse assumes for the first few hours after death. Rafe's throat had been slit from ear to ear. His head was cut open and lay in a pool of blood. His face was scored with scratches. There was blood on his coat and vest and shirt, they found on examination. The district attorney ripped open the shirt and found four distinct stab wounds in the region of Rafe's heart. From one of these wounds protruded the broken end of a broad-bladed knife.
"Pull it out," urged Sam Larder, with a slight shudder, his fat face so white that it showed green in the moonlight.
"I can't," said the district attorney. "Jammed in between his ribs, I guess. That's what busted her. See if you can find the handle, Red."
"There it is," pointed out the marshal. "Right by his elbow."
"Oh, yeah," said the district attorney, picking up the knife handle. From force of habit he fitted the broken part of the knife remaining attached to the handle to the part protruding from the wound. Of course they fitted perfectly.
The marshal ran his hand along Rafe's naked waist. Then he lifted one of Rafe's arms and let it go. The arm snapped stiffly back into position.
"Been dead about two hours," proffered the marshal.
"About that," agreed Felix. "What you lookin' at, Arthur?"
"This," replied the district attorney, holding up the handle of the butcher knife.
With his fingers he traced two initials on the wood. The initials were T.W.
"You can't tell me," said the district attorney belligerently, "that this butcher knife didn't come from the Walton ranch."
Sam Larder stated his belief at once. "She couldn't have done it, Arthur. Why Rafe's carved up like an issue steer. She——"
"She's a woman," interrupted the district attorney. "And a woman will do anything when her dander is up. And we know what this particular woman will do when she's mad. Didn't she try to split open Nate Samson's head when he was hardly more than joking with her? Didn't she throw down on us with a rifle without any excuse a-tall? I tell you this Hazel Walton is a murderess, and I'm going to see her hung."
"Are you?" said Felix Craft. "Seems to me you've overlooked a bet. Didn't we run across Red Herring at the end of the draw?"
"Now look here, Craft," cried the marshal. "You can't hook this killing up with me! I can prove I was in Golden Bar an hour ago. I can get people to swear I was."
The district attorney nodded. "Red's innocent of this, all right. He couldn't have done it. It wouldn't be reasonable. He always was friendly with Rafe, and this was a grudge killing. It couldn't have been robbery, because nothing of Rafe's was stolen; watch, money, it's all here. It's Hazel Walton, and you can stick a pin in that. C'mon, let's go."