by Noel Loomis
“You’ll get no place that way,” Macumber grunted at Major.
Major checked, and turned upon Macumber with the quick anger of a man—any man—who is told that the road he is passionately pursuing leads no place. A silence came into the room, strained and electric, to last while a man might count fifty. “Who is this rider?” Major demanded.
“I’ve sided him through more roundups than one,” Macumber answered. “You can bank on him in every way. But if he sees reason to keep his mouth shut, you’ll never get it open.”
Major turned away abruptly, and once more stood looking out the window, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. When he spoke again his voice was mild.
“Just what do you aim to do, Hughes?”
Hughes spoke slowly. “When this feller died in my camp, I didn’t know but what it could have been an accidental shooting. But it’s pretty plain that you people here know it’s something more. I can see where I’m getting picked up in a stampede that’s no job of mine. Now suppose I tell I’ve seen enough of this, and aim to go out and fork my horse, and ride on?”
“I guess not! For all we know—”
“And there you are! I didn’t ask to sit in this game. But if I’m in it, I’ll hold my own cards. I’d like to know what kind of angle the sheriff’s going to take, for one thing.”
Major said, “Hell, don’t you even know who Donnan was?”
“I guess he doesn’t know anybody around here, but me,” said Macumber.
“Well,” said Major, “after a fashion, and according to his damned poor lights, Donnan was the sheriff, himself… Bob, you lather that buckskin and see how many of the boys you can get together in a half hour. Especially, I want Bart Holt. Hump!”
When Macumber was gone, Major stood for some moments against the wall, his thumbs hooked in his heavy belt, studying Hughes personally.
“Man,” said Major at last, “are you right sure you want to hold out on me?”
“No,” said Hughes.
“I’ll tell you straight,” said Major, “I got my work cut out for me from here out. It’s liable to make a whole lot shorter haul for me if you come out with what Donnan himself had to say, when he cashed!”
“You sure you want to know?”
A dry, humorless smile crossed Major’s face, and he shrugged. “I never turned my back on a fact yet,” he said slowly. “I’m sorry I jumped down your throat like I done. You got no reason to side in with me.”
“It isn’t that,” said Hughes.
Old Major waited.
“Let’s suppose a couple of things for a minute,” Hughes suggested. “Donnan only had time for just a word or two. Maybe, being a stranger, I don’t understand what he meant. But when I do—how’s the killer to know but what those few words mean the rope?”
The old man said, “You mean—”
“What if I keep my mouth shut? Does it look to you like somebody is going to begin to worry pretty soon? Sometimes, a man gets to worrying, and worrying, until after a while he overcrowds his hand.”
Major looked at Hughes for a long time. As they stared at each other their eyes looked hard, and their faces expressionless; yet there was a feeling in the air that these two were very near an understanding.
“Just what are you after, Hughes?”
“I don’t know much about this,” Hughes said. “This looks like your fight, in some way.”
“God knows it is,” said Major.
“But I’m hooked into it; and now if I keep my mouth shut—”
“You might live a week,” said Oliver Major slowly, watching him.
“Might live to force somebody’s hand,” Hughes amended.
“And for what?” said Major curiously.
“How should I know for what?” said Hughes. “Only—‘Never throw away the key to a door—’”
“‘—until you know what’s on the other side,’” Major finished. “Lord, how many years is it since I’ve heard that! There may be some awful pressure on you, boy. You think you can stand pat against them all?”
“You saw me stand pat, just a minute ago.”
“Yes,” Major admitted, “you stood out on Bob Macumber.”
“Even Bob Macumber,” Hughes agreed.
“And you know what this may bring down on you?”
“Does anyone know that?”
Major walked forward, his eyes looking deep into those of the cowboy, and slowly raised bony, gnarled hands to grip Hughes’ shoulders. He opened his mouth as if he were going to speak, but shut it again, and stood looking at Hughes so long that Clay became confused. But at last Major only dropped his hands, and turned away to the window again.
“I’m guessing,” said Clay Hughes, “that you pretty well know who downed Donnan?”
“God knows I do,” Major mumbled. “I guess I always knew—”
The cattleman’s voice trailed off, and as he turned away from the window his face was grey. He began a cigarette, and Hughes saw that the tobacco chattered in its paper as the practiced old fingers tried to twirl it into a smoke. When presently Major looked up his eyes were dark and bleak: the eyes of a man who has stubbornly made up his mind in the face of an uncounted cost.
“There’s just one chance in the world,” he said; and beneath the bitterness of his voice Hughes thought he detected a deep, repressed uncertainty—“one chance that I might be wrong.”
“And if you are?” said Hughes.
“God help us all.”
As Hughes walked out into the sunlight he was asking himself why he had foolhardily let it be thought that he knew more than he would tell. A quixotic instinct had led him to deal himself a hand in a game he knew nothing about. At the moment the favorite words of his father, old Pony Hughes, known on a wide frontier when the frontier was young, had seemed sufficient justification: “Never throw away the key to a door, until you know what’s on the other side.” This was plausible enough; but second thought was telling Clay that his play was all too likely to turn into a cross between a buzzsaw and a boomerang.
No one appeared to be watching him. Even now he could probably mount his long-legged blue roan and cat-foot unnoticed out of the Lazy M, out of the Buckhorn, out of a situation which certainly promised no advantage to himself. If he was ever going to pull out, this was the time. But though he knew he ought to be sorry that he had so definitely involved himself in a rising cloud of trouble, he found that he was not. For once in his life, Clay Hughes had puzzled himself.
Then, out by a corral which stood hard against the Buckhorn water, he again sighted Sally Major. The girl looked almost fragilely slender; yet in her quick nervous stride there was the suggestion of the pliant strength of riders, so that she seemed at once intensely feminine and as competent as a man. Now as he watched her walk out of shadow into sunlight, and saw the brilliant southwestern sun turn her fine dust-colored hair to a mist of gold, he suddenly understood why he had chosen to draw cards, when he might more safely have remained a passive figure, meaningless and disregarded. A faint smile deepened the grin line in his cheek as he told himself, “I’ll—play—these.”
After Hughes had breakfasted it seemed for a little while as if he was to be ignored. Old Major was interviewing one after another of the riders sent in by Bob Macumber. Seven or eight of these Lazy M hands came in during the first three hours, dusty, leather-faced men in worn range-riding clothes; they came in at a high lope, sweat lathering like shaving soap at the edges of their saddle blankets. Most of them promptly departed again, more hastily than they had come, on errands the nature of which Hughes could only guess. Evidently, Oliver Major conceived certain immediate necessities to be implied by the death of Donnan. The stir which had come upon the Lazy M had all the look of a hurried gathering of the clans. Meantime Hughes, left to his own devices, strolled about the extensive layout, smoked, sat on the top rails of corrals.
Then presently an element was provided which told Hughes that he could no longer leave here if he chose. This was
the continual dogging presence of a Mexican youth—slender, Indian-faced, and inexpressive—named José, who accompanied him like his shadow wherever he walked. Plainly, this boy had been set to watch him. It was the first time in his life that he had been reduced to the surveillance of a lowly horse-wrangler. The time for voluntary removal of himself had passed. Hughes was a potential prisoner, unable to withdraw even if he so desired.
Bob Macumber did not return until eleven o’clock, and it was later still when he came out, saturnine and uneasy, to talk to Hughes.
“I thought you’d want to know the lay,” Macumber started. He spat apologetically, and began the making of a cigarette. “The old man wants you to stay here while we go up to the Crazy Mule.” He was not looking at Hughes; having let fall his surprise, he tried to hurry on. “Art French has come in from the Dog Creek sand hills; and he’ll—”
“What’s the idea of this?” Hughes wanted to know. “I supposed naturally he’d want me to go back up with you all.”
“Aw, I don’t know,” Macumber mumbled. “That feller walking toward the far corral is Tom Ireland.” He indicated a big, rawboned, bald-headed figure which was moving, hat still in hand, toward a saddle-hung fence. “The old man sent Tom with a car to Adobe Wells to bring back Jim Crawford. Jim was first deputy—he’ll be acting sheriff now. Crawford wasn’t there, but Tom left word, and Jim’s expected to show before night. Jim Crawford’s about the only good thing in this business. He’s on our side.”
“Our side of what?”
“That feller coming in now is Bart Holt,” said Macumber, ignoring his question. “I’m right relieved. I signaled him in as best I could, but I didn’t know if he’d seen. Bart Holt is the old school. He’d be foreman here, only he’s got more sense. He’ll do the tracking, up Crazy Mule; he’s about the best we’ve got, until we get hold of Grasshopper Tanner. The stoop-shouldered feller going out to speak him is Art French. I bet—”
“You look here, Bob,” said Hughes. Macumber tried to hurry on, but Hughes overrode him. “I’ve got roped into this, and I can’t get out if I want to. And I want to know what the war is about. Major hasn’t even sent a man up there to tally my story, or see what happened. But already he’s rounding in every rider he’s got; and some of the fellers has been cleaning their guns. I want to know where’s the fight; and I want to know now!”
“Clay,” said Macumber, after a long moment of baffled silence, “this is a bad thing.” There was a cigarette glued to his lower lip, but he started the making of another; then saw his mistake and let the makings drift down wind from indifferent fingers. “Earl Shaw, he’ll be at the bottom of this, you can bet; and God knows what that means to us here. Earl Shaw, and Adobe Wells… It looks awful bad.”
“And who is Earl Shaw?”
“Earl Shaw?” repeated Bob Macumber absently. “You never heard of Earl Shaw?” He seemed at a loss for an answer. Then another line of thought seemed to strike him, and he turned to Clay Hughes with a sudden, confidential attitude. “The old man would give a thousand dollars to know where his boy is right now, I’ll bet!”
“His boy?”
“Old man Major has one son, name of Dick Major. He’s been out on long circle for three days. Some of the remarks Dick has bust out with about Hugo Donnan from time to time—Say, if Earl Shaw sets out to hang the killing on Dick Major, he can drum up a case against him that will look awful bad.”
“You mean, this Earl Shaw will try to hang the shooting on Dick Major?”
“Well—we don’t know Dick’s alibi yet… That girl talking to Sally Major over in the doorway is her sister. Her name is Mona.”
The two didn’t look very much alike, Hughes thought; though perhaps the white linen that Mona wore, in contrast to Sally’s cow pony clothes, exaggerated the difference. Mona was taller and darker than her sister; she walked with the leisurely grace of the Spanish, something very different from Sally’s clean-limbed, impatient stride. It was Mona whom most of these lonely-lived, cattle-working men would go crazy over, Hughes guessed. Yet, to him, Sally in her dusty clothes was by far the more vivid figure.
“Sally give me a message for you,” Macumber mumbled disconsolately. “It’s a mistake; I wouldn’t even pass it on, I suppose, if it was anybody else. But maybe I’d better tell you. She says she’s real anxious to talk to you if there should come a good chance.”
“Chance? I’ll walk over and talk to her now.”
“No, you won’t, Clay. My advice is don’t talk to her at all. You’ll only get her in trouble with the old man.”
“Looks like who she talks to is her business,” said Hughes.
“Yeah; the old man has always handled his girls that way. But just lately, seems like a couple of things has happened to make him take a new twist. I never seen anybody change like the old man has changed, just the past week. He’s sure gone tough, and touchy. I wouldn’t monkey with him if I was you.”
“To hell with him,” said Hughes. “If Sally Major wants to talk to me she can.”
“I wouldn’t take that slant, Clay. I—”
Old Major himself now came striding out of the house, shouting for Macumber as he came. The foreman climbed down from his seat on the top rail.
“One thing I forgot, Clay,” he said. “They’re giving you a room in the house for a few days, instead of a bunk with common folks. José will show you where your stuff has been moved at. And I’ll be seeing you, tonight.” Hughes watched him curiously as he turned, and ran for his horse at a lumbering trot.
Clay found his assigned quarters, now shown him by José, to be small and cool, midway of the house on the stable side. The room opened from a narrow dark hallway, which led to the outdoors, and had a single window with bars of two-inch oak. A rusty padlock dangled from a hasp on the outside of the door, suggesting that the room might have been a store-room once; but now a queer sensation stirred Hughes as it occurred to him that this room was mighty suitable for a jail.
Another objectionable surprise was waiting for him there. Unstrapping his bed-roll, to get out more tobacco, he instantly saw that someone had been before him. His gun belt and his holstered Colt were gone; and a glance at his saddle, nearby on the floor, revealed that whoever had got his gun belt had rustled his rifle, too.
An impulse to rush out and demand an instant showdown from Bob Macumber turned him savagely toward the door, but the muffled drum-roll of receding hoofs told him that the Crazy Mule party was gone. With a sudden suspicion he tested the door, but found it unlocked; and when he had cooled himself to a semblance of indifference he returned once more to the outer air.
The man who had been pointed out to him as Art French strolled forward to meet him. The features of Art French were distinguished only by the battered twist put upon some riders by the adversities of the range; but his eyes were unusual. They were opaque eyes, so dark as to appear black; commonly they sought the distance, and they were almost dreamy now as they lay, apparently unseeing, upon the far peaks of the Sweet-waters. Hughes got an odd impression that French, while dissimulating with unseeing eyes, was attentively listening.
“I don’t suppose you want to play a game of seven up?” said French, his eyes drifting.
“Might as well,” Hughes agreed.
Slowly a faint smile, ironic but not unfriendly, showed itself in the weather-hardened features of Art French, and Hughes answered it in kind. Neither of them ever alluded to the fact that from that hour Hughes was a prisoner in truth, and Art French his jailer. It was a curious arrangement, tacitly recognized by them both, and warily accepted.
That was one of those days that seem to hang forever in midair. All day long riders came and went; but by supper time most of them had drifted back, and when, shortly before dusk, three more cowboys came in, hazing a cavvy of nearly fifty head of stock from Twelve Mile Corral, there were almost a dozen at the ranch which that morning Hughes had found so nearly deserted. In the presence of Hughes they were mostly silent; casual men, not unfr
iendly, and not notably curious; but he knew that they covertly studied him. They argued among themselves in little groups, their voices low. Over and over Clay Hughes overheard the repeated names of Earl Shaw, Adobe Wells, until those names began to represent shadowy mysteries, definitely malignant.
Bob Macumber had not returned when Hughes, weary of the surveillance of Art French and the heavy constraint which the situation imposed, at last decided to turn in.
A light hung from the ceiling of the hallway from which opened the small room assigned Hughes. Even so, as Hughes, an unlighted lamp in his hand, preceded the silent and expressionless Art French down the hallway, he was of the opinion that he could have surprised French in time to down him with the lamp, arm himself from the belt of the fallen man, and make his get-away. But the conviction was strong in his mind that he not only himself held an interesting hand in a game that stirred his poker instinct, but that he as yet had little to worry about. “I’ll play these,” he assured himself again; and the door of his lightless room closed behind him.
He groped for the table and set down his lamp. As he did so a cautious metallic click from the door behind him once more brought a sharp turn of anger through him. The sound he had heard had been the snap of the padlock in its hasp.
Hughes hesitated a moment, then grinned one-sidedly in the dark. “I’ll still play these,” he thought again. He removed the lamp chimney and struck a match.
Then as the small flame flared he perceived, with a sense of almost physical impact, that he was not alone. And, immediately, a second amazement swept him as he saw that the slender figure which stood, back to the wall next to the window, was that of Sally Major.
She watched him, her grave eyes at once startled and recklessly resolute; perhaps she also had heard the click of the lock. One of her hands fluttered in a quick gesture urging him to silence. A dozen questions raced through his mind, but what occurred to him instantly was that his window was undoubtedly watched from without. They would not take pains to disarm him and lock him behind bars of ordinary wood without mounting a guard. He lowered the flame of the match, abruptly, so that it went out.
