by Noel Loomis
“We’ll come almighty close to it!”
“That’s beside the point,” said Major. “Hughes, in the position we’re in here, the Lazy M’s got some right in this matter. I say you’ve got no right to go, no right to give yourself up to this gang. It’s suicide to begin with; but even if you don’t see that—”
“If we stand against this,” insisted Hughes, “we’ll be playing right into their hand. It’s exactly what they want.”
“What they want is fight,” said Oliver Major. “If they don’t get it one way, don’t you ever fool yourself, they’ll get it in another. Fight is what they want, and fight is what they’ll get, and all hell can’t stop that. If they can prune down our chances first by cutting you out of the herd, or Tanner either, don’t you ever think that they won’t be tickled to death. And the upshot will be the same, one way or the other.”
Watching Alex Shaw, Hughes thought that the flicker of an unexpected hope had appeared in the eyes of the Adobe Wells sheriff.
“You heard what your boss said,” Alex Shaw told Hughes; “and you Tanner—” Shaw’s eyes searched out the figure of Tanner in the background against the wall of the house, and he raised his voice to carry to the old lion hunter also—“Major has as good as put you two men on your own responsibility, whether you stand against the law, or not. Hold out now, and you’re outlawed where you stand; and don’t you forget that sooner or later you’ll be hunted down and called to pay up! Don’t fool yourself that the law ever forgets, or falls down on the job in the end. The law says that you come to Adobe Wells and answer the questions that are asked you like reasonable men. Play an aboveboard hand and you’ve got a good chance of being free before night. But once you get yourself on the up-wind side, there ain’t going to be anybody you can look to to side you—least of all the Lazy M.”
As Alex Shaw finished, Hughes realized that his own view of his position had changed. A minute before it had seemed to him that to surrender himself was to confuse the Shaw faction’s strategy against Oliver Major, and that to refuse to submit to the technical authority vested in Alex Shaw was to play into the hand of Major’s enemy. He now saw that this was not Alex Shaw’s view; that although Shaw was willing to leave with no more accomplished than the technical outlawry of the Lazy M, he would be only too well pleased to take with him Tanner and Hughes himself. As for turning the force of the law upon the Lazy M, Shaw would only need later to force the matter of Dick Major’s surrender—a thing which Oliver Major would never in the world concede.
“Go to hell,” said Hughes to Shaw. “I’m staying here!”
For a moment Alex Shaw studied him as if testing the stability of Hughes’ decision. Then his twisty grin flickered as he appeared to accept the insubmission as definite. His eyes turned to Tanner, waiting.
“If you’re after me, I’ll come,” said Grasshopper Tanner, unexpectedly. He was answering Alex Shaw, but his defiant eyes were upon Oliver Major.
There was a moment’s silence, while the old lion hunter’s angular figure moved forward slowly, almost warily, as if he expected somebody to stop him. Then, “Why, you old fool—” Oliver Major exploded.
“Where do I get off, bucking the law?” Tanner demanded angrily. He had taken on the fiery look of a man who defends his own interests recklessly in the face of massed opinion. “This is your scrap, not mine!”
There was a general stir. Perhaps no one there had ever recognized before that the habitual bad temper of the old mountain man had concealed an impetuous instability. There was a queer intuitive genius in Tanner, but it was the type of genius commonly found in association with an unaccountable volatility. Beneath his weird genius was to be found nothing upon which men could depend. Perhaps some unforgotten past experience had given Tanner an obsessive fear of the law; perhaps it was only that he was incapable of thinking of himself divided from his hound pack. A man surrounded by hounds cannot be hid; he is as easy to lay hands on any time as a man dogged by an active steam whistle.
“They’ve got nothing on me,” Tanner’s strident voice was saying. “And they won’t learn nothing from me neither, as they’ll damn soon find out! But I ain’t gone crazy enough to fight the law without no reason at all!”
“Get in the car, Tanner,” said Alex Shaw. Now that his work was done here, he seemed anxious to get away.
Once more for an instant Oliver Major seemed to hesitate. He opened his mouth, but closed it again, his face very grim. There was a movement behind him as some of the cowboys stirred, and Tom Ireland started to step forward. Major, without looking around, half raised one arm, palm backward, in a warning gesture; and they became still again, though their faces remained angry and uncertain.
The Adobe Wells car turned, and Hughes saw Alex Shaw grin as he said something out of the side of his mouth to Dutch Pete. Grasshopper Tanner’s dogs were running forward now. Tanner stood up in the back seat, jerking his blacksnake from his belt. “Git back thar! You want to kill yourselves chasing a gas engine?” The whip snapped over the dogs; the nearest yelped, unhit, and they fell back, blooping their protest.
Oliver Major stood gnawing his mustache as he stared after the receding car, and his eyes were very bleak. Beyond any doubt, the old boss of the Buckhorn believed himself to be watching the departure of a man whom he would not see again. Sally Major suddenly covered her face with her hands and ran into the house.
Major turned upon the waiting cowboys, and his voice rose tremendously. He made a sweeping gesture of finality with one arm.
“You saw what’s happened! This is the time for you to quit. This is the time for you to get out, before you’re drawn in deep as me. Who wants his pay? Which of you has sense enough to take his pay and get out?”
No one moved, and there was silence except for the howling of Tanner’s forsaken dogs. The riders looked vaguely embarrassed; they studied the smoke of their cigarettes to avoid meeting his eye. Some of them exchanged expressionless glances, but none gave any sign of taking up Major’s suggestion.
Major suddenly shouted at them, “You damned fools, will you quit?”
Still no one answered; and, after a strained moment, the old man strode through them, and into the house.
Chapter Thirteen
The Lazy M boiled up when the Adobe Wells car was gone. The cowboys, usually so frugal of speech, buzzed like a hive of bees. Not everyone agreed that Grasshopper Tanner should have been allowed to give himself up to Alex Shaw; and not all of them understood exactly what had taken place. Nowhere among them, however, was perceivable any desire to avoid the approaching clash with the Ear S, whether the Bar S came with a pretense of law or without. Hardly a one of them would question his future if called upon to fight for the Lazy M. They made up a formidable fighting unit, not readily to be taken or put down. Yet they knew that while Shaw’s control made the law itself a weapon and a mockery, not even an army could hold out against his resources long. More than ever they needed the ultimate intervention which Stephen Sessions could perhaps obtain.
Oliver Major had withdrawn to his office again. This form of retirement was one of the few indications that the boss of the Buckhorn water was growing old, for all his life he had been accustomed to think in the saddle, developing his ideas and his methods by putting them into effect. When he had withdrawn, the gang of cowboys in front of the house disintegrated slowly. Clay Hughes, after a short interview with the old man, rounded up the restlessly voicing dogs of Grasshopper Tanner and shut them in a stable. Then he set out to look for Sally Major.
This time he had no trouble in finding her. She was sitting in the patio, on the bench where they had last talked; her head was leaned against the wall, so that for a moment she seemed asleep, but as he approached she came to life, and indicated with a peremptory gesture that he was to sit down beside her. He obeyed, rolled a cigarette, and waited.
“Do you understand what has happened?” she asked in a low voice.
“More or less, I guess.”
“
Well, I certainly don’t,” she said. “In all my life I never saw Dad do anything like that before. What in the world has come over him? Do you suppose, after all, he is going to knuckle under to Earl Shaw?”
“No,” said Hughes. “No, he’ll never do that, not in a thousand years!”
“Then why in the world did he let Alex Shaw take Grasshopper Tanner?”
“Seemed like Grasshopper wanted to go.”
“What’s that got to do with it? Do you suppose Grasshopper knows what’s good for him? Not any more than his own dogs!”
“You think Tanner’s in danger?”
“Why, of course he’s in danger! I know what happened this morning. I suppose there isn’t anybody on the place who doesn’t know that Grasshopper Tanner is hiding something. He’s found out something that shows him who killed Donnan!”
“I’m only hoping,” said Hughes, “that nobody outside the Lazy M knows that he has.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And what hope is there of that?”
“You think—”
“I think there’s somebody here we can’t trust. Someone right here among us is getting word to Earl Shaw of everything that happens here.”
“What makes you think so?’
“It’s perfectly obvious. Earl Shaw knew that the posse from here was on the way before ever it reached Adobe Wells. And I don’t suppose you’ve forgotten that you were fired on the very first night you were here. Why it hasn’t happened again is a mystery to me. So far as I can see everybody here has acted just as if it had never happened at all!”
“Not quite that bad,” he told her. “For my part, I’ll admit to a very pointed interest in staying alive. I sure haven’t stood in any more lighted windows. I don’t believe there’s been a minute since then when I could have been thrown down on, without a chance to fire back.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake, don’t get careless. You have to remember that the man who fired upon you is still here, some place.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Everybody is here now that was here then; nobody has quit his job nor disappeared.”
“You don’t think somebody could have ridden in from outside and—”
“Rubbish!”
“Maybe it was a mistake for your father to let Alex Shaw take old Tanner,” Hughes said. “I didn’t exactly understand it myself right then. But I’ve talked to the old man since, and—I believe he was right.”
“For heaven’s sake what was in his mind?”
“Well, it was this: he mentioned that somebody might be passing word to the Bar S of whatever happened here; but he didn’t see how a spy could have got word to Earl Shaw since this morning, even if he wanted to. So he figured that Shaw couldn’t possibly know that Tanner knew anything. After all, you know, maybe Tanner doesn’t. He sure thinks he does, but maybe he’s fooling himself.”
Sally shook her head. “He knows enough to scare him plenty; and did you ever see a lion hunter that was easily scared?”
“Well, anyway,” Hughes finished, “after Tanner made the choice of giving himself up, your father figured that to hold him by force would tell the Shaws that Tanner certainly did know something; but if he let him go, and Tanner kept his mouth shut, Earl Shaw would probably take him for just another meddling old fool, and let him go. Then Tanner will be back here.”
“What makes you think he’ll be back?”
“Because I shut up his dogs. They would have followed him in an hour or two if they’d been loose. But they won’t follow him now. If it works out so that Tanner is turned loose and comes back here, that will sure be a big advantage over holding him by main strength.”
“If,” said Sally.
“Now,” said he, “I want to know why you changed your mind about me.”
“Changed my mind?”
“Yesterday when I talked to you, the last thing you said was that you wanted me to go over the hill; to get out and stay out.”
She was silent for a moment. “Why should I tell you what I meant?” she said. “Why should I answer your questions, or tell you anything? You’re not being open with me.”
“I’m not?” he said, puzzled.
“Of course you’re not. For one thing, I asked you how you made Earl Shaw give in; and you wouldn’t tell me.”
“Why, Sally—I even gave you the pieces of paper, with what I wrote on them.”
“But you told me you didn’t want me to see it, and that was the same thing as not giving it to me at all. Of course,” she went on, “we all know now how you made him back down: you made him wonder if you weren’t a federal man; and his fear of too big an entanglement tied his hands.”
“Of course I know what you think about that.”
“You can’t possibly know anything of the kind. What I can’t understand is why you wanted to make a secret of it—square in the face of the suspicion it naturally caused.”
“I did have a reason,” he said. “It was kind of a fool reason I expect, but it seemed real important to me.”
“I’m not asking you what your reason was. I’m not asking you anything more at all.”
“But I’m going to tell you anyway.” He hesitated, for this was hard for him to say. “I promised you I’d stop a fight if I could. I’m never going to promise such a thing as that again. It forced me to lie our way out of a fight. At least, it amounted to a lie, in effect. I haven’t the least doubt that everybody thinks I did it to save my hide. I’d rather have it thought that I was in cahoots with Earl Shaw.”
“That’s the most foolish thing I ever heard,” she told him.
“I suppose.”
“But why?” she insisted. “What do you care about people thinking a thing when you yourself know it isn’t so?”
“I never did before,” he admitted. “I don’t suppose in all my life it ever made any difference to me what anybody thought; but when it came to showing my hand—I found out that this time it made a heap of difference.”
“You thought Dad would—”
“I didn’t care a hoot what your father thought.”
“Then why did you run the risk of—”
“Because I knew you’d think I’d folded up in the face of a fight.”
“You’d rather they’d think you were in with the Bar S than have them think you were afraid to fight?”
“Not them; you.”
A silence fell between them, but presently a slow smile came into her eyes. “Wasn’t that kind of silly?” she said gently.
Through the quiet they could hear the voicing of Grasshopper Tanner’s shut-up dogs, dulled behind walls, but mournfully persistent. “I was wrong,” Sally murmured at last. “I take back what I said, about your not being open. I guess I understand a little bit better now.” For a moment then it seemed to Hughes that the gulf had about closed.
“You still want me to get out of here?”
She answered slowly, her eyes on the pale blossoms of a vine which climbed a post before them. “I don’t know.”
“You were real set on it,” he said, “at one time.”
“The night I waited for you in the dark? That was something else. Because then I was thinking a different thing that wasn’t so. I can’t tell you what that was; but—something that I shouldn’t have thought, I suppose.”
“It was a natural thing to think,” he said.
She glanced at him, startled. “What do you mean?”
“That first night,” he told her, “you thought your brother killed Hugo Donnan.”
Her face did not change; but watching her profile, he saw the slow color come into it. Suddenly she turned upon him, her grey eyes staring. “And what if he had?” she cried. “He went out to get Donnan because he thought it was the only thing in the world to do. If he had succeeded instead of failed, I wouldn’t hold it against him for a single moment!”
“Of course not,” said Clay.
“I blame myself for not believing him to begin with,” said Sally. �
��Only—perhaps I shouldn’t say this; but Dick hasn’t quite always been willing to stand up and take the consequences of everything he’s done. It was when I found out that Donnan had been shot from behind that I knew Dick could not possibly have done it. Dick doesn’t know what fear is, physically, and never has, I suppose not for a single moment in his life.”
“Sure,” said Clay, “I understand.”
“It was I who made Dick lie low at first when he rode in, the night after Donnan was killed. I’m about the only one that’s ever had any influence with Dick. I shouldn’t have done it; it was just a mistake of mine. But at first, when I thought Dick was the one who got Hugo Donnan, I was afraid that Donnan had really said something to you before he died that would convict Dick. Right or wrong, guilty or innocent, I would have stuck by Dick all the way through. Now you know why I wanted you to leave that first night.”
“Sure,” said Clay.
“Of course, after I knew that Dick did not do it, I hoped that you would stay, to help us with what you knew. And I was wrong again. Why should you come in here, and run every risk that a man can run, when all the time—” She hesitated, and stopped.
“When all the time what?”
She lowered her voice. “It’s a good bluff you’ve made, Clay,” she said softly. “A game bluff, and a nervy one, and I appreciate it, because you did it to help us here. But it puts you in the worst possible danger; and I don’t see how it is going to help in the end. I don’t know what the others may think, but it looks pretty clear to me, Clay, that Hugo Donnan told you nothing at all!”
He had seen that coming. After all, he could not remain silent forever without having it suspected that his silence hid nothing at all. Yet it was in his mind that his slender, tenuous bluff might yet, in the end, prove the key to a door. What he recognized at once was that if he was to maintain that tenuous hope he must never for an instant seem to admit that he was bluffing, not even to Sally Major. A great sense of loneliness overwhelmed him as it was once more forcibly borne in upon him that he was playing his cards alone; not even Major, whatever he might suspect, could be perfectly certain that Hughes had nothing to withhold. But he had never felt quite so much like one man alone as now, knowing that he must guard the truth from Sally.
