by Noel Loomis
He trusted her implicitly; but he could not expect her to know the truth without confiding it to someone nearer to her than he was—perhaps to her brother, or to Mona. After that the grape vine telegraph, wholly innocent, but ruthlessly efficient, would carry the word all through the ranch, and so at last to Adobe Wells itself: “Hughes knows nothing.”
“Are you sure?” he said slowly.
“That Donnan didn’t tell you anything? It looks pretty plain, Clay.”
“Are you sure?” he said again. She would never know the effort it cost him to bring that faintly mocking smile into his eyes. There was something in her own warm eyes that dissolved his will, broke down all barriers, so that before them nothing seemed thinkable except open honesty to the depths. Yet, now he knew that he must look squarely into those eyes and make his own impenetrable and expressionless—except for the smile which was in itself a lie. That smile had made Earl Shaw back down and give himself up; it now defended the little slender bluff which was perhaps a key.
“Are you sure?” he said again.
He saw puzzlement, then doubt come into her face, and he winced. How could she ever forgive him for this, or trust him again, when at last the truth was known? But he knew that Sally’s future was inextricably bound up in that of the Lazy M and the Buckhorn water. To deceive her now was his only means of retaining the single fragile weapon which he could bring to its defense.
“I don’t understand you,” she said dimly. “I think I don’t understand you at all.”
“My first promise stands,” said he. “I won’t tell anyone what I learned that night in the Crazy Mule until I’ve told you.”
She regarded him thoughtfully, her grey eyes almost dreamy in her quiet face. He wondered why it suddenly seemed that once more she was looking at him from across an all but impassable canyon. “I’m beginning to think,” she said, “that you know what you’re doing better than anyone else; a whole lot better than I do, certainly. You must do what you think best.”
“I think it would be the best thing to sing you a song on the banjo,” he suggested.
She shook her head, and a twinkle appeared in her eye. “You can’t; you broke a string.”
So she had been watching him then, he thought, as he had stood in the patio alone. “I’ll fix the string.”
“I have to go and find Mona. Sometimes I think she’s never going to snap out of it again. She eats if you tell her to, and walks if you tell her to, but never makes a single move, hardly, of her own accord. It’s the saddest thing I ever saw—almost as if she were dead. If Donnan had lived she would have got over him presently, and seen that he wasn’t so much, but now that he isn’t in the world any more—”
“I know,” said Hughes.
Chapter Fourteen
Clay Hughes went out of the house, instinctively hitching his gun into position as he stepped through the door. It seemed a long time since there had not been a keen edge of necessity upon the watchfulness of his eyes. But there was still a relaxed laziness in his stroll, and a jaunty angle to his disreputable hat as he jerked it over one eye. He was glad to be alive, and in the same county with Sally Major. Nor could he help a sort of joyous anticipation of the fight that was ahead. What his part would be in it he did not know; but whatever it might be, he could expect it to put him into action in Sally’s behalf.
There was a gloomy anxiety, however, in the face of Bob Macumber, who came toward him now.
“Clay,” said the chunky foreman, “this is sure getting to be too much for me. It begins to look like I pulled another bull.”
“What’s the matter now?”
“Well, right after Alex Shaw went back to town with Grasshopper Tanner, I sent Art French and Walk Ross down to Twelve Mile Corral in the flivver to turn the stock out. Seemed like we wasn’t going to be having time to feed and water no stock twelve miles away; I wanted ’em thrown on the range. That was two hours ago. Clay, they ain’t got back.”
“Give ’em time, Bob.”
“Heck, Clay, all they had to do was to throw down a couple of sets of bars!”
“Maybe their car busted down,” Clay suggested.
“I’m hoping so,” said Macumber gloomily. “It’s about the least thing that could happen. Even so, it’s bad enough. This is an almighty poor time to have hands lying around loose all over the valley, Clay.”
“Why don’t you send somebody after them, then?”
“How do I know that Alex Shaw isn’t holding Twelve Mile Corral, and fixing to pick up anybody that comes down there? He can hold any man of us now, as an accessory to not letting him have Dick Major. Damn this accessory business anyway. I thought accessories was something that went on automobiles.”
Hughes thoughtfully whistled a few bars of “Stony River.”
“Poor old Tanner,” he said at last. “There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
“What you mean, Clay?”
“Art French and Walk Ross—I haven’t known the people around here as long as you have, Bob; and I don’t take ’em at their face value quite so much,” he answered.
“They’ve both worked here a long time,” said Macumber, impatiently. “But another thing’s happened that may turn out even worse. That damn cook should have had chow started long ago, and where is he? He ain’t any place! I’ve hunted high and low, and it sure looks to me like he’s disappeared hisself. I got them old Mexican women that takes care of the house to go to work on it; but supper will be an hour late, and will probably beat hell when we get it. The old man will sure make the air blue.”
Macumber wandered off again in the kind of wavering hustle of a man who feels he must take care of everything, but doesn’t know just how to go about it. Macumber had changed, becoming nervous and jumpy; he certainly would have to get over that if he was ever going to be a good cow foreman again.
There was going to be a lot of trouble around there about the disappearance of Ross and French; Hughes had known that as soon as he had heard of it. By nightfall everyone in the outfit knew that the two cowboys who had started for Twelve Mile Corral in a flivver had not returned. The cowboys, as one man, were in favor of going after French and Ross to make a rescue—or a capture, whichever seemed required under the circumstances. This Oliver Major did not want. He ordered that no one should leave the immediate vicinity of the ranch buildings; and he backed up his order by gathering up the keys of the three cars remaining on the place, and shoving them into his own pants pocket, where they stayed.
Even so, four of the cowboys had saddled up for a raid of their own, and probably could not have been restrained in time, had not a new turn changed their plans. Shortly after dusk a rider came jogging into the Lazy M; and this proved to be Art French himself, riding a spare saddle and a cayuse he had picked up at Twelve Mile Corral. The whole Lazy M swarmed from all quarters to hear his story.
This, told in the unexcited drawl of Art French, proved to be disappointing enough.
“Nobody jumped us; the car didn’t bust down; there wasn’t no fight,” Art French leisurely answered the questions shot at him by the old man. “All it was, Walk Ross seems to have gone nuts, on account of he figures old Tanner is liable to get it in the neck. Seems like Walk used to hunt with old Tanner, over in the Mogollon Country. Didn’t realize old Tanner had a friend; but seems he has, and Walk is it. Walk is good and sore at us all for leaving old Tanner go with Alex Shaw. He tried to get me to go with him on to Adobe Wells, so as to be on hand if it works out that Tanner needs help. Me, I’m going to stay with the old man’s orders, and I won’t go. Walk, he says he’ll be damned if he’ll come back to the Lazy M and sit around twiddling his thumbs, with old Grasshopper in trouble. He can’t get it out of his head that Tanner is in right immediate danger. After we argued a long time we split up, and Walk took the car on to Adobe Wells, and I caught up a cayuse and come back.”
“So it was Ross,” said old man Major to Hughes and Macumber when they were alone again.
“
So what was Ross?” said Macumber.
“The man that’s been giving away our hand to the Bar S,” said Major, his face very grim. “I wouldn’t have thought it of Ross in a thousand years. Why, Walk has worked for me for four years; and how Earl Shaw ever got to him is past me.”
“I never did like his looks much,” said Macumber.
Old man Major roared at him, “What’s looks to do with a man?”
“Looks like they told the truth this time, the way it worked out,” said Macumber.
“It’s getting so a man doesn’t know where to set his foot to find solid ground,” said Major, bitterly. “Well, thank God he’s gone!”
“It looks to me,” said Hughes thoughtfully, “that if you know Walk Ross so well, you might still take him at his word. His going to Adobe Wells because he wanted to be on hand to help Tanner, if he needed it, is a pretty tall story, that’s true; but,” he added sarcastically, “this thing of one man siding another through a siege of trouble is still known in some places, strange as it may seem.”
“Ten million fiddlesticks,” snapped Major. “Grasshopper Tanner didn’t have a good friend in the world!”
“As for me,” suggested Clay, “I’d like to know a little more about Art French.”
“He come back, didn’t he?” snorted Major. “He come back, while Walk Ross jumped the outfit and headed for Adobe Wells. Can you see a thing when it’s written plain on the face of the facts, or do you want me to draw you a picture of it?”
“Let it go,” said Hughes.
The people of the Lazy M slept in shifts that night. At all times one or another of the cowboys was on watch from a roof, waiting for headlights to show on the Adobe Wells road. If one thing was certain to the people of the Lazy M, it was that Alex Shaw, who had come and gone that day, would come again; this time very strong. And if Alex Shaw went back empty handed when next he came, it would be because he was sent back, and behind him there would be gun smoke mingled with the dust.
It was an hour after daylight, however, when a general alarm brought the Lazy M people once more into the space in front of the house to watch a lone car wheeling slowly up the road from Adobe Wells. This time there were rifles in the hands of some of the cowboys, in addition to the guns that swung at every thigh.
As the car drew near, however, they saw that it was of a type unfamiliar to the Buckhorn; and the man who drove it was alone. When at last the big roadster wheeled to a stop in front of the ranch house, it was a ruddy faced old man with hair as white as his immaculate shirt and collar who got stiffly down from the wheel.
It seemed to them a long time that they had awaited the half known quantity called Stephen Sessions. So long had seemed those few days that the man had become almost a myth, a legend. After it had become uncertain whether or not he was coming at all, the Lazy M people had come to feel that only his presence would be needed to turn disadvantage to advantage, and make one roaring sweep of victory out of an otherwise hopeless contest with irresistible forces. It is only the footloose and irresponsible criminal who can slip the grip of the law for long. They were learning that the same law which finds itself puzzled and ineffectual before gangster and racketeer can close with a remorseless grip upon well-rooted and responsible men.
And the roots of Oliver Major’s very life were deep in the Buckhorn water. He could no more take to flight than he could surrender; and it seemed that his enemy was able to bring all the power of the commonwealth against him in open battle. In this situation only Stephen Sessions offered hope of intervention in the high political circles which had, by a single quick stroke, given the law into the hands of Earl Shaw.
And now, the long delayed Sessions was here at last!
Hughes, watching Stephen Sessions shake hands with Major, wondered if after all they had placed their hope in the right place. Certainly Stephen Sessions looked as if he could intercede successfully if he wished. There were already two men in the Buckhorn—Oliver Major and Earl Shaw—who had the unshakable look of granite. To these Stephen Sessions now added a third. The solid hulking weight of his slightly bent shoulders, the square solidity of his face, and above all, the complete unconscious assurance of the man, visible in his every move, gave him a look of great static power. Yet, there was a blandness in the heavy ruddy face, which, no less than the half-humorous shrewdness in the old blue eyes, suggested that this was a man who made his own decisions; and having made them, was persuaded by none.
“I laid overnight in Adobe Wells,” Sessions was saying to Oliver Major. “What’s got into this valley of yours, Oliver? You people trying to get back to the old days?”
“I only wish we could, Steve!” said Major.
“It’s time I got here,” said Sessions, half jocularly. “From what I hear, things are sure shaping up into one sweet mess. Was that one of your men who was killed in Adobe Wells last night?”
“A man killed, Steve?” said old Major slowly.
“Didn’t you hear? Don’t you folks even keep a telephone anymore?”
“The telephone’s been out of whack for four days,” Major told him. “Do you remember the name of the man that was killed?”
“I’ve never forgotten a name yet,” said Sessions. “It was a man being held as an essential witness, and he was killed making a jail break. His name was Grasshopper Tanner.”
“Grasshopper Tanner,” Major repeated. He swung upon Hughes. “Do you doubt now what would have happened to you, if you’d gone with Alex Shaw?”
“No,” said Hughes.
For the first time he saw the incredible assumptions of Oliver Major as parts of a grim prophesy already coming true.
* * * *
“He wants you next,” said Macumber. “You can go in there now.”
For three hours Stephen Sessions had been closeted in the old man’s office with the boss of the Lazy M. From within the office came a steady growl of conversation; sometimes old Major’s voice seemed to rise in harsh emphasis, but what all the parley was about, nobody exactly knew. They had become accustomed to thinking of Sessions as the man who was going to intercede in their behalf with the governor; the man who was going to make the wires hum, revert the advantage that the Bar S had been given, and put the law once more in the hands of Jim Crawford and the Lazy M. It was beginning to look as if there was a hitch some place in this program. Knowing little, they worried. The word of Tanner’s death, with its impact of harsh, immediate certainty, had set them on edge.
“Does it look as bad to you as it did to Tom?” Hughes asked Macumber.
Bob Macumber’s face was both dazed and puzzled. “I don’t know what to make of it, Clay. This here Sessions just sits there with his big square pan hung out in front of him, without any expression on it. I can’t make head or tail of him. But the old man’s looking mighty black. Clay, it looks to me like something’s gone haywire.”
Sometimes during those three hours since the arrival of Sessions some of the Lazy M men had been called in to answer certain questions before Stephen Sessions. Bart Holt had given, for Sessions’ benefit, his version of the appearances at Crazy Mule canyon. Harry Canfield had been asked some questions about the shot that had been fired at Hughes. Jim Crawford had been on the carpet for almost the whole of a bad half hour, and had come out angry and puzzled, refusing to discuss what had evidently been an ordeal. Tom Ireland had been called in and asked some puzzling and apparently irrelevant questions about the character of Grasshopper Tanner; and Art French and Bob Macumber had each had their say as to obscure points of recent happenings.
“He asked me quite a few questions about you, Clay,” said Bob Macumber. “Well, I gave you a clean bill of health. You better be getting on in there, boy.”
What struck Hughes as he entered old Major’s office was the change that had come over the old boss of the Buckhorn water himself. He saw instantly what those others who had been questioned here must also have seen, but had been reluctant to say. The old man’s face had been grim before; it wa
s now grey and haggard, and so bitter hard that he looked more than ever like a cross between a range wolf and a hunk of granite from the rim. A lank lock of grey hair dangled before his eyes, and through it he stared redly, unaware that it was there.
“This is Hughes,” Major growled shortly.
“You were the only man in Crazy Mule canyon the night Donnan died,” said Stephen Sessions. “Is that right?”
“I was the only one with him when he died!” said Hughes. “But I allow there were others in the Crazy Mule that night—or Donnan would never have come by his finish.”
“I understand you left this forty-five caliber shell in the ashes of your fire,” said Sessions. The old politician’s voice was quiet; he was watching Hughes gravely, just as he must have watched many a man from the bench in the days before he had retired from public office forever. He sat leaning forward, with his shoulders hunched up by the arms of his chair, so that his unweathered face was thrust out before him, a suave mask.
“You understand wrongly, then,” said Hughes. “I left no shell.”
“How do you explain the presence of the shell that Bart Holt found?” Sessions asked.
“Grasshopper Tanner’s explanation sounds as reasonable to me as any,” said Hughes.
“Tanner is dead,” Sessions reminded him, “and can give no explanation.”
“I have no doubt,” said Hughes, “that you know what he thought about it, just the same.”
“And what,” said Sessions, “did you say Donnan told you before he died?”
“I didn’t say.”
“Clay,” said old man Major, “if there’s ever going to be a time to speak out, that time has come now.”
Yes, surely, thought Hughes, old Major had come very close to the end of his string. A litter of paper on the desk beside Major, and overflowing onto the floor at his feet, made the room look disheveled. Hughes saw now that those big curling papers were surveys and geologic charts. They had been arguing, then, about the Buckhorn water.
