by Noel Loomis
“Are you going to answer my question?” Sessions said dryly.
“I did answer it,” said Hughes.
“You are evading me,” said Sessions. “I put it to you: Donnan said something to you in Crazy Mule Canyon.”
“Well?”
“Are you ready to state what that was?”
Hughes shook his head slowly, his eyes steady on those of Stephen Sessions. “Not yet,” he said at last.
An unexpected smile jerked the corners of Sessions’ mouth as Hughes and Sessions stared at each other; and Hughes saw that Sessions disbelieved. And he realized now that he never in his life had been before a man so difficult to bluff, so nearly impossible to deceive.
Once more—and he was fervently hoping that it was for the last time—he brought that faint ironic smile to the surface, this time a smile of the eyes alone. With it he had bluffed Earl Shaw so that Shaw had surrendered himself into the hands of the man he hated; with it, God forgive him, he had brought Sally’s accurate guessing to nothing. Even old Oliver Major was in doubt, to this very moment, as to whether Hughes withheld something he knew, or had nothing to withhold. But now, for a moment, it seemed to Hughes that the world-weary blue eyes of the old man could look through that bluff as if it were glass, and see the emptiness beyond. Yet Hughes stood silent, playing out his bluff to the very end; and as Sessions’ smile slowly faded, he hardly knew whether to think that he had won, or lost.
“If you know something,” said Sessions, “what do you expect to gain by holding it back?”
“There’s one link still missing,” Hughes heard himself say. “I’m thinking now that it won’t be missing very long.”
He thought he had never heard such blatant nonsense as his own words then. In spite of the slow assurance of his voice, it seemed to him that the utter lack of meaning in his words must be impossible to conceal.
Yet, when Stephen Sessions spoke, Hughes recognized that a note of uncertainty came into his voice. “I’ll admit that I don’t understand this boy, Oliver. Personally, I doubt that he knows anything at all.”
“Maybe he doesn’t,” said Major stubbornly. “But it’s pretty plain that Earl Shaw thinks he does!”
Sessions slapped the arm of his chair impatiently. “Oliver, I tell you, you don’t know that.”
“He was fired on, wasn’t he? As he stood in this very house?”
“But you don’t know by whom,” said Sessions, flourishing an eloquently judicial finger. “It’s time a little cool reason came in here, Oliver. To begin with, you don’t know this boy. Except for the word of Bob Macumber, who hasn’t seen him for years, you don’t know a thing about him—where he’s from, or what’s his record, or who are his enemies. For all you know, there may be fifty men in the southwest who are anxious to even up old scores against him that you know nothing about.”
“But I know the rest of my boys here,” said Major, “and I tell you there isn’t a one of them that—”
“And do you know that? You don’t even know your own men, Oliver. You thought you knew Walk Ross; he’s worked for you four years, yet you yourself are willing to have me believe that he’s carried some wild yarn to Adobe Wells, and got Grasshopper Tanner killed thereby! Maybe you don’t know this—but personally I never forget a name—there was a Walker Ross in a bad shooting scrape up in Idaho about five years ago.”
“Yes, I knew that,” grunted Major.
“And who is this Art French? Do you know? Maybe you’d like me to dredge down in my memory and bring up a fact or two about this man who calls himself Art French. Just as I never forget a name, neither do I ever forget a face, Oliver. I can call half the people in the southwest by name, history, and reputation; and when it comes to Art French—”
“That isn’t the point,” said Major. The old man seemed badgered, beset. He could wrest a fortune out of the stubborn hills, and throughout his life he had worked his will with a vast valley; but when it came to demonstrating something that seemed to him obvious, he found himself at a loss. “The past or future of Walk Ross is not the question in hand.” His fist drummed the desk top, heavy and slow. “I offer you Grasshopper Tanner. He’s a sample of what happens to Shaw’s enemies—when they put themselves into the hands of the law officers Replogle has foisted on us! I let Tanner go because I hoped Earl Shaw didn’t know Grasshopper had discovered anything. The minute word got to Adobe Wells—evidently by Walk Ross—that Grasshopper Tanner was a dangerous man to the killers of Hugo Donnan, that was the end of Grasshopper Tanner! It’ll be the same story over again if they take Hughes. It’d be the same story again if they took Dick—but, by God, they’ll never do that while I live.”
“Grasshopper Tanner was killed trying to make a jail break,” droned Sessions wearily.
“If he made a break at all—which I doubt—it was because it was the only hope left to him. Grasshopper gave himself up to Alex Shaw of his own free will.”
“Yes, yes,” said Stephen Sessions. “We’ve been good friends for a long time, Oliver; and I certainly hope nothing is going to come up to spoil that now. God knows, Oliver, I’m only too willing to do all I can to—”
“There’s only one thing in the world that’s reasonable to do,” said Oliver Major. “Theron Replogle has rammed into this business and put the sheriff’s office in the hands of Alex Shaw. Now Theron Replogle has got to yank Alex Shaw out again; as matters stand, he looks like the only one who can. Otherwise, I tell you, there’s going to be the damnedest scrap in the Buckhorn that the southwest has seen in many a long year!”
“Of course,” said Stephen Sessions, with only the faintest trace of unctuousness, “I don’t decide these things, Oliver. I am here as an observer for the governor, as I told you before. All I can do, at best,—”
“The whole state knows that you are the man closest to Governor Replogle. I’ll say more. There’s a good many of us has a pretty plain idee, Steve, that Theron Replogle is only a dummy—with you and a couple of others working the strings!”
“Now, now,” said Sessions, “that isn’t the sort of impression we want to create at all!”
“I expect not,” said Major dryly.
“I ask you to look at what you’re asking me to do, Oliver,” said Sessions. “By the way, do we need this man anymore?”
“Yes,” said Major unexpectedly. “I want him to hear this.”
Sessions shrugged. “Let me speak plainly for a couple of minutes. In the first place we have the murder of Sheriff Donnan. By the greatest misfortune it appears that Donnan has previously been threatened by your son.” He raised a hand quickly. “Of course, we know he didn’t do it, but there is the situation. The first deputy under Donnan happened to be a man very much under your influence, Oliver; you certainly won’t deny that. Under your influence, acting-sheriff Crawford stepped forth and imprisoned, absolutely without evidence, one of the most influential citizens in this part of the state, together with several of his employees. Naturally, a sharp protest arises, literally forcing Governor Replogle to replace acting-sheriff Crawford with somebody better prepared to act impartially.”
“Impartially!” exploded old Major.
“I realize, of course, it doesn’t seem exactly impartial to you,” Sessions conceded. “But certainly Alex Shaw has acted entirely within the limits of his duty. What has he done? He has attempted to gather together for questioning the persons nearest the case: that is, Tanner, the old tracker; Hughes, the last man to see Donnan alive; and, of course, though we are sorry for it, your son, who in his own interests, certainly should wish to have his name cleared as promptly as possible by due process of investigation. A very reasonable procedure, certainly. Yet, see what you now ask me to do! I am to persuade Replogle immediately to remove Alex Shaw from office—on no charge at all, unless it is that a man unfortunately lost his life while attempting to break jail.”
Oliver Major opened his mouth, but shut it again, and turned away his face, as if sickened. “Dear God, Steve!”
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br /> “I was glad to come down here when you wired me,” Sessions went on; “though, coincidentally, as I have said, I am also acting as an observer—an impartial one, I hope—on behalf of the governor. It’s nothing new to you, of course, when I say that the Buckhorn has always been an uncertain element in the state. The peculiar position of the water—”
“The only thing peculiar about the water,” said Major, “is that Shaw has forever wanted to get it for his own!”
“That’s naturally your view of it, Oliver. I must say that I think your stand against the Silverado project is not wholly tenable. The laws of conservation naturally provide that wherever water is running to waste, that surplus which is lost may be diverted to other points were it can be put to use; and as for the Silverado—”
“Steve,” Major began. “Steve—” One hand reached uncertainly for a map, but dropped again, relaxed and futile, in his lap. There was a silence in the room while Major stared at the strewn litter of the maps. He looked weary and very old—an old wolf still, but infinitely beset.
Yet, Hughes could see the visions that were in the old man’s mind. All his life he had worked to build up the capital that was to bring the Buckhorn water to fruition. He knew where his dams should stand, and where his reservoirs should spread their sheets of stored water. In his dreams he had looked forever forward to the day when the Buckhorn should come into full flower, supporting not an outfit, but a people. And that development was to be a sound development, steady and sure. Never was there to be the rush and clutch of the land sharks, nor scores of little homesteads springing up in the light of false hopes and misworded claims—each presently to leave a skeleton shanty and a broken windmill to commemorate the heartbreak of a poverty stricken family, and the wastage of a dirt farmer’s toil. But how could Major hope to convey to that suave, many-argumented man the visions he was seeing behind those maps—old Oliver Major, who all his life had expressed himself only through the actualities under his hands?
“Oliver,” said Stephen Sessions, “I’m sorry to say this, but it seems to me that there’s only one way for you to handle this thing. Stop bucking the regularly constituted legal authorities. If you can’t cooperate with the due processes of the law, at least submit to the law’s reasonable demands. Once you’ve made your mind up to that, no problem exists, whatsoever. I realize you can never reconcile yourself to the Silverado project, but you are entirely wrong in confusing it with the case in hand. The case in hand is the simple murder of a sheriff by parties unknown, and everyone associated with the unfortunate occurrence must naturally expect to assist the investigation. Of course, it comes hard to you to—”
On and on droned the smooth, plausible voice from the square implacable face. Almost, listening to that voice, a man could believe that there existed no problem at all, and no trouble at all, and that all men must do in order to have all things come smooth and clear, with justice to all, was to walk in peaceful ways.
Then, as Stephen Sessions paused, and the silence again returned for a moment to that room, there came across the sundrenched heat the mournful keening of Grasshopper Tanner’s dogs.
Major smashed a fist upon the desk, and his voice came in a rising thunder. “Steve, I tell you, as God is my judge—”
A quick rap on the door interrupted him, and without waiting for summons, Bob Macumber thrust into the room. “Mr. Major, there’s a car coming up the Adobe Wells road like all hell was on its tail!”
“Just one car?”
“That’s all we can see yet.”
“The boys know?”
“They’re ready, Mr. Major!”
Major came to his feet and strode toward the door.
“For heaven’s sake, Oliver,” Stephen Sessions began, “be careful what you—”
Major whirled on him savagely. “Shut up!” he snarled, his voice vicious with angry contempt. He went lurching toward the front of the house like a man saddle drunk from too long a season in the leather.
Chapter Fifteen
Once more the people of the Lazy M waited silently before the sprawling adobe, as the approaching car, careening crazily, tore up great geysers of dust from the Adobe Wells road. There was a stir among the cowboys as it was seen that the car was again that of Alex Shaw.
As it wheeled into the space before the house, however, they saw that the driver, who was also the sole occupant, was not Alex Shaw. The man who eased stiffly and unsteadily to the ground was Walk Ross.
There was a moment’s silence while Walk Ross faced those many pairs of watching eyes. Then Tom Ireland raised his voice in a sort of a smothered bellow, and thrust himself hulking forward. “You got guts to come back here!” he roared.
The face of Walk Ross was bloodless, and he seemed dazed. “I got guts to—what?” he said vaguely.
Tom Ireland roared, “This is the coyote that crossed up Grasshopper Tanner! I—”
He stopped abruptly as they saw the legs of Walk Ross slowly buckle under him, so that he sank to his knees, and then to all fours.
“Get back, Tom!” Oliver Major ordered.
Walk Ross was already getting up under his own power as Clay Hughes and Oliver Major reached him. “You hurt, Walk?
“Ain’t anything that amounts to hell,” Walk Ross mumbled apologetically. “It’s just a little nick, but I guess it got to bleeding some, as I come over the bumps.”
“Here,” ordered Oliver Major, “help me get him in the house.”
“Listen,” said Walk Ross. “Listen: you only got a few hours! They’ve got together a posse of anyway forty men—most likely it’ll be fifty before night. Their aim is to swarm down on us the first thing tomorrow. They got men enough to clean us out quicker than a whistle, if we don’t get set to stand ’em off! Somebody gimme drink of water. Ain’t you got any water?”
Everybody trailed after them as they helped Walk Ross into a room and propped him on a bed. Sally Major brought water and rolls of gauze, and Oliver Major himself set about re-bandaging the man’s wounds. Walk Ross had been but lightly hit. A grazing bullet had struck a furrow across the inside of his upper left arm, disabling it for the time; and though he had improvised bandages, the loss of blood had weakened him tremendously. Hughes saw that Walk’s haggard weariness had brought a human quality, which he had not observed before into the man’s sharp, hawk-nosed face; and though the eyes were still as curiously light as bits of shell, the odd, expressionless quality, as of a noncommittal lynx, was no longer evident.
“Earl Shaw himself is coming with the posse,” Walk told them. “Of course, Alex Shaw stands as sheriff, but Dutch Pete will be the leader of the main mob, and Smoky Walters and Frank Muldoon are the real gun throwers, that we have to look out for every minute. God knows what we’re coming to here. It seems like—”
“How come you to go to Adobe Wells, Walk?” Major asked.
“We never should have let Tanner go to Adobe Wells. We should have held him here if we had to hog-tie him,” Ross answered. “Letting Tanner go with Alex Shaw was just the same as if we’d shot Grasshopper where he stood. I—”
“How’d you get hit?”
“I had two brushes with ’em,” said Ross. “Once last night when Tanner was killed, and once today when I swiped this car and broke clear. It was last night that they clipped me, though. Oh, lord, if I only could have winged one of ’em if only just to mark him!… You people never understood Grasshopper Tanner. He was hard-mouthed and crotchety, mostly because he was old. But I’ve worked with him, and ridden with him over in the Mogollon, and I tell you I know him, and a better man never stood up. I couldn’t stand by and not do nothing when I knew what was ahead of him. I went to Adobe Wells to do anything I could if I was needed. I don’t know how some of you fellers are going to explain it to yourselves that you wasn’t with me. God knows, hard-mouthed as he was, Tanner never went back on a man in his life.”
“Yes, sure; but what happened?”
“It was after dark when I got to Adobe Wells.
I parked the flivver back of the town corral, and I walked through the town with my hat pulled down, and I come to the jail. I managed to get around to the side to talk to Tanner through the window a little bit. The old fool didn’t see what he was up against, even then. I told him I’d come to crack him out of there, and he cussed me like always he did, and told me it wouldn’t do. Then Dutch Pete come ramming around the corner of the jail, and I had to duck out.
“I went and bought me a couple of drinks, and I was recognized; but I knew what was ahead all the time, and I didn’t care. In about an hour I went back. You know that little mud shack they use for a jail. Well, when I got back it was empty. I called out Grasshopper’s name at them two little windows that opens into the two cells. But there wasn’t even any deputies there, and Tanner was gone.
“There wasn’t any moon but the stars was clear; and off in the dark, maybe a hundred yards away, I thought I seen somebody move. You know where that gully strikes along there, right back of the town, and there’s a rift of brush? It was over there. What I seen could have been a horse or a cow, but something told me it wasn’t that. I begun moving toward the place where I thought I seen something, quiet as I could. I got about half way to the place when I heard Tanner’s voice, from up ahead.
“Poor old Grasshopper—maybe I shouldn’t tell it on him—but there at the end the poor old feller whimpered like a—like a cat. He hollers out ‘I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything,’ and then he’s stopped off as if somebody slapped a hand over his mouth. And then somebody says ‘No powder burns now’ and—Wham—one shot, and two more.
“I comes up with my gun and lets go pretty near blind, and lets ’em have three blasts. I seen two fellers run, and they blazed away at me as I come running forward, and one of ’em give me this clip. I found Grasshopper Tanner. They’d finished him, all right—
“I high-tailed it out of there and tied up my arm, and laid low. Pretty soon when I went back to the flivver there was fellers sitting on it, and I guess there’s fellers sitting on it yet. It wasn’t until just now that I finally made a break of it, and swiped this car as it stood with the engine running in front of the store, and come on. They peppered the old bus plenty as I went, and there was a couple of cars following me almost all the way to Twelve Mile Corral. But the old baby stepped out pretty, all right. They never was close after the first few miles.”
