“Sorry I incommoded you,” he laughed. “But it’s too heavy for a lady to lift alone, anyhow. I don’t see how you managed it this far.”
“I’m pretty strong,” she said quietly.
She had no hope of escape from the net of evidence in which he had entangled her. It was characteristic of her that she would not stoop to tricks to stir his pity. Deep in her heart she knew now that she had wronged him when she had suspected him of being a rustler. He could not be. It was not in the man’s character. But she would ask no mercy of him. All her pride rose to meet his. She would show him how game she could be. What she had sown she would reap. Nor would it have been any use to beseech him to spare her. He was a hard man, she told herself. Not even a fool could have read any weakness in the quiet gray eyes that looked so steadily into hers. In his voice and movements there was a certain deliberation, but this had nothing to do with indecision of character. He would do his duty as he saw it, regardless of whom it might affect.
Melissy stood before him in the unconscious attitude of distinction she often fell into when she was moved, head thrown back so as to bare the rounded throat column, brown little hands folded in front of her, erectly graceful in all her slender lines.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
His stone-cold eyes met hers steadily. “It ain’t my say-so. I’m going to put it up to Bellamy. I don’t know what he’ll do.”
But, cold as his manner was, the heart of the man leaped to her courage. He saw her worn out, pathetically fearful, but she could face him with that still little smile of hers. He longed to take her in his arms, to tell her it would be all right—all right.
“There’s one thing that troubles me. I don’t know how father will take this. You know how quick-tempered he is. I’m afraid he’ll shoot somebody or do something rash when he finds out. You must let me be alone with him when I tell him.”
He nodded. “I been thinking of that myself. It ain’t going to do him any good to make a gun-play. I have a notion mebbe this thing will unravel itself if we give it time. It will only make things worse for him to go off half-cocked.”
“How do you mean it may unravel itself?” she asked.
“Bellamy is a whole lot better man than folks give him credit for being. I expect he won’t be hard on you when he knows why you did it.”
“And why did I do it?” she asked quietly.
“Sho! I know why you did it. Jim Budd told you what he had heard, and you figured you could save your father from doing it. You meant to give the money back, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I can’t prove that either in court or to Mr. Bellamy.”
“You don’t need to prove it to me. If you say so, that’s enough,” he said in his unenthusiastic voice.
“But you’re not judge and jury, and you’re certainly not Mr. Bellamy.”
“Scrape Arizona with a fine-tooth comb and you couldn’t get a jury to convict when it’s up against the facts in this case.”
At this she brightened. “Thank you, Mr. Flatray.” And naïvely she added with a little laugh: “Are you ready to put the handcuffs on me yet?”
He looked with a smile at her outstretched hands. “They wouldn’t stay on.”
“Don’t you carry them in sizes to fit all criminals?”
“I’ll have to put you on parole.”
“I’ll break it and climb out the window. Then I’ll run off with this.”
She indicated the box of treasure.
“I need that wash-stand in my room. I’m going to take it up there to-night,” he said.
“This isn’t a very good safety deposit vault,” she answered, and, nodding a careless good-night, she walked away in her slow-limbed, graceful Southern fashion.
She had carried it off to the last without breaking down, but, once in her own room, the girl’s face showed haggard in the moonlight. It was one thing to jest about it with him; it was another to face the facts as they stood. She was in the power of her father’s enemy, the man whose proffer of friendship they had rejected with scorn. Her pride cried out that she could not endure mercy from him even if he wished to extend it. Surely there must be some other way out than the humiliation of begging him not to prosecute. She could see none but one, and that was infinitely worse. Yet she knew it would be her father’s first impulsive instinct to seek to fight her out of her trouble, the more because it was through him that it had fallen upon her. At all hazards she must prevent this.
* * *
CHAPTER XI
A CONVERSATION
Not five minutes after Melissy had left the deputy sheriff, another rider galloped up the road. Jack, returning from his room, where he had left the box of gold locked up, waited on the porch to see who this might be.
The horseman proved to be the man Norris, or Boone, and in a thoroughly bad temper, as Jack soon found out.
“Have you see anything of ’Lissie Lee?” he demanded immediately.
“Miss Lee has just left me. She has gone to her room,” answered Flatray quietly.
“Well, I want to see her,” said the other hoarsely.
“I reckon you better postpone it to to-morrow. She’s some played out and needs sleep.”
“Well, I’m going to see her now.”
Jack turned, still all gentleness, and called to Jim Budd, who was in the store.
“Oh, Jim! Run upstairs and knock on Miss Melissy’s door and tell her Mr. Norris is down here. Ask if she will see him to-night.”
“You’re making a heap of formality out of this, Mr. Buttinsky,” sneered the cowpuncher.
Jack made no answer, unless it were one to whistle gently and look out into the night as if he were alone.
“No, seh. She doan’ wan’ tuh see him to-night,” announced Jim upon his return.
“That seems to settle it, Mr. Norris,” said Jack pleasantly.
“Not by a hell of a sight. I’ve got something to say to her, and I’m going to say it.”
“To-morrow,” amended the officer.
“I said to-night.”
“But your say doesn’t go here against hers. I reckon you’ll wait.”
“Not so’s you could notice it.” The cowpuncher took a step forward toward the stairway, but Flatray was there before him.
“Get out of the way, you. I don’t stand for any butting-in,” the cowboy blustered.
“Don’t be a goat, Norris. She’s tired, and she says she don’t want to see you. That’s enough, ain’t it?”
Norris leaped back with an oath to draw his gun, but Jack had the quickest draw in Arizona. The puncher found himself looking into the business end of a revolver.
“Better change your mind, seh,” suggested the officer amiably. “I take it you’ve been drinking and you’re some excited. If you were in condition to savez the situation, you’d understand that the young lady doesn’t care to see you now. Do you need a church to fall on you before you can take a hint?”
“I reckon if you knew all about her, you wouldn’t be so anxious to stand up for her,” Norris said darkly.
“I expect we cayn’t any of us stand the great white light on all our acts; but if any one can, it’s that little girl upstairs.”
“What would you say if I told you that she’s liable to go to Yuma if I lift my hand?”
“I’d say I was from Missouri and needed showing.”
“Put up that gun, come outside with me, and if I take a notion I’ll show you all right.”
Jack laughed as his gun disappeared. “I’d be willing to bet high that there are a good many citizens around here haided straighter for Yuma than Miss Melissy.”
Without answering, Norris led the way out and stopped only when his arm rested on the fence of the corral.
“Nobody can hear us now,” he said brusquely, and the ranger got a whiff of his hot whisky breath. “You’ve put it up to me to make good. All right, I’ll do it. That little girl in there, as you call her, is the bad man who held up the Fort Alli
son stage.”
The officer laughed tolerantly as he lit a cigarette.
“I hear you say it, Norris.”
“I didn’t expect you to believe it right away, but it’s a fact just the same.”
Flatray climbed to the fence and rested his feet on a rail. “Fire ahead. I’m listenin’.”
“The first men on the ground after that hold-up were me and Lee. We covered the situation thorough and got hold of some points right away.”
“That’s right funny too. When I asked you if you’d been down there you both denied it,” commented the officer.
“We were protecting the girl. Mind you, we didn’t know who had done it then, but we had reasons to think the person had just come from this ranch.”
“What reasons?” briefly demanded Flatray.
“We don’t need to go into them. We had them, anyhow. Then I lit on a foot-print right on the edge of the ditch that no man ever made. We didn’t know what to make of it, but we wiped it out and followed the ditch, one on each side. We’d figured that was the way he had gone. You see, though water was running in the ditch now, it hadn’t been half an hour before.”
“You don’t say!”
“There wasn’t a sign of anybody leaving the ditch till we got to the ranch; then we saw tracks going straight to the house.”
“So you got a bunch of sheep and drove them down there to muss things up some.”
Norris looked sharply at him. “You got there while we were driving them back. Well, that’s right. We had to help her out.”
“You’re helping her out now, ain’t you?” Jack asked dryly.
“That’s my business. I’ve got my own reasons, Mr. Deputy. All you got to do is arrest her.”
“Just as soon as you give me the evidence, seh.”
“Haven’t I given it to you? She was seen to drive away from the house in her rig. She left footprints down there. She came back up the ditch and then rode right up to the head-gates and turned on the water. Jim Little saw her cutting across country from the head-gates hell-to-split.”
“Far as I can make out, all the evidence you’ve given me ain’t against her, but against you. She was out drivin’ when it happened, you say, and you expect me to arrest her for it. It ain’t against the law to go driving, seh. And as for that ditch fairy tale, on your own say-so you wiped out all chance to prove the story.”
“Then you won’t arrest her?”
“If you’ll furnish the evidence, seh.”
“I tell you we know she did it. Her father knows it.”
“Is it worryin’ his conscience? Did he ask you to lay an information against her?” asked the officer sarcastically.
“That isn’t the point.”
“You’re right. Here’s the point.” Not by the faintest motion of the body had the officer’s indolence been lifted, but the quiet ring of his voice showed it was gone. “You and Lee were overheard planning that robbery the day after you were seen hanging around the ’Monte Cristo.’ You started out to hold up the stage. It was held up. By your own story you were the first men on the ground after the robbery. I tracked you straight from there here along the ditch. I found a black mask in Lee’s coat. A dozen people saw you on that fool sheep-drive of yours. And to sum up, I found the stolen gold right here where you must have hidden it.”
“You found the gold? Where?”
“That ain’t the point either, seh. The point is that I’ve got you where I want you, Mr. Norris, alias Mr. Boone. You’re wound up in a net you cayn’t get away from. You’re wanted back East, and you’re wanted here. I’m onto your little game, sir. Think I don’t know you’ve been trying to manufacture evidence against me as a rustler? Think I ain’t wise to your whole record? You’re arrested for robbing the Fort Allison stage.”
Norris, standing close in front of him, shot his right hand out and knocked the officer backward from the fence. Before the latter could get on his feet again the cowpuncher was scudding through the night. He reached his horse, flung himself on, and galloped away. Harmlessly a bullet or two zipped after him as he disappeared.
The deputy climbed over the fence again and laughed softly to himself. “You did that right well, Jack. He’ll always think he did that by his lone, never will know you was a partner in that escape. It’s a fact, though, I could have railroaded him through on the evidence, but not without including the old man. No, there wasn’t any way for it but that grandstand escape of Mr. Boone’s.”
Still smiling, he dusted himself, put up his revolver, and returned to the house.
* * *
CHAPTER XII
THE TENDERFOOT MAKES A PROPOSITION
Melissy waited in dread expectancy to see what would happen. Of quick, warm sympathies, always ready to bear with courage her own and others’ burdens, she had none of that passive endurance which age and experience bring. She was keyed to the heroism of an occasion, but not yet to that which life lays as a daily burden upon many without dramatic emphasis.
All next day nothing took place. On the succeeding one her father returned with the news that the “Monte Cristo” contest had been continued to another term of court. Otherwise nothing unusual occurred. It was after mail time that she stepped to the porch for a breath of fresh air and noticed that the reward placard had been taken down.
“Who did that?” she asked of Alan McKinstra, who was sitting on the steps, reading a newspaper and munching an apple.
“Jack Flatray took it down. He said the offer of a reward had been withdrawn.”
“When did he do that?”
“About an hour ago. Just before he rode off.”
“Rode off! Where did he go?”
“Heard him say he was going to Mesa. He told your father that when he settled the bill.”
“He’s gone for good, then?”
“That’s the way I took it. Say, Melissy, Farnum says Jack told him the gold had been found and turned back to Morse. Is that right?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, it looks blamed funny they could get the bullion back without getting the hold-up.”
“Maybe they’ll get him yet,” she consoled him.
“I wish I could get a crack at him,” the boy murmured vengefully.
“You had one chance at him, didn’t you?”
“José spoiled it. Honest, I wasn’t going to lie down, ’Lissie.”
Again the days followed each other uneventfully. Bellamy himself never came for his mail now, but sent one of the boys from the mine for it. Melissy wondered whether he despised her so much he did not ever want to see her again. Somehow she did not like to think this. Perhaps it might be delicacy on his part. He was going to drop the whole thing magnanimously and did not want to put upon her the obligation of thanking him by presenting himself to her eyes.
But though he never appeared in person, he had never been so much in her mind. She could not rid herself of a growing sympathy and admiration for this man who was holding his own against many. A story which was being whispered about reached her ears and increased this. A bunch of his sheep had been found poisoned on their feeding ground, and certain cattle interests were suspected of having done the dastardly thing.
When she could stand the silence no longer Melissy called up Jack Flatray on the telephone at Mesa.
“You caught me just in time. I’m leaving for Phoenix to-night,” he told her. “What can I do for you, Miss Lee?”
“I want to know what’s being done about that Fort Allison stage hold-up.”
“The money has been recovered.”
“I know that, but—what about the—the criminals?”
“They made their getaway all right.”
“Aren’t you looking for them?”
“No.”
“Did Mr. Morse want you to drop it?”
“Yes. He was very urgent about it.”
“Does he know who the criminals are?”
“Yes.”
“And isn’t going to pro
secute?”
“So he told me.”
“What did Mr. Morse say when you made your report?”
“Said, ‘Thank you.’”
“Oh, yes, but—you know what I mean.”
“Not being a mind-reader——”
“About the suspect. Did he say anything?”
“Said he had private reasons for not pushing the case. I didn’t ask him what they were.”
This was all she could get out of him. It was less than she had hoped. Still, it was something. She knew definitely what Bellamy had done. Wherefore she sat down to write him a note of thanks. It took her an hour and eight sheets of paper before she could complete it to her satisfaction. Even then the result was not what she wanted. She wished she knew how he felt about it, so that she could temper it to the right degree of warmth or coolness. Since she did not know, she erred on the side of stiffness and made her message formal.
“Mr. Thomas L. Morse,
“Monte Cristo Mine.
“Dear Sir:
“Father and I feel that we ought to thank you for your considerate forbearance in a certain matter you know of. Believe me, sir, we are grateful.
“Very respectfully,
“Melissy Lee.”
She could not, however, keep herself from one touch of sympathy, and as a postscript she naïvely added:
“I’m sorry about the sheep.”
Before mailing it she carried this letter to her father. Neither of them had ever referred to the other about what each knew of the affair of the robbery. More than once it had been on the tip of Champ Lee’s tongue to speak of it, but it was not in his nature to talk out what he felt, and with a sigh he had given it up. Now Melissy came straight to the point.
“I’ve been writing a letter to Mr. Morse, dad, thanking him for not having me arrested.”
Lee shot at her a glance of quick alarm.
“Does he know about it, honey?”
“Yes. Jack Flatray found out the whole thing and told him. He was very insistent on dropping it, Mr. Flatray says.”
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