The Sixth Western Novel

by Jackson Gregory

  “It isn’t very welcoming, is it?” said Lorna, with a queer little twitch of her mouth. “Maybe that’s for me to read; maybe she changed her mind about my coming to stay with her, and so, instead of meeting me, she put it up for me to read!”

  They rode on into the valley and presently came to the winding creek slipping whisperingly along between its low banks along which trees had been planted—broad leaved poplars and swift growing weeping willows for the most part. A mile farther on the meadow lands narrowed and the hills began to encroach on both sides, rocky brushy hills baking in the sun. Then the hills pinched in closer and closer, so that the creek came tumbling through a narrow, steep-walled canon—and beyond that lay that section of the ranch which gave its name to all, Palm Valley. Here was a tiny, narrow, elongated, crooked valley, hardly more than a deep dusky ravine, only wide enough at its upper end for the farmhouses and corrals and some twenty acres of land, and all along the watercourse and on the slopes of the sheltering hills were groves of shady native palms. The air was fresh and cool and sweet; there was an orange orchard behind the house and the scent of orange blossoms was like honey in the air. “It’s the most wonderful place in the world, I think,” said Lorna softly.

  The house was a tiny, tidy place in a flower garden; its walls were a grayish-white, its windows blue-trimmed.

  “Well, here we are,” said Dorn, and of a sudden found that the journey had been short. “I’ll stop a moment and say howdy to your aunt.”

  She was out of the saddle and ran up the steps ahead of him. There was a screen of morning glory vines veiling the front porch; for an instant he lost sight of her. Then she came running down the steps again, calling: “Bill Dorn!”

  She couldn’t see him anywhere. There stood her horse, but there was no sign of Bill Dorn or his blue roan.

  “The great big dunce! If he’s gone off and left me—” But he hadn’t gone far, only a couple of hundred yards to something he had glimpsed on a hill slope, something that he had never seen there before. Now as she hurried to the corner of the house she saw him riding back, up near the barn; his head was down and he seemed deep in thought. She called to him and at the queer tense tone of her voice he came spurring.

  She led him up the steps to the door. Here again was a fresh sign, heavily penciled on cardboard like the other. This one read like a slap in the face. It said: “This Is My Place. Keep Out.” And it was signed by Mike Bundy.

  “Let’s go inside,” said Bill Dorn. “I’ve something to tell you.”

  “B-but this sign! Can it be that Aunt Nell sold to Mike Bundy and left—without a word to me? And how can we go in—if it’s Mike Bundy’s now!”

  “To hell with Mike Bundy,” snapped Bill Dorn. He began hunting a way to enter. The front door was solid oak; the windows were shuttered. At the rear he found a window boarded up from the outside. He pried the boards loose, got the window up and crawled in. Making his way through the darkened, gloomily hushed house, he was wondering how he was going to break the news to her of the new-made grave on the hillslope, of the plain headboard whose message would explain to her why her aunt had not met her in Nacional.

  CHAPTER V

  When had unsaddled and watered and stabled the horses, Bill Dorn came loafing down from the corral, allowing the girl in the house a few moments alone. He was thinking of the consternation written large on her expressive face, and his eyes clouded as he recalled how of a sudden hers had grown wet. He had hurried out to the horses before the first tear could spill over.

  But there was not a tear, not even a trace of one when he returned. She had opened the little house wide to sun and air, every door and window open; she had hurriedly bathed her hot face in the cool water that came gurgling down the pipe from the spring; she met him at the door and said, sounding quite gay:

  “Welcome to my poor adobe, Mr. Sudden Bill.”

  “Thankee, lady,” said Sudden Bill, and grinned at her as he had grinned once before, back there by the desert pool. He added lightly as he came in, “You seem to have all my names and titles.” And then he demanded, suddenly serious: “Now what? What are you going to do next—after the horses are rested a bit?”

  “I am going to stay right here,” said Lorna.

  “But—”

  “Will you sit down? I’ll have some coffee ready and a snack of sorts in a jiffy—thank heaven no one has raided the larder. And I want to ask you a question or two.”

  “Shoot,” said Bill Dorn.

  “Tell me about Mike Bundy. You and he were friends. You’re not friends any longer. You meant to kill him last night! Tell me about him. What sort is he, square or crooked?”

  He frowned at her. Somehow he didn’t care to talk about Michael to anyone. Then he shrugged a weakness aside.

  “Crooked as hell. But what about it?”

  “I don’t believe this place belongs to him!” she cried hotly. “Oh, listen, Bill! You say that—that the grave out there was dug about a week ago—and it’s only about ten days ago that I got a letter from her. She said that she felt she was getting old, that she couldn’t last forever, that she was lonesome for one of her own stock, that I was to come and stay with her, if I could stand the stillness of these hills, for always. And she said something else—that she was making her will, that she was leaving whatever she had left, Palm Valley included, to me! Then just a few days later she was found dead. Do you think that during that time she would have sold the ranch, after inviting me, after what she had said in her letter? Hmf!” said Lorna eloquently. “I know better! And when it comes to just plain thinking things, if you want to know what I think, it’s that Mike Bundy murdered her and is trying to steal the ranch!”

  “Whoa!” said Bill Dorn. They regarded each other soberly a moment. Then he shook his head slowly. “No; you can’t tie murder to Bundy. He’s not a man to make a misstep like that. Certainly not to steal an outfit like this which, at the outside, couldn’t be worth more than ten or twelve thousand dollars.”

  “What did kill Aunt Nell then?” she demanded. “And how does it happen that Mike Bundy claims the ranch?”

  He shook his head again. Then, “Have you still got that letter?” he asked.

  “It’s in my suitcase.”

  “Too bad. Good-bye letter. Did your aunt say that she was going to make her will in your favor—or that she had already done so?”

  Lorna Kent wrinkled her little nose up, a trick of hers when meditating and fearful that she wasn’t going to find facts to turn out exactly as desired.

  “I’m afraid I can’t remember her exact words; whether she said, ‘I am leaving you everything,’ or, ‘I have left you everything,’ or ‘I am going to leave you everything,’ I just don’t know. But somehow I have the impression she had already made her will. I—I didn’t like to think of it; honestly I didn’t! For you see, Aunt Nell was so g-good to me, even though she quarreled with my mother and never liked my father; and she did everything she could for me, sending me to school, remembering me at Christmas time—I didn’t want to think of her ever dying—”

  “If she did make a will,” he suggested, “likely she had it witnessed. Likely too that it’s somewhere about. She might have sent it to a bank or a lawyer; but it’s just as likely that it’s somewhere about the house. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to look.”

  “Later; not now,” said Lorna. She glanced about her through the hushed house. The place, small as it was, had two bedrooms with bath between, a long, cool, Indian-rugged living room, a cozy dining room looking out under wide overhanging eaves to the hills, a gay, spick-and-span kitchen. She added: “I promised to feed you. Also it seems to me that I invited you to sit down. Make yourself at home, Mr. Bill Dorn,” she concluded, and went into the kitchen.

  Promptly he followed her. While she was hunting the coffee he said bluntly, “You can’t stay out here all alone very well.”

  �
��I’d rather be alone here than in Nacional! Or out in the desert listening to the coyotes. So, until I’m thrown out, here’s where I am going to be.”

  She found the coffee, lighted a coal oil stove, put the pot on and began an inspection of the tins on a pantry shelf.

  “By the way,” he asked, as though a pertinent thought had just struck him, “are you sure that you really are Lorna Kent and Mrs. Kent’s niece?”

  “What do you think?” she said over her shoulder.

  “Well,” said Dorn, “I’m not paid to think. But seems as though, when you told me your name back there, you sort of hesitated. How about it?”

  “Hmf!” said Lorna. She went on to add, “If you take canned milk with your coffee, here’s the can.”

  She brought the tin to the oilcloth-covered table, and he started operations with a can opener. Frowning over his task, while she still rummaged, he said: “Your aunt never lived here all alone. There was generally a young girl; not always the same girl. Then there was always one man on the job outside, sometimes two, tending to stock, running the ranch. Today the place reeks with desertion.”

  “That’s queer.” She too started frowning. “I saw some horses out in the field.”

  “There’s a handful of chickens, too. There’s always a string of white ducks going down to the creek or swimming or coming back from the creek. And some turkeys and anyhow two geese. Not a man in sight to take care of anything. Sure, it’s queer.”

  “Mike Bundy chased them off; I know!” She said it as though she did actually know. “He had some reason. Oh, I’m going to hate that man!”

  Dorn got the can open and she brought some tinned green peas and string beans and, for dessert, sliced pineapple.

  “If this should turn out to be Mike Bundy’s property,” she said, quite gay about it, “I suppose he can send us to jail for theft on top of housebreaking. So we better make a good meal while we’re at it.”

  “Right,” agreed Dorn.

  “Won’t that frown ever come off?” she asked. “You’re looking gloomier and gloomier. What now?”

  “Thinking,” he muttered. “I told you I saw your aunt less than a month ago. I’ve known her four or five years; we got along, she and I. She sent for me and I came. Now I wish to thunder I had stayed away! You see, she had asked my advice two or three times; once about buying the lower end of the valley, then about some stock, then about selling a bit of property she had down along the border. Any man likes to give advice, and I guess I spread myself. In each case she played it my way, and in each case it came out right. Then this last time when she sent word to me to stop in some time, she asked me some questions which I wish now I hadn’t answered.”

  “Something about Mike Bundy!” she exclaimed swiftly.

  He stared at her. “How do you know? Well, yes, that’s what it was. She said Bundy wanted her to chip in on one of his oil projects. And I told her, making it as emphatic as I knew how, that Bundy was absolutely the safest, soundest man in the world. From what I know now—Well, I suppose he bled her for every cent she had lying around loose. And maybe somehow, through the deal, Bundy got title even to her ranch. That sort of thing, I discovered only yesterday, is what he has been doing.” He made a wry face. “I know he did that to me.”

  “What a fool you must have been!”

  “Sure. I trusted him.”

  “And when you give your trust—”

  He shrugged. “You don’t call it trust, do you, if it doesn’t go all the way? And now do we eat all these victuals cold? Where are the pots and pans?”

  Both were thoughtful, little given to words, as together they prepared their meal and as they ate it. Lorna was spooning up her pineapple juice when she said abruptly, “You said there was one thing you wouldn’t put at Mike Bundy’s door, murder.”

  “He makes too sure of every step. He’s a crook, yes, but within the law. He’s too cautious for murder.”

  “I heard a lot of chatter in Nacional,” she went on, “men chattering like parrots, pouring out twice as much gossip as women. More than once, when they were on the common topic, I heard it said that just three men knew all about the new gold strike. They were Mike Bundy and Jake Fanning and One Eye Perez. And now? Well, Mike Bundy’s the only one of the three alive!”

  “Look here! If you mean—”

  “The two others were murdered, weren’t they?”

  Harder than ever did he stare at her, looking down that long nose of his like a man sighting a rifle.

  “Do you realize, young woman,” he rasped out, “that there were two men last night who told the world that they saw you pull down on Perez?”

  “They were liars!” she flared out. Then she asked, “Just what do you know about them?”

  “They’re gunmen, killers of the worst sort even the border ever bred. Hank Smith and Mex Fontana. And just now they’re—” He broke off and a queer look widened his eyes. “By thunder, they’re new henchmen that Michael Bundy has taken on!”

  “You see?” said Lorna, and it meant, “Well, didn’t I tell you so?”

  “I’m off to look at the horses,” he said, and went out. Before he came back he saw a lot of things besides the two stabled animals which he scarcely noted at all. There were signs for him to read in the road that went by the barn and to the Upper End, and they told him that many men had ridden this way today, the crowd rushing on to the Blue Smokes, who would naturally come through Palm Valley. It would seem then that the mob, led no doubt by Stock Morgan, Ken Fairchild and their hangers on, had talked turkey in such fashion with Bundy that they had made him see wisdom in having them ride with him to the new Golconda in the Blue Smokes.

  “There were more than a hundred men, two hundred maybe,” mused Bill Dorn, “that rode through here today hell-for-leather. And there’s bound to be ten times that many pounding the trail inside the week. Men swarming like flies to the honey pot.”

  He grew conscious of a gathering about him of a lot of barnyard fowls, chickens, turkeys, a couple of guinea hens. They looked hungry. He went into the barn, found a grain bin and fed them. “If Michael does own this place, why hasn’t he left a man here in charge?” Perhaps he had; perhaps the hired man, like all the rest, had rushed off after gold, dropping and forgetting all commonplace chores.

  “If that girl is Nellie Kent’s niece—hang it, who’s going to vouch for her? She might be the devil’s stepdaughter, for all I know.”

  He looked down the palm-studded ravine opening up into the broadening green valley; it was as pretty as a picture. He turned toward the thirty-miles-distant Blue Smokes Mountains; they always veiled themselves in purples and violets and smoky grays, withdrawing behind shimmering transparent curtains, somehow hinting of mysteries even in broad daylight. He thought: “I’ve loafed here long enough. My horse is rested by now.”

  When he went back to the house Lorna was in the hammock on the front porch, gazing far off through the screening of morning glories, her eyes trafficking with the all but limitless southern distances. At his step she roused herself and on the instant was as brisk as a cricket. But it was Dorn who spoke first.

  “How could you prove that you’re Lorna Kent?”

  “Mercy, Mr. Bill Dorn! I haven’t the least idea!”

  “Anybody around here who could identify you?”

  “Only you,” she said serenely. He cocked up his ragged eyebrows, and she laughed at him. “Didn’t I tell you that I was none other than Lorna Kent?”

  “Sure. That would help a lot, wouldn’t it? Where are the nearest persons who do know you?”

  “Baltimore. How far is that? Three thousand miles?”

  “Your geography’s first class.”

  “You asked me where I was going from here. May I ask you the same question?”

  “To the Blue Smokes.”

  “When?”

  �
�Pronto.”

  “Look me in the eye, Bill Dorn!” He did so, his eyes low-lidded, revealing nothing. She exclaimed impatiently: “You say you wished that you hadn’t advised Aunt Nell. You feel morally responsible for her losses—if she did lose, and we both fancy she did. It becomes my loss now, doesn’t it? And I gather that there are other people of whom you think well, people who think or thought well of you, that you have also helped along in the general direction of ruination?”

  “That’s what’s eating me up!” said Dorn, and glared at her.

  “And so you’d step along and kill Mike Bundy!”

  “Yes, I’ll kill the skunk.”

  If a girl as pretty as Lorna Kent ever actually sneered, the sneering was done right then. There was nothing but contempt in her expression as she remarked with a sort of italicized sarcasm: “That will be so nice of you, Mr. Dorn! Oh, it will help a lot, won’t it? All the people who have been robbed by Mike Bundy, a lot of them through your connivance, will get all their money back that way, won’t they? With Mike Bundy nice and dead and buried, and you in jail or hung or on the jump to save your precious skin, they’ll have every chance to make up all their losses, won’t they? Oh, I could bite you!”

  “What the devil are you driving at?” snapped Dorn. She jerked her head up like a skittish colt tossing its young mane, and started to go into the house only to have him catch her by the arm. “Let’s have the rest of it while you’re in just the right mood to warm up to it.”

  She jerked free but stood where she was, her breast rising and falling swiftly, her eyes now as hot as his. But when she spoke she held herself in check, her voice low but tense.

  “Mike Bundy is a crook; you say so. He has robbed many, you among the rest. If you kill him, or if he has the better luck and kills you, there is an end. If he is kept alive, and if you’re half the man he is, you can somehow—don’t ask me how! Somehow!—you can square your debt with your friends, and make Mike Bundy dig up every single cent that his dirty claws stole. And there you have what’s on my mind, Mr. Headlong Blind Bull Bill Dorn, while I’m exactly in the mood and all warmed up to it!”