by Alan Lemay
"Sure not. But that didn't matter. It'sMcCord's identification that counts. Of course, it might have been that that gun had wound up at the Bar Hook, and that Elliot walked in and borrowed it, the same as he did Campo's rifle. In that case, of course, there wouldn't have been any tangible evidence against Elliot, and we'd have lost out all around. But I figured that the killer would have shot quick with his own gun, in Zack's case; and then shoved the same gun into Zack's hand. He would have been in a hurry to get out of there about then."
"But how did you know that the gun in Sanders' hand wasn't Zack's own gun? Now there that was the turning point of the whole thing."
"You didn't see that that wasn't Zack's gun?"
"Can I know every gun in the rimrock? How could any man guess it wasn't his?"
"You mean you thought Zack rode all over Wolf Bench carrying that gun in his hand?"
"In his hand? What you driving at?"
"He would have had to carry it in his hand. Sanders had no gun belt," Kentucky reminded him - "he wasn't even wearing boots. And there wasn't a single pocket in his clothes that that gun would go in!"
ITHIN an hour after the showdown which had thrown Elliot into the sheriff's hands, Hopper had forgotten his gratification over the solution in his alarm over the storm which he was sure would follow. Tomorrow word of the charge against Elliot would have swept the rimrock. Already Floyd Hopper could see himself facing the mobs which he now supposed would wish to take the law into their own hands-mobs made difficult by the unnoisy but peculiarly efficient purposefulness of cowmen who have made up their minds. If the sheriff knew his brush poppers and he thought he did unpleasantness was going to come down on him in sheets; and he was already more interested in plans to smuggle Elliot to some far safe confinement than he was in what had already been accomplished.
With only a few hours' margin for the completion of preventive measures the sheriff barged off to Waterman. With him went his brother, Doe Hopper, who had been rushed out meantime to administer first aid;and Bill McCord.
Late afternoon found the Bar Hook locked in that restive, exhausted quiet which follows any kind of explosion. Somewhere in the house Willie Helmar sat watchfully beside the wounded Elliot, who propped himself up in bed and smoked interminably, saying nothing at all. Ted Baylor had left, and Campo had drawn off by himself and into himself, in what mood no one knew.
Kentucky Jones sat alone in the big kitchen, slowly drinking coffee that he did not want, and watching, through the smoke of his cigarette, the golden motes that swam in the horizontal sunlight from the west.
He wanted to talk to Jean knew that he must talk to Jean; and he dreaded it, for he had no remotest notion of what he would be able to say. Now that the war of the 88 upon the Bar Hook was killed at the source, and the death of Mason no longer was a mystery which hung over Campo Ragland, Kentucky Jones found himself comprehending, as if for the first time, the full weight of the burden which Jean had chosen to bear alone.
At one time, he thought, Jean must have believed her father guilty of the murder of Mason. For him she had smothered the evidence, at once concealing her father's supposed involvement and concealing her knowledge from Campo himself. To her Lee Bishop had told a story which he himself did not understand; she had known the exact status of St. Marie and Kentucky Jones, and the truth about the missing rifle and the picture that was gone from its frame. What Kentucky had said was true-that every one had confided in her, and she had confided in none. And through every hour of those days she most certainly had known that she was carrying in her own hands the lives of men who meant more to her than any others in the world.
As Kentucky considered this it seemed to him that he had never witnessed in any man the gameness, the courage, nor the fixed fidelity of purpose that this one slender girl had shown.
He wanted to seek her out now, and tell her that he knew what she had faced; and that the victory was not Sheriff Hopper's, nor his own, but hers, and hers only. And he knew he would have no words to express any part of that. He almost convinced himself this was not the time to try to talk to her; that he should pack out of there, and go to Waterman, and come back some time a long while later.
Then a door closed softly in another part of the house, and he jerked to his feet.
He found her at the stable shed where the saddles were. She had already roped a pony the same pony with which she had met him early that morning upon the trail and she was saddling with hurried, unsteady hands, within the shadow of the shed.
"Where you going, Jean?"
"What do you care where I'm going?" she said in a small vague voice. "Who gives a whoop? Least of all myself"
He went to his saddle, and took down his rope. She watched him shake out a little cat-loop.
"What what are you going to do?"
"I thought," he said, "I'd reach me down a horse, and come along."
Her hands dropped the latigo, and she turned to face him. Except that it was daylight now, and the low sun behind her outlined her figure with flame, they stood now almost as they had stood here the night that he had trapped her, after her unexplained rendezvous with Bob Elliot.
"No!" she told him. "No, no! I don't want you to come. I I want to be alone-" Her face was white, and her mouth quivered.
"Just as you want, Jean," he answered slowly. "Only I just thought that you and I had been through too much here, together, to ride two trails now. I don't blame you though, if you hate the hell out of me."
"It isn't that," she said brokenly. "Kentucky, it isn't that. It's myself that I hate the hell out of."
"Why, child, what's the matter?"
Suddenly Jean broke. She sat down in a heap upon a spare saddle, and hid her face in her arms. "I-wish I were dead." The words came to him half smothered, inarticulate. "I wish I'd never been born."
He dropped to one knee beside her. "Jean! What is it?"
"Lee Bishop poor Lee"
Kentucky considered. "Did you love him, Jean?"
For a moment she lifted her face to stare at him. "Did I what? Love him? No. But oh, dear God, Kentucky it's my fault he isn't alive today."
"What nonsense is this?" he demanded.
She had hidden her face again, but she shook her head. "I killed him, Kentucky; I killed him just as sure as-as if I'd gunned him myself."
"That's the worst bunk I ever heard in my life!"
She shook her head again; her words were muffled and incoherent. "You don't know. You don't know. ...If only I'd trusted you then! I've trusted you since, Kentucky; I have, I have! I'd put anything in the world in your hands, with never a flicker of a doubt. But then-I thought I had to play it out alone. Everybody trusted me, but I trusted nobody - just as you said. After Lee told me he had seen Mason here the day Mason died - I knew it was Bob Elliot he had seen. And when Elliot began swamping our range I phoned him, and rode out to meet him, and I tried to bluff him out I told him that. Lee had seen him there that we could turn the case against him if he opened the play. I thought I could hold that over him, and bluff him off. Instead it only meant Lee's death. Kentucky, Kentucky, it's my fault he's dead. If ever blame could be placed in this world, that blame is on me!"
"Poor child," he said. "Poor child! Jean, I guess Lee didn't tell you it all; but he told me before he died. Didn't Lee tell you that he hailed the man he thought was Mason? He hailed, and waved; the other didn't answer but it's certain that Elliot knew Lee saw him, because McCord tried to pick a fight with Bishop, before you talked to Elliot. Don't you see? The cards were against Lee all the time, and you had nothing to do with it at all."
She lifted her face, and gripped both his arms. "Kentucky is this true are you sure"
"Why, of course, child. I"
Once more she hid her face, this time weeping unrestrainedly. Kentucky gathered her into his arms. "Whatever else has happened here," he told her, "this thing is true: nobody in the world has ever been as game, and as brave, and as true as you've been, through all this long stampede.
There isn't your equal any place, and never has been, you hear me? And not a man of us here, or anywhere, is fit to saddle your bronc."
Presently, as he held her, the shuddering jerk of her breathing subsided, and she was quiet in his arms. "It's been so lonely, so terrible, for so long," she whispered at last. "Hold me tight, Kentucky; don't let me go."
"No," he answered; "not ever any more."
THE END
*Only about 50% of the land in New Mexico and 17% of the land in Arizona is privately owned (1925). Of Nevada's 550,000 cattle, 85% are on open range.
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Jones already knew that the Bar Hook was at least half on public domain. By the cowman's code Campo
