Ten-Gallon was the chief guardian of the interests of the gamblers’ trust of Comanche, which was responsible for his elevation to office–for even the office itself–and which contributed the fund out of which his salary came. It is a curious anomaly of civilization, everywhere under the flag which stretched its stripes in the wind above the little land-office at Comanche, that law-breaking thrives most prosperously under the protection of law.
Gambling in itself had not been prohibited by statute at that time in Wyoming, though its most profitable side diversions–such as dropping paralyzing poisons in a man’s drink, snatching his money and clearing out with it, cracking him on the head with a leaden billet, or standing him up at the point of a pistol and rifling him–were, as now, discountenanced under the laws.
But what profit is there in gambling if the hangers-on, the cappers, the steerers, and the snatchers of crumbs in all cannot find protection under the flag and its institutions? That was what the gamblers’ trust of Comanche wanted to know. In order to insure it they had the city incorporated, and put in a good, limber-wristed bartender as chief of police.
It was to that dignitary that Dr. Slavens’ friends had come with their appeal for assistance. There was discouragement in the very air that surrounded the chief, and in the indifference with which he heard their report. He looked at Agnes with the slinking familiarity of a man who knows but one kind of woman, and judges the world of women thereby. She colored under the insult of his eyes, and Bentley, even-tempered and slow to wrath as he was, felt himself firing to fighting pitch.
“Well,” said the chief, turning from them presently with a long gape, terminating in a ructatious sigh, “I’ll shake out all the drunks in the calaboose this afternoon, and if your friend’s among ’em I’ll send him on over to you. No harm could happen to him here in Comanche. He’d be as safe here, night or day, as he would be playin’ tennis in the back yard at home.”
The chief mentioned that game with scorn and curling of the lip. Then he gazed out of the window vacuously, as if he had forgotten them, his mashed cigar smoking foully between his gemmed fingers.
Bentley looked at Agnes in amazed indignation. When he squared off as if to read his mind to the chief she checked him, and laid her hand on his arm with a compelling pressure toward the door.
“That man’s as crooked as the river over there!” he exclaimed when they had regained the sunlight outside the smoke-polluted office.
“That’s plain,” she agreed; “and it doesn’t mitigate my fears for the doctor’s safety in the least.”
“Walker and I were wrong in our opinion; something has happened to Slavens,” said Bentley.
“Your opinion?” she questioned.
“Well, I should say Walker’s rather,” he corrected. “I only concurred weakly along toward the end. Walker has held out all the time that Slavens went out to hold a celebration all by himself.”
“No; he didn’t do that,” said she calmly. “I thought so for a little while this morning, too. But I know he didn’t. Do you suppose––”
She stopped, as if considering something too extravagant to utter.
“Suppose?” he repeated.
“He talked a good deal about going into the cañon to clear up the mystery of that newspaperman and earn the reward,” said she.
Bentley shook his head.
“He’d hardly start at night and without preparation.”
“He seemed to be a man of peculiar moods. If it came over him suddenly and strongly in an hour of depression he might even go to that desperate length. He believed the difficulties of the cañon were largely exaggerated, anyhow. Once he told me that he would undertake to go through it with nothing more than a pair of moccasins and a lantern. It was his theory that a man would need the moccasins for clinging to the rocks.”
“It’s a queer notion,” said Bentley reflectively.
“Do you think––” she began, halting her words again and looking at him with distended eyes.
“There’s no telling what a man might do when desperate and despondent,” he answered. “But I don’t believe he’d go without leaving some word, or at least making some disposition of his property in writing, in case he never returned. We’ll open his bags and see what we can find.”
They hurried forward to carry out this intention.
The doctor’s baggage consisted of his battered suitcase and the black bag which contained his instruments. Neither was locked, but neither contained any word to explain where he had gone, nor to give support to the belief that he had intended going anywhere.
Walker, whom Bentley and Agnes rejoined at the camp, sat pondering the information supplied by the girl concerning the doctor’s designs on the cañon.
“I’ll tell you,” he declared at length, as if talking to himself, “that man had the nerve to tackle it!”
Agnes looked at him, her face quickening.
“What do you know about him?” she asked.
“I know,” said Walker mysteriously, with no intention of bringing his own indiscretions up for the censure of June and her severe mother, “that he had courage enough to tackle anything. I’ve seen proof of that right here in Comanche, and I want to tell you people that doctor wasn’t any man’s coward.”
“Thank you for saying that,” blurted Agnes, wholly unintentionally, a glow of pride on her cheeks.
Mrs. Reed and June looked at her, the widow with a severe opening of her mouth, out of which no sound came; June with a smile behind her hand.
Walker shook his head.
“He had the courage,” said he, “but he had too much sense to try to go through that cañon. No white man ever went in there and came out alive. And even if the doctor had wanted to go he wouldn’t have started at night.”
“I don’t know that it would make much difference,” said Agnes. “It’s always night in that terrible cañon.”
“And that’s so, too,” Walker agreed. “I think I’ll go over there and take a look around.”
“Do you mind if Mr. Bentley and I go with you?” Agnes asked.
“I was going to suggest it,” Walker replied, looking longingly at June.
June asked permission with her eyes; Mrs. Reed nodded, having overcome her fears of Walker, owing to the substantial credentials which he was able to show. Mrs. Mann put on her hat and slipped her black bag a bit farther up her arm, and stood ready in a moment to join the expedition. Mrs. Reed was to remain alone in camp to watch things, for they had been warned that morning by the hotel people against a band of visiting Indians, who picked up anything and everything that was not anchored at least at one end.
It was late in the afternoon; the sun was low when they reached the river. There wasn’t anything to be made out of the footprints there. The mouth of the cañon had been visited by a great many tourists, some of whom had ventured within a little way to bring out stones for mementos of their daring days of fearsome adventures in the West.
The party stood looking into the mouth of the narrow slit between the high-towering walls. Down there it was already dark; the eye could pierce the gloom but a little way.
“There are places in there where the sun never shines, even for a second a day,” Walker declared. “And that water goes through there with power enough in it to grind a man’s bones against the rocks. There must be a fall of more than a thousand feet.”
“I don’t believe he went in there,” said Agnes with finality, after standing as if trance-bound for a long time, gazing after the foam-white river as it roared into the echoing depths.
“No,” Walker agreed. “He had too much sense for that.”
They were all cheered and lightened by this conclusion. A daylight study of the terrors of the place was sufficient to convince anybody that a man would have to be driven to desperate lengths before he would venture for the dubious reward or narrow notoriety to be gained by following that wild river through its dark way.
“I camped over at the other side one sum
mer,” Walker told them as they turned away to go back to Comanche, “and I used to pick up things that had come through–boards and things that people had dropped in over at Meander. It pounds things up, I tell you!”
“Did you ever pick up any gold on the other side?” asked June.
“I never found a trace of any,” said Walker. “I think that’s all a sheep-herder’s yarn.”
They saw one of the police force in conversation with Mrs. Reed in front of the tent as they drew near, and hastened forward in the hope that he had brought news of the missing man. Mrs. Reed received them with shocked expression, and a gesture of the hands denoting hopelessness for the salvation of the world.
“It’s scandalous!” she declared.
The policeman, a carpenterly looking man full of sandy hairs, stood by, grinning.
“What is it, Mother?” asked June.
“I’ll not repeat what he says,” announced Mrs. Reed. “I will–not–repeat–it!”
They turned to the officer, who wore his tarnished badge–evidently bought after long service in a pawn-shop at Cheyenne–pinned to his suspender at a point where he could turn his eye down on it whenever the longing, or a desire to feed upon the pride of his official importance, overcame him.
“I was tellin’ her that the chief sent me over to say that your friend, the doctor, was seen last night at half-past two in the mornin’, jagged up so tight he took two steps back’ards for every one he went ahead. The chief told me to tell you he was layin’ under a tent somewhere, and that he’d be as safe as a calf in a barn. I hope that’s what you wanted to know.”
The policeman turned and went his dusty way after delivering his message from the chief, the wagon-spoke which he carried at the end of a thong twirling at his wrist.
Walker looked around with a little flash of triumph in his eyes, for a man likes to be vindicated in his opinion, even at the expense of his friends’ honor. But the gust of pain and disappointment which he saw sweep over Agnes’ face set him back with a sudden wrench.
“Say,” said he with an assumption of indignation which he did not altogether feel, “I don’t believe that!”
“Nor I,” declared Bentley, with no need of assuming a part to say it. “I heard a man describing a crook the other day. He said the fellow was so crooked that if you were to shoot him in the top of the head the bullet would make seven holes in his body before it hit the ground. That’s the kind of a man that chief is.”
“Well, it’s scandalous!” declared Mrs. Reed. “Even it he comes back, his conduct is simply disgusting, and I’ll never permit him to address a word to my daughter again!”
Agnes had drawn a little apart from them. She had no heart to come to Dr. Slavens’ defense, although she knew that the charge was calumnious. But it furnished her a sudden and new train of thought. What interest had the chief of police in circulating such a report? Was the motive for Dr. Slavens’ disappearance behind that insidious attempt to discredit him, and fasten a character upon him wholly foreign to his own?
It was a matter worth looking into. Had Dr. Slavens incurred, somehow, the disfavor of the vicious element which was the backbone of the place? And had he paid the penalty of such temerity, perhaps with his life?
Thinking over the futility of a further appeal to the authorities there, and wondering where she could turn for honest assistance beyond William Bentley, who could do no more than herself, Agnes walked away from the camp a short distance, retracing the way they had come.
“Of all the deluded, deceived creatures!” said Mrs. Reed.
“Hush-sh-sh!” said the miller’s wife.
It was almost sunset when Agnes, overtaking her thoughts, halted with a start to find that she had gone half the distance back to the river. Hoping that they would not be waiting supper on her account, she turned and hurried back.
Meanwhile, at camp there had been a little running-up of excitement, occasioned by the arrival of the Governor’s son, who came on a commission from his mother and sister, bearing a note of invitation to Mrs. Reed, her sister, Mrs. Mann, and June Reed.
Jerry Boyle–for that was the name of the Governor’s son–was greatly surprised to find his friend, Joe Walker, in the camp. But that only made it easier for him, he declared, seeing that Walker could vouch for him and put him on unquestionable terms at once.
“Just as if it were necessary!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed, glowing with pleasure. “And you the brother of my daughter’s dearest friend!”
Jerry Boyle seemed older by ten years than Walker. He was a tall man, with a little forward bend to him that gave him an awkward cast. He was dark-skinned and big-nosed, with black eyebrows which met at its bridge and appeared to threaten an invasion of that structure. Little sensitive, expressive ripples ran over his face as he talked, and that was all the time. For Boyle was as voluble as a political press-agent.
Bentley recognized him, even before he was introduced, as the man whom Walker had pointed out in the dance-house the night before. He said nothing about that, but he smiled to himself when he recalled Walker’s anxiety to leave the place. It was a sort of guilty honor, he thought, such as that which was anciently supposed to stand between thieves.
As Agnes approached, Boyle was in the middle of a story of his experiences in Comanche during the days of its infancy. Mrs. Reed, busy about the stove, had grown so deeply interested that she stood with a lamb chop in her hand poised above the frying-pan, her face all smiles. Boyle was seated on a low box, and some of the others were standing around him, hiding him from Agnes, who stopped near the stove on catching the sound of the new voice. Mrs. Reed nodded reassuringly.
“It’s the Governor’s son,” said she.
Boyle caught sight of Agnes at that moment and jumped to his feet. Walker turned to introduce him.
“No need,” said Boyle, striding forward to their great amazement, his hand outstretched. “Miss Gates and I are old friends.”
Agnes drew back with a frightened, shrinking start, her face very white.
“I beg your pardon, sir!” she protested with some little show of indignation.
“This is Miss Horton,” said Walker, coming to her rescue with considerable presence. “She’s one of us.”
Boyle stammered, staring in amazement.
“I apologize to Miss Horton,” said he with something like an insolent emphasis upon the name. “The resemblance is remarkable, believe me!”
Agnes inclined her head in cold acknowledgment, as if afraid to trust her tongue, and passed on into the tent. Boyle stared after her, and a feeling that there was something out of tune seemed to fall upon the party waiting there for supper in the red sunset.
Boyle forgot the rest of his story, and the others forgot to ask him to resume it. He repeated something about remarkable resemblances, and seemed to have fallen into a period of abstraction, from which he roused himself presently with a short, grunting laugh.
“I must be gettin’ on,” said he, arising and taking his cowboy hat from the table, where it lay among the plates–to the great satisfaction and delight of Mrs. Mann, who believed that she had met a real westerner at last.
“Oh, stay for supper!” pleaded June.
“You’ll get enough of me when you come out to the ranch,” he laughed, giving her cheek a brotherly pinch.
While Mrs. Reed would have resented such familiarity with June’s cheek on the part of Mr. Walker, or even Mr. Bentley, she took it as an act of condescension and compliment on the part of the Governor’s son, and smiled.
Walker went off down the street with Boyle, to speed him on his way. The Governor’s son was to send out to the ranch, some forty miles distant, for a conveyance to carry Mrs. Reed and her party thither. It was to be there early on the morning of the second day from that time, that being, for that country, only an easy day’s drive for a double team to a democrat wagon.
There was an uncomfortable air of uneasiness and constraint upon them during supper and afterward, a period usuall
y filled with banter and chatter, and shrill laughter from June. They were not able to get clear of the suspicion raised by Boyle’s apparent recognition of Agnes and her denial that she was Miss Gates. The two older women especially seemed to believe that Agnes had been guilty of some serious misdemeanor in her past.
“He wasn’t mistaken in her identity,” whispered Mrs. Reed to Mrs. Mann when Agnes went in for a wrap as the chill of night began to settle.
Mrs. Mann, charitable and romantic as she was in her mild way, shook her head sadly.
“I’m afraid he wasn’t,” said she.
“I’m sorry that I can’t take June away from here tomorrow,” lamented Mrs. Reed. “There’s something hidden in that woman’s life!”
Agnes had come out silently, as anyone must have come over that velvet-soft earth, which much trampling only made the softer. In the gloom she stood just behind Mrs. Reed. That pure-minded lady did not know that she was there, and was unable to see the rolling warning in her sister’s eyes.
“Would you mind walking over to the stage-office with me, Mr. Bentley?” asked Agnes. “I want to engage passage to Meander for tomorrow.”
On the way to the stage-office they talked matters over between them. Her purpose in going to Meander was, primarily, to enlist the sheriff of the county in the search for Dr. Slavens, and, remotely, to be there when her day came for filing on a piece of land.
“I made up my mind to do it after we came back from the cañon,” she explained. “There’s nothing more to be hoped for here. That story the police told us only strengthens my belief that a crime has been committed, and in my opinion that chief knows all about it, too.”
She said nothing of Boyle and the start that his salutation had given her. Whatever Bentley thought of that incident he kept to himself. But there was one thing in connection with Boyle’s visit which he felt that she should know.
“The Governor’s son told Walker that he saw the doctor late last night in about the same condition as that policeman described,” he said. “It came up when Walker asked Boyle to keep an eye open and let us know if he happened to run across him.”
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