“I do not know, for I have neither seen Crumb nor Allen since; but when I read in the paper that he had been arrested that night, I guessed that Crumb had done it. I heard Crumb ask him to deliver some snow to a man in Hollywood. I know that Crumb is a bad man, and that he was trying to steal your share of the money from Allen.”
The man thought in silence for several minutes, the lines of his heavy face evidencing the travail with which some new idea was being born. Presently he looked up, the light of cunning gleaming in his evil eyes.
“You go now,” he said. “I know you! Allen tell me about you a long time ago. You Crumb’s woman, and your name is Gaza. You will not tell anything about us to your rich friends the Penningtons — you bet you won’t!”
The Mexican laughed loudly, winking at his companions.
Shannon could feel the burning flush that suffused her face. She closed her eyes in what was almost physical pain, so terrible did the humiliation torture her pride, and then came the nausea of disgust. The man had dropped her reins, and she wheeled Baldy about.
“You will not come Friday night?” she asked, wishing some assurance that her sacrifice had not been entirely unavailing.
“Mr. Pennington will not find us Friday night, and so he will not be shot.”
She rode away then; but there was a vague suspicion lurking in her mind that there had been a double meaning in the man’s final words.
Custer Pennington, occupied in the office for a couple of hours after lunch, had just come from the house, and was standing on the brow of the hill looking out over the ranch toward the mountains. His gaze, wandering idly at first, was suddenly riveted upon a tiny speck moving downward from the mouth of a distant ravine — a moving speck which he recognized, even at that distance, to be a horseman, where no horseman should have been. For a moment he watched it, and then, returning to the house, he brought out a pair of binoculars. Now they were clearly revealed by the powerful lenses, the horse and its rider — Baldy and Shannon!
After a while he saw her emerge from Horse Camp Canyon and follow the road to her own place. Custer ran his fingers through his hair in perplexity. He was troubled not only because Shannon had ridden without him, after telling him that she could not ride that afternoon, but also because of the direction in which she had ridden — the trail of which he had told her that he thought it led to the solution of the mystery of the nocturnal traffic. He had told her that he would not ride it before Saturday, for fear of arousing the suspicions of the men he wished to surprise in whatever activity they might be engaged upon; and within a few hours she had ridden deliberately into the mountains on that very trail.
The more Custer considered the matter; the more perplexed he became. At last he gave it up in sheer disgust. Doubtless Shannon would tell him all about it when he called for her later in the afternoon. He tried to forget it; but the thing would not be forgotten.
Several times he realized, with surprise, that he was hurt because she had ridden without him. He tried to argue that he was not hurt, that it made no difference to him, that she had a perfect right to ride with or without him as she saw fit, and that he did not care a straw one way or the other.
Yet, argue as he would, the fact remained that it had made a difference, and that he was considering Shannon now in a new light. Just what the change meant he probably could not have satisfactorily explained, had he tried; but he did not try. He knew that there was was a difference, and that his heart ached when it should not ache. It made him angry with himself, with the result that he went to his room and had another drink.
Shannon, too, felt the difference. She thought that it was her own guilty conscience, though why she should feel guilt for having risked so much for his sake she did not know. Instinctively she was honest, and so to deceive one who she loved, even for a good purpose, troubled her.
At dinner that night Eva was unusually quiet until the colonel, noticing it, asked if she was ill.
“There!” she cried. “You all make life miserable for me because I talk too much, and then, when I give you a rest, you ask if I am ill. What shall I do? If I talk, I pain you. If I fail to talk, I pain you; but if you must know, I am too thrilled to talk just now — I am going to be married!”
“All alone?” inquired Custer.
Guy grinned sheepishly, and was about to venture an explanation when Eva interrupted him. The others at the table were watching the two with amused smiles.
“You see, momsy,” said Eva, addressing her mother, “Guy has sold a story. He got a thousand dollars for it — a thousand!”
“Oh, not a thousand!” expostulated Guy.
“Well, it was nearly a thousand — if it had been three hundred dollars more it would have been — and so now that our future’s assured we are going to be married. I hadn’t intended to mention it until Guy had talked with popsy, but this will be very much nicer, and easier for Guy.”
They were all laughing now, including Eva and Guy. The tears were rolling down Custer’s cheeks.
“That editor was guilty of grand larceny when he offered you seven hundred berries for the story. Why the gem alone is easily worth a thousand. Adieu, Mark Twain! Farewell, Bill Nye! You’ve got ’em all nailed to the post, Guy Thackeray!”
The colonel wiped his eyes.
“I gather,” he said,. “that you two children wish to get married. Do I surmise correctly?”
“Oh, popsy, you’re just wonderful!” exclaimed Eva.
“Yes, how did you guess it, father?” asked Custer. “Marvelous deductive faculties for an old gentleman, I’ll say!”
“That will be about all from you, Custer,” admonished the colonel.
“Any time that I let a chance like this slip!” returned young Pennington. “Do you think I have forgotten how those two imps pestered the life out of Grace and me a few short years ago? Nay, nay!”
“I don’t blame Custer a bit,” said Mrs. Evans.
“Guy and Eva certainly did make life miserable for him and Grace.”
“That part of it is all right — it is Guy’s affair and Eva’s; but did you hear him refer to me as an old gentleman?”
They all laughed.
“But you are a gentleman,” insisted Custer.
The colonel, his eyes twinkling, turned to Mrs. Evans.
“Times have changed, Mae, since we were children. Imagine speaking thus to our fathers!”
“I’m glad they have changed, Custer. It’s terrible to see children afraid of their parents. It has driven so many of them away from home.”
“No danger of that here,” said the colonel.
“It is more likely to be the other way around,” suggested Mrs. Pennington. “In the future we may hear of parents leaving home because of the exacting tyranny of their children.”
“My children shall be brought up properly,” announced Eva, “with proper respect for their elders.”
“Guided by the shining example of their mother,” said Custer.
“And their Uncle Cutie,” she retorted.
“Come now,” interrupted the colonel, “let’s hear something of your plans. When are you going to be married?”
“Yes,” offered Custer. “Now that the seven hundred dollars has assured their future, there is no reason why they shouldn’t be married at once and take a suite at the Ambassador. I understand they’re as low as thirty-five hundred a month.”
“Aw, I have more than the seven hundred,” said Guy. “I’ve been saving up for a long time. We’ll have plenty to start with.”
Shannon noticed that he flushed just a little as he made the statement, and she alone knew why he flushed. It was too bad that Custer’s little sister should start her married life on money of that sort!
Shannon felt that at heart Guy was a good boy — that he must have been led into this traffic without any adequate realization of its criminality. Her own misfortune had made her generously ready to seek excuses for wrongdoing in others; but she dreaded to think what it was goin
g to mean to Eva and the other Penningtons if ever the truth became known. From her knowledge of the sort of men with whom Guy was involved, she was inclined to believe that the menace of exposure or blackmail would hang over him for many years, even if the former did not materialize in the near future; for authorities, they would immediately involve him, and would try to put the full burden of responsibility upon his shoulders.
“I don’t want the financial end of matrimony to worry either of you,” the colonel was saying. “Guy has chosen a profession in which it may require years of effort to produce substantial returns. All I shall ask of my daughter’s husband is that he shall honestly apply himself to his work. If you do your best, Guy, you will succeed, and in the meantime I’ll take care of the finances.”
CHAPTER 21
On the following Monday a pock-marked Mexican appeared at the county jail in Los Angeles, during visitor’s hours, and asked to see Slick Allen. The two stood in a corner and conversed in whispers. Allen’s face wore an ugly scowl when his visitor told him of young Pennington’s interference with their plans.
“It’s getting too hot for us around there,” said Allen. “We got to move. How much junk you got left?”
“About sixty cases of booze. We got rid of nearly three hundred cases on the cast side, without sending ’em through Evans. There isn’t much of the other junk left — a couple of pounds altogether, at the outside.”
“We got to lose the last of the booze,” said Allen; “but we’ll get our money’s worth out of it. Now you listen, and listen careful, Bartolo.”
He proceeded very carefully and explicitly to explain the details of a plan which brought a grin of sinister amusement to the face of the Mexican. It was not an entirely new plan, but rather an elaboration and improvement of one that Allen had conceived some time before in the event of a contingency similar to that which had now arisen.
“And what about the girl?” asked Bartolo. “She should pay well to keep the Pennington’s from knowing.”
“Leave her to me,” replied Allen. “I shall not be in jail forever.”
During the ensuing days of that late September week, when Shannon and Custer rode together, there was a certain constraint in their relations that was new and depressing. The girl was apprehensive of the outcome of his adventure on the rapidly approaching Friday, while he could not rid himself of the haunting memory of her solitary and clandestine ride over the mysterious trail that led into the mountains.
At last Friday came. Neither had reverted, since the previous Saturday, to the subject that was uppermost in the minds of each; but now Shannon could not refrain from seeking once more to defer Custer from his project. She had not been able to forget the sinister smile of the Mexican, or to rid her mind of an intuitive conviction that the man’s final statement had concealed a hidden threat. They were parting at the fork of the road — she had hesitated until the last moment.
“You still intend to try to catch those men tonight?” she asked.
“Yes — why?”
“I had hoped you would give it up. I am afraid something may happen. I - oh, please don’t go, Custer!” She wished that she might add: “For my sake.”
He laughed shortly. “I guess there won’t be any trouble. If there is, I can take care of myself.”
She saw that it was useless to insist further.
“Let me know if everything is all right,” she asked. “Light the light in the big cupola on the house when you get back — I can see it from my bedroom window — and then I shall know that nothing has happened. I shall be watching for it.”
“All right,” Custer promised, and they parted.
When he reached the house, the ranch bookkeeper came to tell him that the Los Angeles operator had been trying to get him all afternoon.
“Somebody in L. A. wants to talk to you on important business,” said the bookkeeper. “You’re to call back the minute you get here.” Five minutes later he had his connection. An unfamiliar voice asked if he were the younger Mr. Pennington.
“I am,” he replied.
“Some one cut your fence last Friday. You like to know who he is?”
“What about it? Who are you?”
“Never mind who I am. I was with them. They double-crossed me. You want to catch ‘em?”
“I want to know who they are, and why they cut my fence, and what the devil they’re up to back there in the hills.”
“You listen to me. You sabe Jackknife Canyon?”
“Yes.”
“To-night they bring down the load just before dark. They do that every Friday, and hide the burros until very late. Then they come down into the valley while every one is asleep. To-night they hide ’em in Jackknife. They tie ’em there an’ go away. About ten o’clock they come back. You be there nine o’clock, and you catch ’em when they come back. Sabe?
“How many of ’em are there?”
“Only two. You don’t have to be afraid — they don’t pack no guns. You take gun an’ you catch ’em all alone.”
“But how do I know that. you’re not stringing me?”
“You listen. They double-cross me. I get even. You no want to catch ‘em, I no care — that’s all. Goodbye!”
Custer turned away from the phone, running his fingers through his hair in a characteristic gesture signifying perplexity. What should he do? The message sounded rather fishy, he thought; but it would do no harm to have a look into Jackknife Canyon around nine o’clock. If he was being tricked, the worst he could fear was that they had taken this method of luring him to Jackknife while they brought the loaded burros down from the hills by some other route. If they had done that, it was very clever of them; but he would not be fooled a second time.
Custer Pennington didn’t care to be laughed at, and so, if he was going to be hoaxed that night, he had no intention of having a witness to his idiocy. For that reason he did not take Jake with him, but rode alone up Sycamore when all the inmates of the castle on the hill thought him in bed and asleep.
When he turned into Jackknife, he reined the Apache in and sat for a moment listening. From farther up the canyon, out of sight, there came the shadow of a sound. That would be the tethered burros, he thought, if the whole thing was not a trick; but he was certain that he heard the sound of something moving there.
He rode on again, but he took the precaution of loosening his gun in its holster. There was, of course, the bare possibility of a sinister motive behind the message he had received. As he thought of it now, it occurred to him that his informant was perhaps a trifle too insistent in assuring him that it was safe to come up here alone. Well, the man had put it over cleverly, if that had been his intent.
Now Custer saw a dark mass beneath a sycamore. He rode directly toward it, and in another moment he saw that it represented half a dozen laden burros tethered to the tree. He moved the Apache close in to examine them. There was no sign of men about.
He examined the packs, leaning over and feeling one. What they contained he could not guess; but it was not firewood. They evidently consisted of six wooden boxes to each burro, three on a side.
He reined the Apache in behind the burros in the darkness of the tree’s shade, and there he waited for the coming of the men. He did not like the look of things at all. What could those boxes contain?
As he sat there waiting, he had ample time to think. He speculated upon the identity and purpose of the mysterious informant who had called him up from Los Angeles. He speculated again upon the contents of the packs. He recalled the whiskey that Guy had sold him from time to time, and wondered if the packs might not contain liquor. He had gathered from Guy that his supply came from Los Angeles, and he had never given the matter a second thought; but now he recalled the fact, and concluded that if this was whiskey, it was not from the same source as Guy’s.
Then from the mouth of Jackknife he heard the sound of horses’ hoofs. The Apache pricked up his ears, and Custer leaned forward and laid a hand upon his nostrils. “
Quiet boy!” he admonished, in a low whisper.
The sounds approached slowly, halting occasionally. Presently two horsemen rode directly past him on the far side of the canyon. They rode at a brisk trot. Apparently they did not see the pack train, or, if they saw it, they paid no attention to it. They disappeared in the darkness, and the sounds of their horses’ hoofs ceased. Pennington knew that they had halted. Who could they be? Certainly not the drivers of the pack train, else they would have stopped with the burros.
He listened intently. Presently he heard horses walking slowly toward him from up the canyon. The two who had passed were coming back — stealthily.
“I sure have got myself in a pretty trap!” he soliloquized a moment later, when he heard the movement of mounted men in the canyon below him. He drew his gun and sat waiting. It was not long that he had to wait. A voice coming from a short distance down the canyon addressed him.
“Ride out into the open and hold up your hands!” it said. “We got you surrounded and covered. If you make a break, we’ll bore you. Come on, now, step lively — and keep your hands up!”
It was the voice of an American.
“Who in thunder are you?” demanded Pennington.
“I am a United States marshal,” was the quick reply.
Pennington laughed. There was something convincing in the very tone of the man’s voice — possibly because Custer had been expecting to meet Mexicans. Here was a hoax indeed; but evidently as much on the newcomers as on himself. They had expected to find a lawbreaker. They would doubtless be angry when they discover that they had been duped.
Custer rode slowly out from beneath the tree.
“Hold up your hands, Mr. Pennington!” snapped the marshal.
Custer Pennington was nonplussed. They knew who he was, yet they demanded that he should hold up his hands like a common criminal.
“Hold on there!” he cried. “What’s the joke? If you know who I am, what do you want me to hold up my hands for? How do I know you’re a marshal?”
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 757
