The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  “Accidents?” Lorraine felt her throat squeeze together. “Sorry, you don’t mean—Sawtooth accidents?” she blurted.

  She surprised a grunt out of Sorry, who looked over his shoulder as if he feared eavesdroppers. “Where’d you git that idee?” he demanded. “I dunno what you mean. Ain’t that yore dad callin’ yuh?”

  Lorraine ignored the hint. “You do know what I mean. Why did you say they wouldn’t both be likely to have accidents hand-running? And why don’t you do something? Why does every one just keep still and let things happen, and not say a word? If there’s any chance of Frank having an—an accident, I should think you’d be out looking after him, and not standing there with your hands in your pockets just waiting to see if he shows up or if he doesn’t show up. You’re all just like these rabbits out in the sage. You’ll hide under a bush and wait until you’re almost stepped on before you so much as wiggle an ear! I’m getting good and tired of this meek business!”

  “We-ell,” Sorry drawled amiably as she went past him, “playin’ rabbit-under-a-bush mebby don’t look purty, but it’s dern good life insurance.”

  “A coward’s policy,” Lorraine taunted him over her shoulder, and went to see what her father wanted. When he, too, wanted to know why Lone had come and gone again in such a hurry, Lorraine felt all the courage go out of her at once. Their very uneasiness seemed to prove that there was more than enough cause for it. Yet, when she forced herself to stop and think, it was all about nothing. Frank had driven to Echo and had not returned exactly on time, though a dozen things might have detained him.

  She was listening at the door when Swan appeared unexpectedly before her, having walked over from the Thurman ranch after doing the chores. To him she observed that Frank was an hour late, and Swan, whistling softly to Jack—Lorraine was surprised to hear how closely the call resembled the chirp of a bird—strode away without so much as a pretense at excuse. Lorraine stared after him wide-eyed, wondering and yet not daring to wonder.

  Her father called to her fretfully, and she went in to him again and told him what Sorry had said about the cracked doubletree, and persuaded him to let her bring his supper at once, and to have the fruit later when Frank arrived. Brit did not say much, but she sensed his uneasiness, and her own increased in proportion. Later she saw two tiny, glowing points down by the corral and knew that Sorry and Jim were down there, waiting and listening, ready to do whatever was needed of them; although what that would be she could not even conjecture.

  She made her father comfortable, chattered aimlessly to combat her understanding of his moody silence, and listened and waited and tried her pitiful best not to think that anything could be wrong. The subdued chuckling of the wagon in the sand outside the gate startled her with its unmistakable reality after so many false impressions that she heard it.

  “Frank’s coming, dad,” she announced relievedly, “and I’ll go and get the mail and the fruit.”

  She ran down the path again, almost light-hearted in her relief from that vague terror which had held her for the past hour. From the corral Sorry and Jim came walking up the path to meet the wagon which was making straight for the bunk-house instead of going first to the stable. One man rode on the seat, driving the team which walked slowly, oddly, reminding Lorraine of a funeral procession. Beside the wagon rode Lone, his head drooped a little in the starlight. It was not until the team stopped before the bunk-house that Lorraine knew what it was that gave her that strange, creepy feeling of disaster. It was not Frank Johnson, but Swan Vjolmar who climbed limberly down from the seat without speaking and turned toward the back of the wagon.

  “Why, where’s Frank?” she asked, going up to where Lone was dismounting in silence.

  “He’s there—in the wagon. We picked him up back here about three-quarters of a mile or so.”

  “What’s the matter? Is he drunk?” This was Sorry who came up to Swan and stood ready to lend a hand.

  “He’s so drunk he falls out of wagon down the road, but he don’t have whisky smell by his face,” was Swan’s ambiguous reply.

  “He’s not hurt, is he?” Lorraine pressed close, and felt a hand on her arm pulling her gently away.

  “He’s hurt,” Lone said, just behind her. “We’ll take him into the bunk-house and bring him to. Run along to the house and don’t worry—and don’t say anything to your dad, either. There’s no need to bother him about it. We’ll look after Frank.”

  Already Swan and Sorry and Jim were lifting Frank’s limp form from the rear of the wagon. It sagged in their arms like a dead thing, and Lorraine stepped back shuddering as they passed her. A minute later she followed them inside, where Jim was lighting the lamp with shaking fingers. By the glow of the match Lorraine saw how sober Jim looked, how his chin was trembling under the drooping, sandy mustache. She stared at him, hating to read the emotion in his heavy face that she had always thought so utterly void of feeling.

  “It isn’t—he isn’t——” she began, and turned upon Swan, who was beside the bunk, looking down at Frank’s upturned face. “Swan, if it’s serious enough for a doctor, can’t you send another thought message to your mother?” she asked. “He looks—oh, Lone! He isn’t dead, is he?”

  Swan turned his head and stared down at her, and from her face his glance went sharply to Lone’s downcast face. He looked again at Lorraine.

  “Tonight I can’t talk with my mind,” Swan told her bluntly. “Not always I can do that. I could ask Lone how can a man be drunk so he falls off the wagon when no whisky smell is on his breath.”

  “Breath? Hell! There ain’t no breath to smell,” Sorry exclaimed as unexpectedly as his speeches usually were. “If he’s breathin’ I can’t tell it on him.”

  “He’s got to be breathing!” Lone declared with a suppressed fierceness that made them all look at him. “I found a half bottle of whisky in his pocket—but Swan’s right. There wasn’t a smell of it on his breath—I tell you now, boys, that he was lying in the sand between two sagebushes, on his face. And there is where he got the blow—behind his ear. It’s one of them accidents that you’ve got to figure out for yourself.”

  “Oh, do something!” Lorraine cried distractedly. “Never mind now how it happened, or whether he was drunk or not—bring him to his senses first, and let him explain. If there’s whisky, wouldn’t that help if he swallowed some now? And there’s medicine for dad’s bruises in the house. I’ll get it. And Swan! Won’t you please talk to your mother and tell her we need the doctor?”

  Swan drew back. “I can’t,” he said shortly. “Better you send to Echo for telegraph. And if you have medicine, it should be on his head quick.”

  Lone was standing with his fingers pressed on Frank’s wrist. He looked up, hesitated, drew out his knife and opened the small blade. He moved so that his back was to Lorraine, and still holding the wrist he made a small, clean cut in the flesh. The three others stooped, stared with tightened lips at the bloodless incision, straightened and looked at one another dumbly.

  “I’d like to lie to you,” Lone told Lorraine, speaking over his shoulder. “But I won’t. You’re too game and too square. Go and stay with your dad, but don’t let him know—get him to sleep. We don’t need that medicine, nor a doctor either. Frank’s dead. I reckon he was dead when he hit the ground.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SWAN TRAILS A COYOTE

  At daybreak Swan was striding toward the place where Frank Johnson had been found. Lone, his face moody, his eyes clouded with thought, rode beside him, while Jack trotted loose-jointedly at Swan’s heels. Swan had his rifle, and Lone’s six-shooter showed now and then under his coat when the wind flipped back a corner. Neither had spoken since they left the ranch, where Jim was wandering dismally here and there, trying to do the chores when his heart was heavy with a sense of personal loss and grim foreboding. None save Brit had slept during the night—and Brit had slept only because Lorraine had prudently given him a full dose of the sedative left by the doctor for t
hat very purpose. Sorry had gone to Echo to send a telegram to the coroner, and he was likely to return now at any time. Wherefore Swan and Lone were going to look over the ground before others had trampled out what evidence there might be in the shape of footprints.

  They reached the spot where the team had stopped of its own accord in crossing a little, green meadow, and had gone to feeding. Lone pulled up and half turned in the saddle, looking at Swan questioningly.

  “Is that dog of yours any good at trailing?” he asked abruptly. “I’ve got a theory that somebody was in that wagon with Frank, and drove on a ways before he jumped out. I believe if you’d put that dog on the trail——”

  “If I put that dog on the trail he stays on the trail all day, maybe,” Swan averred with some pride. “By golly, he follows a coyote till he drops.”

  “Well, it’s a coyote we’re after now,” said Lone. “A sheep-killer that has made his last killin’. Right here’s where I rode up and caught the team, last night. We better take a look along here for tracks.”

  Swan stared at him curiously, but he did not speak, and the two went on more slowly, their glances roving here and there along the trail edge, looking for footprints. Once the dog Jack swung off the trail into the brush, and Swan followed him while Lone stopped and awaited the result. Swan came back presently, with Jack sulking at his heels.

  “Yack, he take up the trail of a coyote,” Swan explained, “but it’s got the four legs, and Yack, he don’t understand me when I don’t follow. He thinks I’m crazy this morning.”

  “I reckon the team came on toward home after the fellow jumped out,” Lone observed. “He’d plan that way, seems to me. I know I would.”

  “I guess that’s right. I don’t have experience in killing somebody,” Swan returned blandly, and Lone was too preoccupied to wonder at the unaccustomed sarcasm.

  A little farther along Swan swooped down upon a blue dotted handkerchief of the kind which men find so useful where laundries are but a name. Again Lone stopped and bent to examine it as Swan spread it out in his hands. A few tiny grains of sandstone rattled out, and in the center was a small blood spot. Swan looked up straight into Lone’s dark, brooding eyes.

  “By golly, Lone, you would do that, too, if you kill somebody,” he began in a new tone,—the tone which Lorraine had heard indistinctly in the bunk-house when Swan was talking to the doctor. “Do you think I’m a damn fool, just because I’m a Swede? You are smart—you think out every little thing. But you make a big mistake if you don’t think some one else may be using his brain, too. This handkerchief I have seen you pull from your pocket too many times. And it had a rock in it last night, and the blood shows that it was used to hit Frank behind the ear. You think it all out—but maybe I’ve been thinking too. Now you’re under arrest. Just stay on your horse—he can’t run faster than a bullet, and I don’t miss coyotes when I shoot them on the run.”

  “The hell you say!” Lone stared at him. “Where’s your authority, Swan?”

  Swan lifted the rifle to a comfortable, firing position, the muzzle pointing straight at Lone’s chest. With his left hand he turned back his coat and disclosed a badge pinned to the lining.

  “I’m a United States Marshal, that’s all; a government hunter,” he stated. “I’m hot on the trail of coyotes—all kinds. Throw that six-shooter over there in the brush, will you?”

  “I hate to get the barrel all sanded up,” Lone objected mildly. “You can pack it, can’t you?” He grinned a little as he handed out the gun, muzzle toward himself. “You’re playing safe, Swan, but if that dog of yours is any good, you’ll have a change of heart pretty quick. Isn’t that a man’s track, just beside that flat rock? Put the dog on, why don’t you?”

  “Yack is on already,” Swan pointed out. “Ride ahead of me, Lone.”

  With a shrug of his shoulders Lone obeyed, following the dog as it trotted through the brush on the trail of a man’s footprints which Swan had shown it. A man might have had some trouble in keeping to the trail, but Jack trotted easily along and never once seemed at fault. In a very few minutes he stopped in a rocky depression where a horse had been tied, and waited for Swan, wagging his tail and showing his teeth in a panting smile. The man he had trailed had mounted and ridden toward the ridge to the west. Swan examined the tracks, and Lone sat on his horse watching him.

  Jack picked up the trail where the horseman had walked away toward the road, and Swan followed him, motioning Lone to ride ahead.

  “You could tell me about this, I think, but I can find out for myself,” he observed, glancing at Lone briefly.

  “Sure, you can find out, if you use your eyes and do a little thinking,” Lone replied. “I hope you do lay the evidence on the right doorstep.”

  “I will,” Swan promised, looking ahead to where Jack was nosing his way through the sagebrush.

  They brought up at the edge of the road nearly a quarter of a mile nearer Echo than the place where Frank’s body had been found. They saw where the man had climbed into the wagon, and followed to where they had found Frank beside the road, lying just as he had pitched forward from the wagon seat.

  “I think,” said Swan quietly, “we will go now and find out where that horse went last night.”

  “A good idea,” Lone agreed. “Do you see how it was done, Swan? When he saw the team coming, away back toward Echo, he rode down into that wash and tied his horse. He was walking when Frank overtook him, I reckon—maybe claiming his horse had broke away from him. He had a rock in his handkerchief. Frank stopped and gave him a lift, and he used the rock first chance he got. Then I reckon he stuck the whisky bottle in Frank’s pocket and heaved him out. He dropped the handkerchief out of his hip pocket when he jumped out of the rig. It’s right simple, and if folks didn’t get to wondering about it, it’d be safe as any killing can be. As safe,” he added meaningly, “as dragging Fred Thurman, or unhooking Brit’s chain-lock before he started down the canyon with his load of posts.”

  Swan did not answer, but turned back to where the horse had been left tied and took up the trail from there. As before, the dog trotted along, Lone riding close behind him and Swan striding after. They did not really need the dog, for the hoofprints were easily followed for the greater part of the way.

  They had gone perhaps four miles when Lone turned, resting a hand on the cantle of his saddle while he looked back at Swan. “You see where he was headed for, don’t yuh, Swan?” he asked, his tone as friendly as though he was not under arrest as a murderer. “If he didn’t go to Whisper, I’ll eat my hat.”

  “You’re the man to know,” Swan retorted grimly. And then, because Lone’s horse had slowed in a long climb over a ridge, he came up even with a stirrup. “Lone, I hate to do it. I’d like you, if you don’t kill for a living. But for that I could shoot you quick as a coyote. You’re smart—but not smart enough. You gave yourself away when I showed you Fred’s saddle. After that I knew who was the Sawtooth killer that I came here to find.”

  “You thought you knew,” Lone corrected calmly.

  “You don’t have to lie,” Swan informed him bluntly. “You don’t have to tell anything. I find out for myself if I make mistake.”

  “Go to it,” Lone advised him coldly. “It don’t make a darn bit of difference to me whether I ride in front of you or behind. I’m so glad you’re here on the job, Swan, that I’m plumb willing to be tied hand and foot if it’ll help you any.”

  “When a man’s too damn willing to be my prisoner,” Swan observed seriously, “he gets tied, all right. Put out your hands, Lone. You look good to me with bracelets on, when you talk so willing to go to jail for murder.”

  He had slipped the rifle butt to the ground, and before Lone quite realized what he was doing Swan had a short, wicked-looking automatic pistol in one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other. Lone flushed, but there was nothing to do but hold out his hands.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE SAWTOOTH SHOWS ITS HAND

  In
her fictitious West Lorraine had long since come to look upon violence as a synonym for picturesqueness; murder and mystery were inevitably an accompaniment of chaps and spurs. But when a man she had cooked breakfast for, had talked with just a few hours ago, lay dead in the bunk-house, she forgot that it was merely an expected incident of Western life. She lay in her bed shaking with nervous dread, and the shrill rasping of the crickets and tree-toads was unendurable.

  After the first shock had passed a deep, fighting rage filled her, made her long for day so that she might fight back somehow. Who was the Sawtooth Company, that they could sweep human beings from their path so ruthlessly and never be called to account? Not once did she doubt that this was the doing of the Sawtooth, another carefully planned “accident” calculated to rid the country of another man who in some fashion had become inimical to their interests.

  From Lone she had learned a good deal about the new irrigation project which lay very close to the Sawtooth’s heart. She could see how the Quirt ranch, with its water rights and its big, fertile meadows and its fences and silent disapprobation of the Sawtooth’s methods, might be looked upon as an obstacle which they would be glad to remove.

  That her father had been sent down that grade with a brake deliberately made useless was a horrible thought which she could not put from her mind. She had thought and thought until it seemed to her that she knew exactly how and why the killer’s plans had gone awry. She was certain that she and Swan had prevented him from climbing down into the canyon and making sure that her dad did not live to tell what mischance had overtaken him. He had probably been watching while she and Swan made that stretcher and carried her dad away out of his reach. He would not shoot her,—he would not dare. Nor would he dare come to the cabin and finish the job he had begun. But he had managed to kill Frank—poor old Frank, who would never grumble and argue over little things again.