CHAPTER XVI
A GUARDED CONFERENCE
With flaming eyes Winifred Waverly whirled upon her uncle.
"Why do you suffer it?" she cried hotly. "The man knows that I was notdeceived by his idiotic mask, he knows that I have told you, and stillyou let him go free where he pleases, swagger about with brawlers likethat horrible Kid Bedloe, and dribble your money over the bars for drinkand over the poker tables! Why do you suffer it?"
A fleeting smile of deep satisfaction brightened Pollard's eyes. Theyhad ridden home in silence and now, with the door barely closed behindthem, she had turned upon him with her indignant question.
"I am waiting," began Pollard.
"Waiting for what?" she demanded. "Until he can have had time tosquander what is rightfully yours, until there be no chance of gettingit back or bringing such a man to justice!"
"You little fire-eater!" he laughed at her. "Come with me in here." Heturned and led the way into the room just off the hall and at the frontof the house where he had his office. When the door was closed behindhim he dropped into a chair, his face a little white and drawn from theexertion of his ride, the first he had had since the girl had come. "Iwant to talk with you, and I don't want anybody, Mrs. Riddell inparticular, to overhear. She's too fond of talking."
Winifred stood across the room from him, her quirt in her hand switchingrestlessly at the carpet, her eyes showing a little sympathy for hisillness but more anger at Buck Thornton.
"You ask why I don't bring that man to reckoning, and I tell you that Iam waiting. Then you ask, for what?" He leaned a little forward, and shesaw again in his eyes the look she had surprised there on that first dayshe had come to Hill's Corners, a look of hate and of a sinistersatisfaction. "Waiting for the time when I am sure there will be noloophole for him to crawl through! You are ready to go into a court roomand swear that he robbed you; that is a great deal and it will go a longway toward convicting him. But it isn't enough. It's only your wordagainst his; don't you see? He will swear that he did _not_ rob you,won't he? We can prove that you left Dry Town with the five thousanddollars; we might even prove that you didn't bring it on to me. But wecouldn't prove, beyond the last shadow of doubt, that you didn't loseit, or that somebody else didn't rob you of it."
"But," she asked, frowning in her perplexity, "what good will it do towait?"
"Your evidence," he went on slowly, as though working the thing out forhimself, "is enough to convince eleven jurors out of the twelve; now wemust make sure of the twelfth. How will we do it? One way is to find thelost bank notes in Thornton's possession. The other way is to get otherevidence to add to yours, cumulative evidence all of which will pointone way, to one conclusion!"
"To one conclusion?" she repeated after him, prompting him, so eager wasshe for him to go on.
"To the fact that Buck Thornton is the man who, for six months now, hasbeen committing the series of crimes, running the gamut from the murderof a stage driver to the theft of cattle from Kemble's place! That isthe thing I am waiting for!"
She frowned. A mental picture of the cowboy rose quickly and vividlybefore her. She saw the clear, steadfast eyes, the free, uprightcarriage, the flash of a smile that was like a boy's. She had come to befirm in her belief that he was the man who had robbed her, had forcedthe insult of his kiss upon her, but it was hard, with that picture ofhim before her, to think him a murderer, too. But then, as though tosweep away her last shred of doubt, the vision widened and into it cameanother man: she saw Buck Thornton as she had seen him only a fewminutes ago, in seeming friendly conversation with the youngest Bedloewhose eyes soiled the woman they rested upon, whose name had travelledeven to her home in Crystal City and beyond as a roisterer, a brawler,a man of unsavoury deeds done boldly and shamelessly.
"I am a little sick of it all," she said wearily. "I want to go backhome, uncle."
He had looked for that and had his answer ready.
"I know, Winifred. And I don't blame you. But I want you to stay alittle longer, won't you? Your evidence is going to be the strongestcard in our deck. Will you stay and give it?"
"How long?"
"Not long now. I expect Dalton here today."
"Who is Dalton?"
"Cole Dalton, the sheriff. He is as anxious as I am to get his hands onThornton. The whole country has been growing hotter in its criticisms ofhim every day for the last six months, blaming him for not rounding upthe man who has committed one depredation on top of another, and gottenaway with it."
"And you are sure," she hesitated a little in spite of herself,repeating, "you are sure ... that Buck Thornton is that man?"
"Yes. I guessed it a long time ago. I know it now that he has robbedyou. You will wait a few days, won't you?"
"Yes, I'll wait. But, oh," she cried out with sudden vehemence, swingingabout when half way to the door, "I hate this sort of thing! Get it overwith quick, Uncle Henry!"
She left him then and went upstairs to her own room where for a littleshe tried to concentrate her wandering thoughts upon a book. But in theend she flung the volume aside impatiently and went to her window,staring down into the neglected tangle of the front yard and the glimpseof the street through the straggling branches of the pear trees. Shetried to see only that men like Kid Bedloe and Buck Thornton were not tobe thought of as men, but rather as some rare species of clear-eyed,unscrupulous, conscienceless animals; that they were not human, that itwould not be humane but foolish to regard them with any kind ofsympathy; that the law should set its iron heel upon them as a man mightset his heel upon a snake's flat, venomous head.
And she felt a hard contempt of self, she hated herself, when again andagain there rose before her mind's eye the form and face of the man whosurely was the worst of the lot, and yet who looked like a gentleman andwho knew how to carry himself like a gentleman, who knew what courtesyto a woman was when he wanted to know, who had in a few hours made uponher an impression which she realized shamefacedly would stay with heralways.
She had been in her room for an hour, driven by her loneliness had rundownstairs to chat a few minutes with Mrs. Riddell in the kitchen and,unusually restless, had gone back upstairs. As she came again to herwindow, she saw two men leave their horses at the front gate and turntoward the house along the walk under the pear trees. Both were men whosevery stature would have drawn one's thoughts away from even pleasantpreoccupation, and Winifred Waverly's thoughts were sick of the channelin which they had been running.
One, the one who came on slightly in front of his companion, was verybroad and heavy and thick. Thick of arm, of thigh, of neck. He was notshort, standing close to six feet, and yet his bigness of girth made himseem of low, squat stature as she looked down upon him. She did not seehis face under the wide, soft hat but guessed it to be heavy like therest of him, square jawed and massive. She noted curiously that histread was light, that his whole being spoke of energy and swiftinitiative, that the alertness of his carriage was an incongruity in aman so heavily built from the great, monster shoulders of him to thebulging calves.
The face of the other man she saw. His hat was far back upon his headand as he come on his dark features fascinated her. He was tall, as tallor nearly as tall as the Kid or Buck Thornton, she thought, slender,full of the grace of perfect physical manhood. There was a dash to himthat, to the girl, was not without its charm. It spoke from the finelychiselled lips, curved to a still, contemptuous smile, from the eyes,long lashed, well set far apart, from the swinging careless stride. Ahandsome devil, as handsome in his own way as the Kid in his, as defiantan insolence in his smiling eyes, as cool an assurance and a vague addedcharm which was not so readily classified.
The two men came to the door. She heard Pollard greet them, callingthem by name, and thus learned that one was Cole Dalton, the sheriff,one Broderick. Then there came up to her the hum of voices from heruncle's office, the heavy, rasping voice which she was certain belongedto the thicker-set man, the light, careless pleasant tones of the tallerman.
She found herself listening, not for the words which were lost inthe indistinct hum, but to the qualities of tone, idly speculating as towhich man was the sheriff, which Broderick. She wondered if now theywere going to arrest Buck Thornton and if Broderick were a deputy? Andagain she hated herself with a quick spurt of contemptuous indignationthat she allowed a feeling of sympathy for the tall cattleman to slipinto her heart.
For a long time the low toned conversation in the room below hercontinued. At first it was her uncle who did the greater part of thetalking, his utterances at once emphatic and yet guarded. She had theuneasy feeling that the tones were hushed less because of Mrs. Riddellwhom she could hear clattering with her pots and pans in the kitchen,than because of herself. A little hurt, half angry that he should thinkof her as a possible eavesdropper, she took up her book again, turningthe pages impatiently in search of the place which she had a great dealof trouble in finding since she had understood so little of what she hadread that day. And even then one half of her mind was on the men belowas she wondered why they should not want her to know what it was theysaid.
Evidently Pollard had finished what he had to say. She supposed that hehad been telling them of his loss and her robbery. Then the heavy,rasping voice, Cole Dalton's she was right in guessing it to be, asguarded as Pollard's had been, broke in and for several minutes it wasthe only sound that came to her, save twice when a low laugh fromBroderick interrupted. She frowned at that; to her it seemed that inthis stern discussion which had for theme crime and retribution therewas no place for a man's laughter; even then her dislike for BenBroderick had begun.
Then Cole Dalton had finished and Broderick was talking. It was asthough each man in turn were making his report to the others. As beforenot a word came to the ears which she strove futilely to makeinattentive. A certain quality in the speaker's voice drew freshspeculation from her. He spoke quietly, with no single interruption fromthe others and with a positiveness that was like a command, as though hewhom she had thought possibly a deputy were coolly telling both Pollardand Cole Dalton what they should do, when they should do it and how. Thevoice was arrogant, cool and confident.
Again the sheriff's voice floated up to her, raised a little, raspingout what sounded like a protest. And Broderick's answer was anothershort laugh, full of contempt and followed by a few emphatic, crispwords which she did not catch.
That ended the consultation. She knew it from the silence whichfollowed the curt finality of Broderick's retort and from the scrapingof chair legs followed by the sound of the men pacing back and forth andspeaking in new, unguarded tones. Now their conversation came to her forthe first time.
"You'll be going out tonight, Dalton?" Pollard asked.
"No. The first thing in the morning."
"And you, Broderick?"
"I'll trot along tonight, Henry. But not," the cool voice carelessly,"until I've had something to eat. I know you're going to ask me to stayto supper!"
"What do you want to stay for, Ben?" demanded Pollard with something ofirritation in the question. "Haven't you got enough on your hands...."
Broderick's ready laugh, slow, easy, vaguely insolent, rose clearly toWinifred's ears.
"You're sure a hospitable cuss," he retorted. "Don't be a hog on top ofit, Henry. I want to see that pretty niece of yours."
The girl's cheeks went red at the light tone. She waited to hear heruncle's short rejoinder. And she heard nothing beyond the sheriff'srasping chuckle.
When Mrs. Riddell called from the foot of the stairs that supper wasready Winifred had fully made up her mind that she would not go down.She heard the three men chatting lightly and decided that she would getsomething to eat after they had finished and gone. But as though heruncle had caught her thought he too came to the foot of the stairs,calling to her.
"Winifred," he was saying, "supper's ready. Sheriff Dalton is here, andMr. Broderick, a friend of mine. I want you to tell them what you havetold me."
She hesitated a moment, biting her lip. Then she answered, "All right,Uncle Henry; I'll be right down." She went to her wash-stand, arrangedher hair swiftly, saw that the flush had gone out of her cheeks, thather eyes were cool and told nothing, and went down to join the three menwho had already taken their places at the dinner table.
As she came through the door, her head up, her lips a little hard,Broderick was the first to see her and was upon his feet in a flash, asgraceful as a cavalier, as debonair in his big boots and soft white silkshirt as though he had been a courtly gentleman dressed for the ball,his eyes frankly filled with the appreciation of her dainty beauty.Pollard, remembering, rose too, and last of all Cole Dalton, his shrewdeyes intense and keen upon her. Winifred's gaze passed by Broderick asthough she had not seen him and travelled to her uncle while she waitedfor the introductions.
Dalton, who was first to be presented, put out a big, hard, square hand,capturing and releasing Winifred's suddenly as though it were a part ofthe day's work to be done and over with. He had stepped forward and nowstepped back to his chair, his keen, watchful eyes never leaving herface.
Then Broderick took the hand which she did not like to refuse to heruncle's friend and guest and yet which she disliked giving him, saw thelittle flush which his gaze drove into her cheeks, and with a hint oflaughter in his eyes bowed over it gallantly, murmuring his happiness inknowing her. And it was Broderick who stepped quickly to her chair,drawing it out for her to be seated. She found herself wondering wherethis man had learned to do these little things which are no part of thetraining of the far out cattle men.
During the first half of the meal there was no reference to thehappening at Harte's Camp. Broderick, with a mood contagiously care freeand sparkling, did the greater part of the talking, and though heelicited from the girl rare words beyond a brief "yes" or "no," heseemed content. And he interested her. He talked well, with little slursof grammar that seemed rather due to the man's carelessness of naturethan to ignorance, his vocabularly not without picturesque force. Itseemed natural that he should do the talking, that he should addresshimself largely to her, and that Pollard and Cole Dalton should listenand watch him.
Within ten minutes she gleaned that Broderick was a miner, that he had aclaim of some sort in the mountains back of Hill's Corners, to theeastward, that a couple of years ago he had made his "pile" in theYukon country and that he had lost it in unwise speculation, that heknew more than the names of the streets of the chief cities of bothcoasts, that he had strong hopes of making a strike where he was and ofselling out at a good figure to a mining concern with which he wasalready corresponding. And yet this light miscellany of information wasso brightly sprinkled into the flow of talk upon a score of othermatters that it did not seem that the man was ever talking of himself.
Finally Pollard, catching a sharp look from Sheriff Dalton, got up andstepped into the kitchen where Mrs. Riddell was. The woman went out intothe yard and Pollard came back. Before he had taken his chair againDalton said abruptly, turning upon the girl:
"Pollard mentioned your seeing the stick-up man at Harte's cabin. Tellus about it."
She told him swiftly, eager to have it over with, conscious that theeyes of all three of the men watched her with a very intense interest.From her account she omitted only that which concerned her personallyand alone and of which she had not even spoken to her uncle.
"You're sure it was Thornton?" demanded the sheriff when she hadfinished. "Dead sure?"
"Yes," she answered resolutely, defiant of her own self that hesitatedto fix on an absent man the crime of which she believed him guilty.
Dalton sat still save for the drumming of his thick fingers upon thetable cloth. Presently his big stocky body turned slowly in his chair ashe looked from Broderick to Pollard, the hint of a smile merely makinghis eyes the harder.
"So," he said, his wide shoulders rising to his deep breath, "it lookslike all we got to do is just go out and put our rope on Mr. Badman!"
"It looks like it, Cole," laughed Broderick gentl
y. "Only when you getready to pull off your little roping party I wish you'd let me know. Hedon't look like he's the kind to lie down and let you hog-tie him, doeshe, Miss Waverly? They say he's half Texan an' the other half panther.You want to be quick on the throw, Cole. Remember the way he got the Kidlast winter!"
"The only wonder," growled Dalton, "is that the Kid hasn't taken him offour hands and got him long ago!"
"But," put in Winifred hastily, "they're friends now. Uncle Henry and Isaw them talking together this afternoon."
She saw the start that her words gave the sheriff, and turning towardBroderick glimpsed a look, steely and hard and glittering with suspicionthat had driven the smile from his eyes.
"If Bedloe...." began Dalton sharply, his great fist clenched. But hestopped short. He saw and understood the warning glance Broderick shotat him; Winifred saw, too, but did not understand.
"Let's go into the other room," the miner said carelessly, "and see whatHenry's cigars are made out of."
They rose and went back to Pollard's office. And Ben Broderick, who hadsuggested cigars, was the only one of the three men who rolled his owncigarette, rolled it slowly and with deep thoughtfulness.
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