CHAPTER XXIV
SHORTY
It was a surprise to Dave to discover that the horse Steve had got for him was his own old favorite Chiquito. The pinto knew him. He tested this by putting him through some of his old tricks. The horse refused to dance or play dead, but at the word of command his right foreleg came up to shake hands. He nuzzled his silky nose against the coat of his master just as in the days of old.
Crawford rode a bay, larger than a bronco. The oil prospector was astride a rangy roan. He was no horseman, but as a perpetual-motion conversationalist the old wildcatter broke records. He was a short barrel of a man, with small eyes set close together, and he made a figure of fun perched high up in the saddle. But he permitted no difficulties of travel to interfere with his monologue.
"The boss hold-up wasn't no glad-hand artist," he explained. "He was a sure-enough sulky devil, though o'course we couldn't see his face behind the mask. Blue mask it was, made outa a bandanna handkerchief. Well, rightaway I knew somethin' was liable to pop, for old Harrigan, scared to death, kep' a-goin' just the same. Maybe he hadn't sense enough to stop, as the fellow says. Maybe he didn't want to. Bang-bang! I reckon Tim was dead before he hit the ground. They lined us up, but they didn't take a thing except the gold and one Chicago fellow's watch. Then they cut the harness and p'int for the hills."
"How do you know they made for the hills?" asked Dave.
"Well, they naturally would. Anyhow, they lit out round the Bend. I hadn't lost 'em none, and I wasn't lookin' to see where they went. Not in this year of our Lord. I'm right careless at times, but not enough so to make inquiries of road agents when they're red from killin'. I been told I got no terminal facilities of speech, but it's a fact I didn't chirp from start to finish of the hold-up. I was plumb reticent."
Light sifted into the sky. The riders saw the colors change in a desert dawn. The hilltops below them were veiled in a silver-blue mist. Far away Malapi rose out of the caldron, its cheapness for once touched to a moment of beauty and significance. In that glorified sunrise it might have been a jeweled city of dreams.
The prospector's words flowed on. Crystal dawns might come and go, succeeding mist scarfs of rose and lilac, but a great poet has said that speech is silver.
"No, sir. When a man has got the drop on me I don't aim to argue with him. Not none. Tim Harrigan had notions. Different here. I've done some rough-housin'. When a guy puts up his dukes I'm there. Onct down in Sonora I slammed a fellow so hard he woke up among strangers. Fact. I don't make claims, but up at Carbondale they say I'm some rip-snorter when I get goin' good. I'm quiet. I don't go around with a chip on my shoulder. It's the quiet boys you want to look out for. Am I right?"
Crawford gave a little snort of laughter and covered it hastily with a cough.
"You know it," went on the quiet man who was a rip-snorter when he got going. "In regards to that, I'll say my observation is that when you meet a small man with a steady gray eye it don't do a bit of harm to spend a lot of time leavin' him alone. He may be good-natured, but he won't stand no devilin', take it from me."
The small man with the gray eye eased himself in the saddle and moistened his tongue for a fresh start. "But I'm not one o' these foolhardy idiots who have to have wooden suits made for 'em because they don't know when to stay mum. You cattlemen have lived a quiet life in the hills, but I've been right where the tough ones crowd for years. I'll tell you there's a time to talk and a time to keep still, as the old sayin' is."
"Yes," agreed Crawford.
"Another thing. I got an instinct that tells me when folks are interested in what I say. I've seen talkers that went right on borin' people and never caught on. They'd talk yore arm off without gettin' wise to it that you'd had a-plenty. That kind of talker ain't fit for nothin' but to wrangle Mary's little lamb 'way off from every human bein'."
In front of the riders a group of cottonwoods lifted their branches at a sharp bend in the road. Just before they reached this turn a bridge crossed a dry irrigating lateral.
"After Harrigan had been shot I came to the ditch for some water, but she was dry as a whistle. Ever notice how things are that way? A fellow wants water; none there. It's rainin' rivers; the ditch is runnin' strong. There's a sermon for a preacher," said the prospector.
The cattleman nodded to Dave. "I noticed she was dry when I crossed higher up on my way out. But she was full up with water when I saw her after I had been up to Dick Grein's."
"Funny," commented Sanders. "Nobody would want water to irrigate at this season. Who turned the water in? And why?"
"Beats me," answered Crawford. "But it don't worry me any. I've got troubles of my own."
They reached the cottonwoods, and the oil prospector pointed out to them just where the stage had been when the bandits first appeared. He showed them the bushes from behind which the robbers had stepped, the place occupied by the passengers after they had been lined up, and the course taken by the hold-ups after the robbery.
The road ran up a long, slow incline to the Bend, which was the crest of the hill. Beyond it the wheel tracks went down again with a sharp dip. The stage had been stopped just beyond the crest, just at the beginning of the down grade.
"The coach must have just started to move downhill when the robbers jumped out from the bushes," suggested Dave.
"Sure enough. That's probably howcome Tim to make a mistake. He figured he could give the horses the whip and make a getaway. The hold-up saw that. He had to shoot to kill or lose the gold. Bein' as he was a cold-blooded killer he shot." There were pinpoints of light in Emerson Crawford's eyes. He knew now the kind of man they were hunting. He was an assassin of a deadly type, not a wild cowboy who had fired in excitement because his nerves had betrayed him.
"Yes. Tim knew what he was doing. He took a chance the hold-ups wouldn't shoot to kill. Most of 'em won't. That was his mistake. If he'd seen the face behind that mask he would have known better," said Dave.
Crawford quartered over the ground. "Just like I thought, Dave. Applegate and his posse have been here and stomped out any tracks the robbers left. No way of tellin' which of all these footprints belonged to them. Likely none of 'em. If I didn't know better I'd think some one had been givin' a dance here, the way the ground is cut up."
They made a wide circle to try to pick up the trail wanted, and again a still larger one. Both of these attempts failed.
"Looks to me like they flew away," the cattleman said at last. "Horses have got hoofs and hoofs make tracks. I see plenty of these, but I don't find any place where the animals waited while this thing was bein' pulled off."
"The sheriff's posse has milled over the whole ground so thoroughly we can't be sure. But there's a point in what you say. Maybe they left their horses farther up the hill and walked back to them," Dave hazarded.
"No-o, son. This job was planned careful. Now the hold-ups didn't know whether they'd have to make a quick getaway or not. They would have their horses handy, but out of sight."
"Why not in the dry ditch back of the cotton woods?" asked Dave with a flash of light.
Crawford stared at him, but at last shook his head, "I reckon not. In the sand and clay there the hoofs would show too plain."
"What if the hold-ups knew the ditch was going to be filled before the pursuit got started?"
"You mean—?"
"I mean they might have arranged to have the water turned into the lateral to wipe out their tracks."
"I'll be dawged if you ain't on a warm trail, son," murmured Crawford. "And if they knew that, why wouldn't they ride either up or down the ditch and leave no tracks a-tall?"
"They would—for a way, anyhow. Up or down, which?"
"Down, so as to reach Malapi and get into the Gusher before word came of the hold-up," guessed Crawford.
"Up, because in the hills there's less chance of being seen," differed Dave. "Crooks like them can fix up an alibi when they need one. They had to get away unseen, in a hurry, and to get rid of the gold soon in case they should be seen."
"You've rung the bell, son. Up it is. It's an instinct of an outlaw to make for the hills where he can hole up when in trouble."
The prospector had been out of the conversation long enough.
"Depends who did this," he said. "If they come from the town, they'd want to get back there in a hurry. If not, they'd steer clear of folks. Onct, when I was in Oklahoma, a nigger went into a house and shot a white man he claimed owed him money. He made his getaway, looked like, and the whole town hunted for him for fifty miles. They found him two days later in the cellar of the man he had killed."
"Well, you can go look in Tim Harrigan's cellar if you've a mind to. Dave and I are goin' up the ditch," said the old cattleman, smiling.
"I'll tag along, seein' as I've been drug in this far. All I'll say is that when we get to the bottom of this, we'll find it was done by fellows you'd never suspect. I know human nature. My guess is no drunken cowboy pulled this off. No, sir. I'd look higher for the men."
"How about Parson Brown and the school superintendent?" asked Crawford.
"You can laugh. All right. Wait and see. Somehow I don't make mistakes. I'm lucky that way. Use my judgment, I reckon. Anyhow, I always guess right on presidential elections and prize fights. You got to know men, in my line of business. I study 'em. Hardly ever peg 'em wrong. Fellow said to me one day, 'How's it come, Thomas, you most always call the turn?' I give him an answer in one word—psycho-ology."
The trailers scanned closely the edge of the irrigation ditch. Here, too, they failed to get results. There were tracks enough close to the lateral, but apparently none of them led down into the bed of it. The outlaws no doubt had carefully obliterated their tracks at this place in order to give no starting-point for the pursuit.
"I'll go up on the left-hand side, you take the right, Dave," said
Crawford. "We've got to find where they left the ditch."
The prospector took the sandy bed of the dry canal as his path. He chose it for two reasons. There was less brush to obstruct his progress, and he could reach the ears of both his auditors better as he burbled his comments on affairs in general and the wisdom of Mr. Thomas in particular.
The ditch was climbing into the hills, zigzagging up draws in order to find the most even grade. The three men traveled slowly, for Sanders and Crawford had to read sign on every foot of the way.
"Chances are they didn't leave the ditch till they heard the water comin'," the cattleman said. "These fellows knew their business, and they were playin' safe."
Dave pulled up. He went down on his knees and studied the ground, then jumped down into the ditch and examined the bank.
"Here's where they got out," he announced.
Thomas pressed forward. With one outstretched hand the young man held him back.
"Just a minute. I want Mr. Crawford to see this before it's touched."
The old cattleman examined the side of the canal. The clay showed where a sharp hoof had reached for a footing, missed, and pawed down the bank. Higher up was the faint mark of a shoe on the loose rubble at the edge.
"Looks like," he assented.
Study of the ground above showed the trail of two horses striking off at a right angle from the ditch toward the mouth of a box cañon about a mile distant. The horses were both larger than broncos. One of them was shod. One of the front shoes, badly worn, was broken and part of it gone on the left side. The riders were taking no pains apparently to hide their course. No doubt they relied on the full ditch to blot out pursuit.
The trail led through the cañon, over a divide beyond, and down into a small grassy valley.
At the summit Crawford gave strict orders. "No talkin', Mr. Thomas. This is serious business now. We're in enemy country and have got to soft-foot it."
The foothills were bristling with chaparral. Behind any scrub oak or cedar, under cover of an aspen thicket or even of a clump of gray sage, an enemy with murder in his heart might be lurking. Here an ambush was much more likely than in the sun-scorched plain they had left.
The three men left the footpath where it dipped down into the park and followed the rim to the left, passing through a heavy growth of manzanita to a bare hill dotted with scrubby sage, at the other side of which was a small gulch of aspens straggling down into the valley. Back of these a log cabin squatted on the slope. One had to be almost upon it before it could be seen. Its back door looked down upon the entrance to a cañon. This was fenced across to make a corral.
The cattleman and the cowpuncher looked at each other without verbal comment. A message better not put into words flashed from one to the other. This looked like the haunt of rustlers. Here they could pursue their nefarious calling unmolested. Not once a year would anybody except one of themselves enter this valley, and if a stranger did so he would know better than to push his way into the cañon.
Horses were drowsing sleepily in the corral. Dave slid from the saddle and spoke to Crawford in a low voice.
"I'm going down to have a look at those horses," he said, unfastening his rope from the tientos.
The cattleman nodded. He drew from its case beneath his leg a rifle and held it across the pommel. It was not necessary for Sanders to ask, nor for him to promise, protection while the younger man was making his trip of inspection. Both were men who knew the frontier code and each other. At a time of action speech, beyond the curtest of monosyllables, was surplusage.
Dave walked and slid down the rubble of the steep hillside, clambered down a rough face of rock, and dropped into the corral: He wore a revolver, but he did not draw it. He did not want to give anybody in the house an excuse to shoot at him without warning.
His glance swept over the horses, searched the hoofs of each. It found one shod, a rangy roan gelding.
The cowpuncher's rope whined through the air and settled down upon the shoulders of the animal. The gelding went sun-fishing as a formal protest against the lariat, then surrendered tamely. Dave patted it gently, stroked the neck, and spoke softly reassuring words. He picked up one of the front feet and examined the shoe. This was badly worn, and on the left side part of it had broken off.
A man came to the back door of the cabin and stretched in a long and luxuriant yawn. Carelessly and casually his eyes wandered over the aspens and into the corral. For a moment he stood frozen, his arms still flung wide.
From the aspens came down Crawford's voice, cool and ironic. "Much obliged, Shorty. Leave 'em right up and save trouble."
The squat cowpuncher's eyes moved back to the aspens and found there the owner of the D Bar Lazy R. "Wha'dya want?" he growled sullenly.
"You—just now. Step right out from the house, Shorty. Tha's right.
Anybody else in the house?"
"No."
"You'll be luckier if you tell the truth."
"I'm tellin' it."
"Hope so. Dave, step forward and get his six-shooter. Keep him between you and the house. If anything happens to you I'm goin' to kill him right now."
Shorty shivered, hardy villain though he was. There had been nobody in the house when he left it, but he had been expecting some one shortly. If his partner arrived and began shooting, he knew that Crawford would drop him in his tracks. His throat went dry as a lime kiln. He wanted to shout out to the man who might be inside not to shoot at any cost. But he was a game and loyal ruffian. He would not spoil his confederate's chance by betraying him. If he said nothing, the man might come, realize the situation, and slip away unobserved.
Sanders took the man's gun and ran his hand over his thick body to make sure he had no concealed weapon.
"I'm going to back away. You come after me, step by step, so close I could touch you with the gun," ordered Dave.
The man followed him as directed, his hands still in the air. His captor kept him in a line between him and the house door. Crawford rode down to join them. The man who claimed not to be foolhardy stayed up in the timber. This was no business of his. He did not want to be the target of any shots from the cabin.
The cattleman swung down from the saddle. "Sure we'll 'light and come in, Shorty. No, you first. I'm right at yore heels with this gun pokin' into yore ribs. Don't make any mistake. You'd never have time to explain it."
The cabin had only one room. The bunks were over at one side, the stove and table at the other. Two six-pane windows flanked the front door.
The room was empty, except for the three men now entering.
"You live here, Shorty?" asked Crawford curtly.
"Yes." The answer was sulky and reluctant.
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"Why?" snapped the cattleman.
Shorty's defiant eyes met his. "My business."
"Mine, too, I'll bet a dollar. If you're nestin' in these hills you cayn't have but one business."
"Prove it! Prove it!" retorted Shorty angrily.
"Some day—not now." Crawford turned to Sanders. "What about the horse you looked at, Dave?"
"Same one we've been trailing. The one with the broken shoe."
"That yore horse, Shorty?"
"Maybeso. Maybe not."
"You've been havin' company here lately," Crawford went on. "Who's yore guest?"
"You seem to be right now. You and yore friend the convict," sneered the short cowpuncher.
"Don't use that word again, Shorty," advised the ranchman in a voice gently ominous.
"Why not? True, ain't it? Doesn't deny it none, does he?"
"We'll not discuss that. Where were you yesterday?"
"Here, part o' the day. Where was you?" demanded Shorty impudently.
"Seems to me I heard you was right busy."
"What part of the day? Begin at the beginnin' and tell us what you did.
You may put yore hands down."
"Why, I got up in the mo'nin' and put on my pants an' my boots," jeered
Shorty. "I don't recolleck whether I put on my hat or not. Maybe I did. I
cooked breakfast and et it. I chawed tobacco. I cooked dinner and et it.
Smoked and chawed some more. Cooked supper and et it. Went to bed."
"That all?"
"Why, no, I fed the critters and fixed up a busted stirrup."
"Who was with you?"
"I was plumb lonesome yesterday. This any business of yours, by the way,
Em?"
"Think again, Shorty. Who was with you?"
The heavy-set cowpuncher helped himself to a chew of tobacco. "I told you onct I was alone. Ain't seen anybody but you for a week."
"Then how did you hear yesterday was my busy day?" Crawford thrust at him.
For a moment Shorty was taken aback. Before he could answer Dave spoke.
"Man coming up from the creek."
Crawford took crisp command. "Back in that corner, Shorty. Dave, you stand back, too. Cover him soon as he shows up."
Dave nodded.
CHAPTER XXV
MILLER TALKS
A man stood in the doorway, big, fat, swaggering. In his younger days his deep chest and broad shoulders had accompanied great strength. But fat had accumulated in layers. He was a mountain of sagging flesh. His breath came in wheezy puffs.
"Next time you get your own—"
The voice faltered, died away. The protuberant eyes, still cold and fishy, passed fearfully from one to another of those in the room. It was plain that the bottom had dropped out of his heart. One moment he had straddled the world a Colossus, the next he was collapsing like a punctured balloon.
"Goddlemighty!" he gasped. "Don't shoot! I—I give up."
He was carrying a bucket of water. It dropped from his nerveless fingers and spilt over the floor.
Like a bullet out of a gun Crawford shot a question at him. "Where have you hidden the money you got from the stage?"
The loose mouth of the convict opened. "Why, we—I—we—"
"Keep yore trap shut, you durn fool," ordered Shorty.
Crawford jabbed his rifle into the ribs of the rustler. "Yours, too,
Shorty."
But the damage had been done. Miller's flabby will had been braced by a stronger one. He had been given time to recover from his dismay. He moistened his lips with his tongue and framed his lie.
"I was gonna say you must be mistaken, Mr. Crawford," he whined.
Shorty laughed hardily, spat tobacco juice at a knot in the floor, and spoke again. "Third degree stuff, eh? It won't buy you a thing, Crawford. Miller wasn't in that hold-up any more'n I—"
"Let Miller do his own talkin', Shorty. He don't need any lead from you."
Shorty looked hard at the cattleman with unflinching eyes. "Don't get on the peck, Em. You got no business coverin' me with that gun. I know you got reasons a-plenty for tryin' to bluff us into sayin' we held up the stage. But we don't bluff worth a cent. See?"
Crawford saw. He had failed to surprise a confession out of Miller by the narrowest of margins. If he had had time to get Shorty out of the room before the convict's appearance, the fellow would have come through. As it was, he had missed his opportunity.
A head followed by a round barrel body came in cautiously from the lean-to at the rear.
"Everything all right, Mr. Crawford? Thought I'd drap on down to see if you didn't need any help."
"None, thanks, Mr. Thomas," the cattleman answered dryly.
"Well, you never can tell." The prospector nodded genially to Shorty, then spoke again to the man with the rifle. "Found any clue to the hold-up yet?"
"We've found the men who did it," replied Crawford.
"Knew 'em all the time, I reckon," scoffed Shorty with a harsh laugh.
Dave drew his chief aside, still keeping a vigilant eye on the prisoners. "We've got to play our hand different. Shorty is game. He can't be bluffed. But Miller can. I found out years ago he squeals at physical pain. We'll start for home. After a while we'll give Shorty a chance to make a getaway. Then we'll turn the screws on Miller."
"All right, Dave. You run it. I'll back yore play," his friend said.
They disarmed Miller, made him saddle two of the horses in the corral, and took the back trail across the valley to the divide. It was here they gave Shorty his chance of escape. Miller was leading the way up the trail, with Crawford, Thomas, Shorty, and Dave in the order named. Dave rode forward to confer with the owner of the D Bar Lazy R. For three seconds his back was turned to the squat cowpuncher.
Shorty whirled his horse and flung it wildly down the precipitous slope. Sanders galloped after him, fired his revolver three times, and after a short chase gave up the pursuit. He rode back to the party on the summit.
Crawford glanced around at the heavy chaparral. "How about off here a bit, Dave?"
The younger man agreed. He turned to Miller. "We're going to hang you," he said quietly.
The pasty color of the fat man ebbed till his face seemed entirely bloodless. "My God! You wouldn't do that!" he moaned.
He clung feebly to the horn of his saddle as Sanders led the horse into the brush. He whimpered, snuffling an appeal for mercy repeated over and over. The party had not left the road a hundred yards behind when a man jogged past on his way into the valley. He did not see them, nor did they see him.
Underneath a rather scrubby cedar Dave drew up. He glanced it over critically. "Think it'll do?" he asked Crawford in a voice the prisoner could just hear.
"Yep. That big limb'll hold him," the old cattleman answered in the same low voice. "Better let him stay right on the horse, then we'll lead it out from under him."
Miller pleaded for his life abjectly. His blood had turned to water. "Honest, I didn't shoot Harrigan. Why, I'm that tender-hearted I wouldn't hurt a kitten. I—I—Oh, don't do that, for God's sake."
Thomas was almost as white as the outlaw. "You don't aim to—you wouldn't—"
Crawford's face was as cold and as hard as steel. "Why not? He's a murderer. He tried to gun Dave here when the boy didn't have a six-shooter. We'll jes' get rid of him now." He threw a rope over the convict's head and adjusted it to the folds of his fat throat.
The man under condemnation could hardly speak. His throat was dry as the desert dust below. "I—I done Mr. Sanders a meanness. I'm sorry. I was drunk."
"You lied about him and sent him to the penitentiary."
"I'll fix that. Lemme go an' I'll make that right."
"How will you make it right?" asked Crawford grimly, and the weight of his arm drew the rope so tight that Miller winced. "Can you give him back the years he's lost?"
"No, sir, no," the man whispered eagerly. "But I can tell how it was—that we fired first at him. Doble did that, an' then—accidental—I killed Doble whilst I was shootin' at Mr. Sanders."
Dave strode forward, his eyes like great live coals. "What? Say that again!" he cried.
"Yessir. I did it—accidental—when Doble run forward in front of me. Tha's right. I'm plumb sorry I didn't tell the cou't so when you was on trial, Mr. Sanders. I reckon I was scairt to."
"Will you tell this of yore own free will to the sheriff down at Malapi?" asked Crawford.
"I sure will. Yessir, Mr. Crawford." The man's terror had swept away all thought of anything but the present peril. His color was a seasick green. His great body trembled like a jelly shaken from a mould.
"It's too late now," cut in Dave savagely. "We came up about this stage robbery. Unless he'll clear that up, I vote to finish the job."
"Maybe we'd better," agreed the cattleman. "I'll tie the rope to the trunk of the tree and you lead the horse from under him, Dave."
Miller broke down. He groveled. "I'll tell. I'll tell all I know. Dug
Doble and Shorty held up the stage. I don' know who killed the driver.
They didn't say when they come back."
"You let the water into the ditch," suggested Crawford.
"Yessir. I did that. They was shelterin' me and o' course I had to do like they said."
"When did you escape?"
"On the way back to the penitentiary. A fellow give the deputy sheriff a drink on the train. It was doped. We had that fixed. The keys to the handcuffs was in the deputy's pocket. When he went to sleep we unlocked the cuffs and I got off at the next depot. Horses was waitin' there for us."
"Who do you mean by us? Who was with you?"
"I don' know who he was. Fellow said Brad Steelman sent him to fix things up for me."
Thomas borrowed the field-glasses of Crawford. Presently he lowered them. "Two fellows comin' hell-for-leather across the valley," he said in a voice that expressed his fears.
The cattleman took the glasses and looked. "Shorty's found a friend. Dug Doble likely. They're carryin' rifles. We'll have trouble. They'll see we stopped at the haid of the pass," he said quietly.
Much shaken already, the oil prospector collapsed at the prospect before him. He was a man of peace and always had been, in spite of the valiant promise of his tongue.
"None of my funeral," he said, his lips white. "I'm hittin' the trail for
Malapi right now."
He wheeled his horse and jumped it to a gallop. The roan plunged through the chaparral and soon was out of sight.
"We'll fix Mr. Miller so he won't make us any trouble during the rookus,"
Crawford told Dave.
He threw the coiled rope over the heaviest branch of the cedar, drew it tight, and fastened it to the trunk of the tree.
"Now you'll stay hitched," he went on, speaking to their prisoner. "And you'd better hold that horse mighty steady, because if he jumps from under you it'll be good-bye for one scalawag."
"If you'd let me down I'd do like you told me, Mr. Crawford," pleaded
Miller. "It's right uncomfortable here."
"Keep still. Don't say a word. Yore friends are gettin' close. Let a chirp outa you, and you'll never have time to be sorry," warned the cattleman.
The two men tied their horses behind some heavy mesquite and chose their own cover. Here they crouched down and waited.
They could hear the horses of the outlaws climbing the hill out of the valley to the pass. Then, down in the cañon, they caught a glimpse of Thomas in wild flight. The bandits stopped at the divide.
"They'll be headin' this way in a minute," Crawford whispered.
His companion nodded agreement.
They were wrong. There came the sound of a whoop, a sudden clatter of hoofs, the diminishing beat of horses' feet.
"They've seen Thomas, and they're after him on the jump," suggested Dave.
His friend's eyes crinkled to a smile. "Sure enough. They figure he's the tail end of our party. Well, I'll bet Thomas gives 'em a good run for their money. He's right careless sometimes, but he's no foolhardy idiot and he don't aim to argue with birds like these even though he's a rip-snorter when he gets goin' good and won't stand any devilin'."
"He'll talk them to death if they catch him," Dave answered.
"Back to business. What's our next move, son?"
"Some more conversation with Miller. Probably he can tell us where the gold is hidden."
"Whoopee! I'll bet he can. You do the talkin'. I've a notion he's more scared of you."
The fat convict tried to make a stand against them. He pleaded ignorance.
"I don' know where they hid the stuff. They didn't tell me."
"Sounds reasonable, and you in with them on the deal," said Sanders.
"Well, you're in hard luck. We don't give two hoots for you, anyhow, but
we decided to take you in to town with us if you came through clean.
If not—" He shrugged his shoulders and glanced up at the branch above.
Miller swallowed a lump in his throat. "You wouldn't treat me thataway, Mr. Sanders. I'm gittin' to be an old man now. I done wrong, but I'm sure right sorry," he whimpered.
The eyes of the man who had spent years in prison at Cañon City were hard as jade. The fat man read a day of judgment in his stern and somber face.
"I'll tell!" The crook broke down, clammy beads of perspiration all over his pallid face. "I'll tell you right where it's at. In the lean-to of the shack. Southwest corner. Buried in a gunnysack."
They rode back across the valley to the cabin. Miller pointed out the spot where the stolen treasure was cached. With an old axe as a spade Dave dug away the dirt till he came to a bit of sacking. Crawford scooped out the loose earth with his gauntlet and dragged out a gunnysack. Inside it were a number of canvas bags showing the broken wax seals of the express company. These contained gold pieces apparently fresh from the mint.
A hurried sum in arithmetic showed that approximately all the gold taken from the stage must be here. Dave packed it on the back of his saddle while Crawford penciled a note to leave in the cache in place of the money.
The note said:
This is no safe place to leave seventeen thousand dollars, Dug. I'm taking it to town to put in the bank. If you want to make inquiries about it, come in and we'll talk it over, you and me and Applegate.
EMERSON CRAWFORD
Five minutes later the three men were once more riding rapidly across the valley toward the summit of the divide. The loop of Crawford's lariat still encircled the gross neck of the convict.
CHAPTER XXVI
DAVE ACCEPTS AN INVITATION
Crawford and Dave, with their prisoner, lay out in the chaparral for an hour, then made their way back to Malapi by a wide circuit. They did not want to meet Shorty and Doble, for that would result in a pitched battle. They preferred rather to make a report to the sheriff and let him attempt the arrest of the bandits.
Reluctantly, under the pressure of much prodding, Miller repeated his story to Sheriff Applegate. Under the circumstances he was not sorry that he was to be returned to the penitentiary, for he recognized that his life at large would not be safe so long as Shorty and Doble were ranging the hills. Both of them were "bad men," in the usual Western acceptance of the term, and an accomplice who betrayed them would meet short shrift at their hands.
The sheriff gave Crawford a receipt for the gold after they had counted it and found none missing.
The old cattleman rose from the table and reached for his hat.
"Come on, son," he said to Dave. "I'll say we've done a good day's work. Both of us were under a cloud. Now we're clear. We're goin' up to the house to have some supper. Applegate, you'll get both of the confessions of Miller fixed up, won't you? I'll want the one about George Doble's death to take with me to the Governor of Colorado. I'm takin' the train to-morrow."
"I'll have the district attorney fix up the papers," the sheriff promised.
Emerson Crawford hooked an arm under the elbow of Sanders and left the office.
"I'm wonderin' about one thing, boy," he said. "Did Miller kill George
Doble accidentally or on purpose?"
"I'm wondering about that myself. You remember that Denver bartender said they had been quarreling a good deal. They were having a row at the very time when I met them at the gate of the corral. It's a ten-to-one shot that Miller took the chance to plug Doble and make me pay for it."
"Looks likely, but we'll never know. Son, you've had a rotten deal handed you."
The younger man's eyes were hard as steel. He clamped his jaw tight, but he made no comment.
"Nobody can give you back the years of yore life you've lost," the cattleman went on. "But we'll get yore record straightened out, anyhow, so that won't stand against you. I know one li'l' girl will be tickled to hear the news. Joy always has stuck out that you were treated shameful."
"I reckon I'll not go up to your house to-night," Dave said in a carefully modulated voice. "I'm dirty and unshaven, and anyhow I'd rather not go to-night."
Crawford refused to accept this excuse. "No, sir. You're comin' with me, by gum! I got soap and water and a razor up at the house, if that's what's troublin' you. We've had a big day and I'm goin' to celebrate by talkin' it all over again. Dad gum my hide, think of it, you solemn-faced old owl! This time last night I was 'most a pauper and you sure were. Both of us were under the charge of havin' killed a man each. To-night we're rich as that fellow Crocus; anyhow I am, an' you're haided that way. And both of us have cleared our names to boot. Ain't you got any red blood in that big body of yore's?"
"I'll drop in to the Delmonico and get a bite, then ride out to the
Jackpot."
"You will not!" protested the cattleman. "Looky here, Dave. It's a showdown. Have you got anything against me?"
Dave met him eye to eye. "Not a thing, Mr. Crawford. No man ever had a better friend."
"Anything against Joyce?"
"No, sir."
"Don't hate my boy Keith, do you?"
"How could I?"
"Then what in hell ails you? You're not parlor-shy, are you? Say the word, and we'll eat in the kitchen," grinned Crawford.
"I'm not a society man," said Sanders lamely.
He could not explain that the shadow of the prison walls was a barrier he could not cross; that they rose to bar him from all the joy and happiness of young life.
"Who in Mexico's talkin' about society? I said come up and eat supper with me and Joy and Keith. If you don't come, I'm goin' to be good and sore. I'll not stand for it, you darned old killjoy."
"I'll go," answered the invited man.
He went, not because he wanted to go, but because he could not escape without being an ungracious boor.
Joyce flew to meet her father, eyes eager, hands swift to caress his rough face and wrinkled coat. She bubbled with joy at his return, and when he told her that his news was of the best the long lashes of the brown eyes misted with tears. The young man in the background was struck anew by the matronly tenderness of her relation to her father. She hovered about him as a mother does about her son returned from the wars.
"I've brought company for supper, honey," Emerson told her.
She gave Dave her hand, flushed and smiling. "I've been so worried," she explained. "It's fine to know the news is good. I'll want to hear it all."
"We've got the stolen money back, Joy," exploded her father. "We know who took it—Dug Doble and that cowboy Shorty and Miller."
"But I thought Miller—"
"He escaped. We caught him and brought him back to town with us." Crawford seized the girl by the shoulders. He was as keen as a boy to share his pleasure. "And Joy—better news yet. Miller confessed he killed George Doble. Dave didn't do it at all."
Joyce came to the young man impulsively, hand outstretched. She was glowing with delight, eyes kind and warm and glad. "That's the best yet. Oh, Mr. Sanders, isn't it good?"
His impassive face gave no betrayal of any happiness he might feel in his vindication. Indeed, something almost sardonic in its expression chilled her enthusiasm. More than the passing of years separated them from the days when he had shyly but gayly wiped dishes for her in the kitchen, when he had worshiped her with a boy's uncritical adoration.
Sanders knew it better than she, and cursed the habit of repression that had become a part of him in his prison days. He wanted to give her happy smile for smile. But he could not do it. All that was young and ardent and eager in him was dead. He could not let himself go. Even when emotions flooded his heart, no evidence of it reached his chill eyes and set face.
After he had come back from shaving, he watched her flit about the room while she set the table. She was the competent young mistress of the house. With grave young authority she moved, slenderly graceful. He knew her mind was with the cook in the kitchen, but she found time to order Keith crisply to wash his face and hands, time to gather flowers for the center of the table from the front yard and to keep up a running fire of talk with him and her father. More of the woman than in the days when he had known her, perhaps less of the carefree maiden, she was essentially unchanged, was what he might confidently have expected her to be. Emerson Crawford was the same bluff, hearty Westerner, a friend to tie to in sunshine and in storm. Even little Keith, just escaping from his baby ways, had the same tricks and mannerisms. Nothing was different except himself. He had become arid and hard and bitter, he told himself regretfully.
Keith was his slave, a faithful admirer whose eyes fed upon his hero steadily. He had heard the story of this young man's deeds discussed until Dave had come to take on almost mythical proportions.
He asked a question in an awed voice. "How did you get this Miller to confess?"
The guest exchanged a glance with the host. "We had a talk with him."
"Did you—?"
"Oh, no! We just asked him if he didn't want to tell us all about it, and it seems he did."
"Maybe you touched his better feelin's," suggested Keith, with memories of an hour in Sunday School when his teacher had made a vain appeal to his.
His father laughed. "Maybe we did. I noticed he was near blubberin'. I expect it's 'Adios, Señor Miller.' He's got two years more to serve, and after that he'll have another nice long term to serve for robbin' the stage. All I wish is we'd done the job more thorough and sent some friends of his along with him. Well, that's up to Applegate."
"I'm glad it is," said Joyce emphatically.
"Any news to-day from Jackpot Number Three?" asked the president of that company.
"Bob Hart sent in to get some supplies and had a note left for me at the post-office," Miss Joyce mentioned, a trifle annoyed at herself because a blush insisted on flowing into her cheeks. "He says it's the biggest thing he ever saw, but it's going to be awf'ly hard to control. Where is that note? I must have put it somewhere."
Emerson's eyes flickered mischief. "Oh, well, never mind about the note.
That's private property, I reckon."
"I'm sure if I can find it—"
"I'll bet my boots you cayn't, though," he teased.
"Dad! What will Mr. Sanders think? You know that's nonsense. Bob wrote because I asked him to let me know."
"Sure. Why wouldn't the secretary and field superintendent of the Jackpot Company keep the daughter of the president informed? I'll have it read into the minutes of our next board meetin' that it's in his duties to keep you posted."
"Oh, well, if you want to talk foolishness," she pouted.
"There's somethin' else I'm goin' to have put into the minutes of the next meetin', Dave," Crawford went on. "And that's yore election as treasurer of the company. I want officers around me that I can trust, son."
"I don't know anything about finance or about bookkeeping," Dave said.
"You'll learn. We'll have a bookkeeper, of course. I want some one for treasurer that's level-haided and knows how to make a quick turn when he has to, some one that uses the gray stuff in his cocoanut. We'll fix a salary when we get goin'. You and Bob are goin' to have the active management of this concern. Cattle's my line, an' I aim to stick to it. Him and you can talk it over and fix yore duties so's they won't conflict. Burns, of course, will run the actual drillin'. He's an A1 man. Don't let him go."
Dave was profoundly touched. No man could be kinder to his own son, could show more confidence in him, than Emerson Crawford was to one who had no claims upon him.
He murmured a dry "Thank you"; then, feeling this to be inadequate, added, "I'll try to see you don't regret this."
The cattleman was a shrewd judge of men. His action now was not based solely upon humanitarian motives. Here was a keen man, quick-witted, steady, and wholly to be trusted, one certain to push himself to the front. It was good business to make it worth his while to stick to Crawford's enterprises. He said as much to Dave bluntly.
"And you ain't in for any easy time either," he added. "We've got oil. We're flooded with it, so I hear. Seve-re-al thousand dollars' worth a day is runnin' off and seepin' into the desert. Bob Hart and Jed Burns have got the job of puttin' the lid on the pot, but when they do that you've got a bigger job. Looks bigger to me, anyhow. You've got to get rid of that oil—find a market for it, sell it, ship it away to make room for more. Get busy, son." Crawford waved his hand after the manner of one who has shifted a responsibility and does not expect to worry about it. "Moreover an' likewise, we're shy of money to keep operatin' until we can sell the stuff. You'll have to raise scads of mazuma, son. In this oil game dollars sure have got wings. No matter how tight yore pockets are buttoned, they fly right out."
"I doubt whether you've chosen the right man," the ex-cowpuncher said, smiling faintly. "The most I ever borrowed in my life was twenty-five dollars."
"You borrow twenty-five thousand the same way, only it's easier if the luck's breakin' right," the cattleman assured him cheerfully. "The easiest thing in the world to get hold of is money—when you've already got lots of it."
"The trouble is we haven't."
"Well, you'll have to learn to look like you knew where it grew on bushes," Emerson told him, grinning.
"I can see you've chosen me for a nice lazy job."
"Anything but that, son. You don't want to make any mistake about this thing. Brad Steelman's goin' to fight like a son-of-a-gun. He'll strike at our credit and at our market and at our means of transportation. He'll fight twenty-four hours of the day, and he's the slickest, crookedest gray wolf that ever skulked over the range."
The foreman of the D Bar Lazy R came in after supper for a conference with his boss. He and Crawford got their heads together in the sitting-room and the young people gravitated out to the porch. Joyce pressed Dave into service to help her water the roses, and Keith hung around in order to be near Dave. Occasionally he asked questions irrelevant to the conversation. These were embarrassing or not as it happened.
Joyce delivered a little lecture on the culture of roses, not because she considered herself an authority, but because her guest's conversation was mostly of the monosyllabic order. He was not awkward or self-conscious; rather a man given to silence.
"Say, Mr. Sanders, how does it feel to be wounded?" Keith blurted out.
"You mustn't ask personal questions, Keith," his sister told him.
"Oh! Well, I already ast this one?" the boy suggested ingenuously.
"Don't know, Keith," answered the young man. "I never was really wounded. If you mean this scratch in the shoulder, I hardly felt it at all till afterward."
"Golly! I'll bet I wouldn't tackle a feller shootin' at me the way that
Miller was at you," the youngster commented in naïve admiration.
"Bedtime for li'l boys, Keith," his sister reminded him.
"Oh, lemme stay up a while longer," he begged.
Joyce was firm. She had schooled her impulses to resist the little fellow's blandishments, but Dave noticed that she was affectionate even in her refusal.
"I'll come up and say good-night after a while, Keithie," she promised as she kissed him.
To the gaunt-faced man watching them she was the symbol of all most to be desired in woman. She embodied youth, health, charm. She was life's springtime, its promise of fulfillment; yet already an immaculate Madonna in the beauty of her generous soul. He was young enough in his knowledge of her sex to be unaware that nature often gives soft trout-pool eyes of tenderness to coquettes and wonderful hair with the lights and shadows of an autumn-painted valley to giggling fools. Joyce was neither coquette nor fool. She was essential woman in the making, with all the faults and fine brave impulses of her years. Unconsciously, perhaps, she was showing her best side to her guest, as maidens have done to men since Eve first smiled on Adam.
Dave had closed his heart to love. It was to have no room in his life. To his morbid sensibilities the shadow of the prison walls still stretched between him and Joyce. It did not matter that he was innocent, that all his small world would soon know of his vindication. The fact stood. For years he had been shut away from men, a leprous thing labeled "Unclean!" He had dwelt in a place of furtive whisperings, of sinister sounds. His nostrils had inhaled the odor of musty clothes and steamed food. His fingers had touched moisture sweating through the walls, and in his small dark cell he had hunted graybacks. The hopeless squalor of it at times had driven him almost mad. As he saw it now, his guilt was of minor importance. If he had not fired the shot that killed George Doble, that was merely a chance detail. What counted against him was that his soul was marked with the taint of the criminal through association and habit of thought. He could reason with this feeling and temporarily destroy it. He could drag it into the light and laugh it away. But subconsciously it persisted as a horror from which he could not escape. A man cannot touch pitch, even against his own will, and not be defiled.
"You're Keith's hero, you know," the girl told Dave, her face bubbling to unexpected mirth. "He tries to walk and talk like you. He asks the queerest questions. To-day I caught him diving at a pillow on the bed. He was making-believe to be you when you were shot."
Her nearness in the soft, shadowy night shook his self-control. The music of her voice with its drawling intonations played on his heartstrings.
"Think I'll go now," he said abruptly.
"You must come again," she told him. "Keith wants you to teach him how to rope. You won't mind, will you?"
The long lashes lifted innocently from the soft deep eyes, which rested in his for a moment and set clamoring a disturbance in his blood.
"I'll be right busy," he said awkwardly, bluntly.
She drew back within herself. "I'd forgotten how busy you are, Mr. Sanders. Of course we mustn't impose on you," she said, cold and stiff as only offended youth can be.
Striding into the night, Dave cursed the fate that had made him what he was. He had hurt her boorishly by his curt refusal of her friendship. Yet the heart inside him was a wild river of love.
CHAPTER XXVII
AT THE JACKPOT
The day lasted twenty-four hours in Malapi. As Sanders walked along Junipero Street, on his way to the downtown corral from Crawford's house, saloons and gambling-houses advertised their attractions candidly and noisily. They seemed bursting with raw and vehement life. The strains of fiddles and the sound of shuffling feet were pierced occasionally by the whoop of a drunken reveler. Once there rang out the high notes of a woman's hysterical laughter. Cowponies and packed burros drooped listlessly at the hitching-rack. Even loaded wagons were waiting to take the road as soon as the drivers could tear themselves away from the attractions of keno and a last drink.
Junipero Street was not the usual crooked lane that serves as the main thoroughfare for business in a mining town. For Malapi had been a cowtown before the discovery of oil. It lay on the wide prairie and not in a gulch. The street was broad and dusty, flanked by false-front stores, flat-roofed adobes, and corrugated iron buildings imported hastily since the first boom.
At the Stag Horn corral Dave hired a horse and saddled for a night ride. On his way to the Jackpot he passed a dozen outfits headed for the new strike. They were hauling supplies of food, tools, timbers, and machinery to the oil camp. Out of the night a mule skinner shouted a profane and drunken greeting to him. A Mexican with a burro train gave him a low-voiced "Buenos noches, señor."
A fine mist of oil began to spray him when he was still a mile away from the well. It grew denser as he came nearer. He found Bob Hart, in oilskins and rubber boots, bossing a gang of scrapers, giving directions to a second one building a dam across a draw, and supervising a third group engaged in siphoning crude oil from one sump to another. From head to foot Hart and his assistants were wet to the skin with the black crude oil.
"'Lo, Dave! One sure-enough little spouter!" Bob shouted cheerfully. "Number Three's sure a-hittin' her up. She's no cougher—stays right steady on the job. Bet I've wallowed in a million barrels of the stuff since mo'nin'." He waded through a viscid pool to Dave and asked a question in a low voice. "What's the good word?"
"We had a little luck," admitted Sanders, then plumped out his budget of news. "Got the express money back, captured one of the robbers, forced a confession out of him, and left him with the sheriff."
Bob did an Indian war dance in hip boots. "You're the darndest go-getter ever I did see. Tell it to me, you ornery ol' scalawag."
His friend told the story of the day so far as it related to the robbery.
"I could 'a' told you Miller would weaken when you had the rope round his soft neck. Shorty would 'a' gone through and told you-all where to get off at."
"Yes. Miller's yellow. He didn't quit with the robbery, Bob. Must have been scared bad, I reckon. He admitted that he killed George Doble—by accident, he claimed. Says Doble ran in front of him while he was shooting at me."
"Have you got that down on paper?" demanded Hart.
"Yes."
Bob caught his friend's hand. "I reckon the long lane has turned for you, old socks. I can't tell you how damn glad I am. Doble needed killin', but I'd rather you hadn't done it."
The other man made no comment on this phase of the situation. "This brings Dug Doble out into the open at last. He'll come pretty near going to the pen for this."
"I can't see Applegate arrestin' him. He'll fight, Dug will. My notion is he'll take to the hills and throw off all pretense. If he does he'll be the worst killer ever was known in this part of the country. You an' Crawford want to look out for him, Dave."
"Crawford says he wants me to be treasurer of the company, Bob. You and I are to manage it, he says, with Burns doing the drilling."
"Tha's great. He told me he was gonna ask you. Betcha we make the ol'
Jackpot hum."
"D' you ever hear of a man land poor, Bob?"
"Sure have."
"Well, right now we're oil poor. According to what the old man says there's no cash in the treasury and we've got bills that have to be paid. You know that ten thousand he paid in to the bank to satisfy the note. He borrowed it from a friend who took it out of a trust fund to loan it to him. He didn't tell me who the man is, but he said his friend would get into trouble a-plenty if it's found out before he replaces the money. Then we've got to keep our labor bills paid right up. Some of the other accounts can wait."
"Can't we borrow money on this gusher?"
"We'll have to do that. Trouble is that oil isn't a marketable asset until it reaches a refinery. We can sell stock, of course, but we don't want to do much of that unless we're forced to it. Our play is to keep control and not let any other interest in to oust us. It's going to take some scratching."
"Looks like," agreed Bob. "Any use tryin' the bank here?"
"I'll try it, but we'll not accept any call loan. They say Steelman owns the bank. He won't let us have money unless there's some nigger in the woodpile. I'll probably have to try Denver."
"That'll take time."
"Yes. And time's one thing we haven't got any too much of. Whoever underwrites this for us will send an expert back with me and will wait for his report before making a loan. We'll have to talk it over with Crawford and find out how much treasury stock we'll have to sell locally to keep the business going till I make a raise."
"You and the old man decide that, Dave. I can't get away from here till we get Number Three roped and muzzled. I'll vote for whatever you two say."
An hour later Dave rode back to town.