Ironheart

From Betty’s cheeks the delicate wild-rose bloom had fled. Icy fingers seemed to clutch at her heart and squeeze the blood from it. This was the worst that could happen, since she knew her father was not wounded to death.

Lon spoke, grimly. “Bumped into him down the creek a ways—hidin’ in the willows. Heard a rustling an’ drapped in on him onexpected. Thought he wouldn’t come with me at first, then he changed his mind an’ thought he would.”

The tramp said nothing. His dogged eyes passed from Betty to her father. She thought there leaped into them a little flicker of surprise when they fell upon the ranchman sitting on the ground with his leg bound up.

“Have you taken his gun from him?” Reed asked.

“Couldn’t find it. He must ’a’ throwed it away.” The foreman passed an exploring hand over the body of the prisoner to make sure that he had not missed a concealed weapon. “No, sir. He ain’t got a gat with him now, unless he’s et it.”

“Take him to the bunkhouse and keep him guarded. We’ll ’phone for the sheriff. Soon as you get to the house call up Doc Rayburn and have him run right out. Then hook up a team and come get me,” the ranch-owner directed.

From the fog of Betty’s distress a small voice projected itself. “You’re not going to send for the sheriff without making sure, Dad?”

“Sure of what?” The steel-gray eyes were hard and cold.

“Sure he did it. He hasn’t said so.”

Reed’s laughter was harsh and without humor. “Nor he ain’t liable to. Right now he’s trying to fix up his alibi.”

“Aren’t you going to hear what he’s got to say?”

“He can tell it in court.”

Betty turned from him to the prisoner. “Why don’t you say something?”

She did not get past the defense of his sardonic smile. “What shall I say?”

“Tell him you didn’t do it,” she begged, seeking assurance for herself.

“Would he believe me? Would you?”

There came to her a conviction that she would—if he said it in a way to inspire confidence.

“Yes,” she said.

The veil of irrision lifted from his eyes. He looked straight at her. “I didn’t do it.”

Instantly Betty knew he was telling the truth. A warm resurgent wave flooded her veins. His life was bound up with tragedy. It had failed of all it had set out to be. But she knew, beyond doubt or evidence, that he had not fired the stacks or shot her father. The amazing thing now, to her mind, was that even for a moment she could have believed he would kill at advantage in cold blood.

“I knew it! I knew it all the time!” she cried.

“How did you know all that?” her father asked.

“Because.”

It was no answer, yet it was as good as any she could give. How could she phrase a feeling that rested only on faith in such a way as to give it weight to others?

“I’m one o’ these Missouri guys,” the foreman snorted. “He’ll have to show me. What’s he doin’ here? What was he hidin’ out in the bushes for? How could he tell soon as I jumped him that a man had been shot?”

“He can explain that,” she urged; and to the vagrant, “Can’t you?”

“I can,” he answered her.

“We’re waiting,” snapped Reed, and voice and manner showed that he had prejudged the case.

The young man met his look with one of cold hostility.

“You can keep on waiting—till the sheriff comes.”

“Suits me,” snapped the ranchman. “Hustle along, Lon. No use wasting time.”

The foreman and his prisoner departed. Betty stayed with her father, miserably conscious that she had failed to avert the clash of inimical temperaments. None the less she was determined to keep the young man out of the hands of the law.

She began at once to lay siege to her father.

“I knew he didn’t do it. I knew he couldn’t. It was that one they call Cig. I know it was.”

“All three of ’em in it likely.”

“No. They had quarreled. He wouldn’t be in it with them. That Cig thought he had told you about his attacking me. He threatened this Tug. I think he’d have shot him just as he did you—if he’d got a chance.”

“If he did shoot me. That’s not been proved.”

“Well, if this one—the one they call Tug—if he did it, why didn’t he have a gun when Lon found him? Lon says he came on him unexpectedly. He had no time to get rid of it. Where is it?”

“Maybe he dropped it while he was running.”

“You know you don’t believe that, Dad,” she scoffed. “He’d have stopped to pick it up. Don’t you see he had to have that gun—the man that shot you did—to make sure of getting away? And when Lon found him he would have killed Lon, too. He’d have had to do it—to save himself from the hangman. The fact that this Tug didn’t have a gun proves that he didn’t shoot you.”

“Say he didn’t, then. Does it prove he wasn’t in cahoots with the man who did? What was he hiding here on the ground for?”

“You didn’t give him a chance to tell. He was ready to, if you’d let him.”

“I asked him, didn’t I?”

“Oh, Dad, you know how you asked him,” she reproached. “He’s got his pride, same as we have. If he wasn’t in this—and I know he wasn’t—you can’t blame him for getting stubborn when he’s badgered. His explanations would have tumbled out fast enough if he’d been guilty.”

This struck Reed as psychologically true. The fellow had not acted like a guilty man. He had held his head high, with a scornful and almost indifferent pride.

“What did I say, for him to get his back up so quick?” the ranchman grumbled.

“It’s the way you said it, and the way Lon acted. He’s quick-tempered, and of course he’s fed up with our treatment of him. Wouldn’t you be?”

“What right has he to travel with a bunch of crooks if he doesn’t expect to be classed as one?”

“Well, he hasn’t.” Betty put her arms round his neck with a warm rush of feeling. Motives are usually mixed in the most simple of us. Perhaps in the back of her mind there was an intuition that the road to her desire lay through affection and not argument. “I can’t row with you now, Daddikins, when you’re wounded and hurt. I’m so worried about you. I thought—a while ago—when I saw you lying on the ground and that murderer shooting at you—”

She stopped, to steady a voice grown tremulous in spite of herself. He stroked her black hair softly.

“I know, li’l’ girl. But it’s all right now. Just a clean flesh wound. Don’t you feel bad,” he comforted.

“And then that boy. I don’t want us to rush into doing anything that will hurt the poor fellow more. We’ve done enough to him. We’d feel awf’ly bad if we got him into trouble and he wasn’t the right man.”

Reed surrendered, largely because her argument was just, but partly, too, because of her distress. “Have it your own way, Bess. I know you’re going to, anyhow. We’ll hear his story. If it sounds reasonable, why—”

Her arms tightened in a quick hug and her soft cheek pressed against his rough one. “That’s all I want, Dad. I know Clint Reed. He’s what Dusty calls one square guy. If you listen to this tramp’s story, he’ll get justice, and that’s all I ask for him.” She dismissed the subject, sure in her young, instinctive wisdom that she had said enough and that more would be too much. “Is the leg throbbing, Daddy? Shall I run down to the creek and get water to bathe it? Maybe that would help the pain.”

“No, you stay right here where it’s dark and quit talking. The boys may drive that fellow back up the creek. My leg’ll be all right till Rayburn sees it.”

“You think he’ll come back here again?” she asked, her voice a-tremble.

“Not if he can help it, you can bet on that. But if the boys hem him in, and he can’t break through, why, he’ll have to back-track.”

The girl’s heart began to flutter again. She had plenty of native courage, but to lie in the darkness of the night in fear of an assassin shook her nerves. What would he do if he came back, hard-pressed by the men, and found her father lying wounded and defenseless? In imagination she saw again the horrible menace of his twisted face, the lifted lip so feral, the wolfish, hungry eyes.

Would Lon Forbes never come back? What was he doing? What was keeping him so long? He had had time long since to have reached the house and hitched a team. Maybe he was wasting precious minutes at the telephone trying to get the sheriff.

A dry twig crackled in the willows and Betty’s hand clutched spasmodically at her father’s arm. She felt rather than saw his body grow taut. There came a sound of something gliding through the saplings.

Betty scarce dared breathe.

A patter of light feet was heard. Clint laughed.

“A rabbit. Didn’t think it could be any one in the willows. We’d ’a’ heard him coming.”

“Listen!” whispered Betty.

The rumble of wagon wheels going over disintegrated quartz drifted to them.

“Lon’s coming,” her father said.

Presently they heard his voice talking to the horses. “Get over there, Buckskin, you got plenty o’ room. What’s eatin’ you, anyhow?”

Forbes stopped on the bluff and came down. “Left the fellow with Burwell tied up in the bunkhouse. Got both the sheriff and Doc Rayburn. How’s the leg, Clint?”

Reed grunted a “’S all right,” and showed the foreman how to support him up the incline to the wagon.

Five minutes later they were moving back toward the ranch house. The fired stacks had burned themselves out, but smoke still rolled skyward.

“Keller’s watchin’ to see everything’s all right there,” Forbes said. “I don’t aim to take chances till we get the whole crop threshed.”

“Might ’a’ been worse,” Clint said. “If that fellow’d known how to go at it, he could have sent half the crop up in smoke. We’re lucky, I’ll say.”

“Luckier than he is. I’ll bet he gets ten years,” the foreman said with unction.

Neither father nor daughter made any answer to that prophecy.