while Lone walked beside her, agreeing with everything she said that
needed agreement. When she had gone a few rods, however, she began to
call him Charlie and to criticize the direction of the picture. They
should not, she declared, mix murders and thunderstorms in the same
scene. While the storm effect was perfectly _wonderful_, she thought it
rather detracted from the killing. She did not believe in lumping big
stuff together like that. Why not have the killing done by moonlight,
and use the storm when the murderer was getting away, or something like
that? And as for taking them out on location and making all those storm
scenes without telling them in advance so that they could have dry
clothes afterwards, she thought it a perfect outrage! If it were not for
spoiling the picture, she would quit, she asserted indignantly. She
thought the director had better go back to driving a laundry wagon,
which was probably where he came from.
Lone agreed with her, even though he did not know what she was talking
about. He walked as fast as he could, but even so he could not travel
the six miles to the ranch very quickly. He could see that the girl was
burning up with fever, and he could hear her voice growing husky,--could
hear, too, the painful laboring of her breath. When she was not mumbling
incoherent nonsense she was laughing hoarsely at the plight she was in,
and after that she would hold both hands to her chest and moan in a way
that made Lone grind his teeth.
When he lifted her off his horse at the foreman's cottage she was
whispering things no one could understand. Three cowpunchers came
running and hindered him a good deal in carrying her into the house, and
the foreman's wife ran excitedly from one room to the other, asking
questions and demanding that some one do something "for pity's sake, she
may be dying for all you know, while you stand there gawping like
fool-hens."
"She was out all night in the rain--got lost, somehow. She said she was
coming here, so I brought her on. She's down with a cold, Mrs. Hawkins.
Better take off them wet clothes and put hot blankets around her. And a
poultice or something on her chest, I reckon." Lone turned to the door,
stopped to roll a cigarette, and watched Mrs. Hawkins hurrying to
Lorraine with a whisky toddy the cook had mixed for her.
"A sweat's awful good for a cold like she's got," he volunteered
practically. "She's out of her head--or she was when I found her. But I
reckon that's mostly scare, from being lost all night. Give her a good
sweat, why don't you?" He reached the doorstep and then turned back to
add, "She left a grip back somewhere along the road. I'll go hunt it up,
I reckon."
He mounted John Doe and rode down to the corral, where two or three
riders were killing time on various pretexts while they waited for
details of Lone's adventure. Delirious young women of the silk-stocking
class did not arrive at the Sawtooth every morning, and it was rumored
already amongst the men that she was some looker, which naturally
whetted their interest in her.
"I'll bet it's one of Bob's girls, come trailin' him up. Mebby another
of them heart-ballum cases of Bob's," hazarded Pop Bridgers, who read
nothing unless it was printed on pink paper, and who refused to believe
that any good could come out of a city. "Ain't that right, Loney?
Hain't she a heart-ballum girl of Bob's?"
From the saddle Lone stared down impassively at Pop and Pop's
companions. "I don't know a thing about her," he stated emphatically.
"She said she was coming to the ranch, and she was scared of the thunder
and lightning. That's every word of sense I could get outa her. She
ain't altogether ignorant--she knows how to climb on a horse, anyway,
and she kicked about having to ride sideways on account of her skirts.
She was plumb out of her head, and talked wild, but she handled her
reins like a rider. And she never mentioned Bob, nor anybody else
excepting some fellow she called Charlie. She thought I was him, but she
only talked to me friendly. She didn't pull any love talk at all."
"Charlie?" Pop ruminated over a fresh quid of tobacco. "Charlie! Mebby
Bob, he stakes himself to a different name now and then. There ain't any
Charlie, except Charlie Werner; she wouldn't mean him, do yuh s'pose?"
"Charlie Werner? Hunh! Say, Pop, she ain't no squaw--is she, Loney?" Sid
Sterling remonstrated.
"If I can read brands," Lone testified, "she's no girl of Bob's. She's
a good, honest girl when she ain't crazy."
"And no good, honest girl who is not crazy could possibly be a girl of
mine! Is that the idea, Lone?"
Lone turned unhurriedly and looked at young Bob Warfield standing in the
stable door with his hands in his trousers pockets and his pipe in his
mouth.
"That ain't the argument. Pop, here, was wondering if she was another
heart-ballum girl of yours," Lone grinned unabashed. "I don't know such
a hell of a lot about heart-balm ladies, Bob. I ain't a millionaire. I'm
just making a guess at their brand--and it ain't the brand this little
lady carries."
Bob removed one hand from his pocket and cuddled the bowl of his pipe.
"If she's a woman, she's a heart-balmer if she gets the chance. They all
are, down deep in their tricky hearts. There isn't a woman on earth that
won't sell a man's soul out of his body if she happens to think it's
worth her while--and she can get away with it. But don't for any sake
call her _my_ heart-balmer."
"That was Pop," drawled Lone. "It don't strike me as being any subject
for you fellows to make remarks about, anyway," he advised Pop firmly.
"She's a right nice little girl, and she's pretty darn sick." He touched
John Doe with the spurs and rode away, stopping at the foreman's gate to
finish his business with Hawkins. He was a conscientious young man, and
since he had charge of Elk Spring camp, he set its interests above his
own, which was more than some of the Sawtooth men would have done in his
place.
Having reported the damage to the bridge and made his suggestions about
the repairs, he touched up John Doe again and loped away on a purely
personal matter, which had to do with finding the bag which the girl had
told him was under a bush where a rabbit had been sitting.
If she had not been so very sick, Lone would have laughed at her naive
method of identifying the spot. But he was too sorry for her to be
amused at the vagaries of her sick brain. He did not believe anything
she had said, except that she had been coming to the ranch and had left
her bag under a bush beside the road. It should not be difficult to find
it, if he followed the road and watched closely the bushes on either
side.
Until he reached the place where he had first sighted her, Lone rode
swiftly, anxious to be through with the business and go his way. But
when he came upon her footprints again, he pulled up and held John Doe
to a walk, scanning each bush and boulder as he passed.
It seemed probable that she had left the grip at Rock City where she
must have spent the night. She had spoken of being deceived into
thinking the place was the Sawtooth ranch until she had come into it and
found it "just rocks." Then, he reasoned, the storm had broken, and her
fright had held her there. When daylight came she had either forgotten
the bag or had left it deliberately.
At Rock City, then, Lone stopped to examine the base of every rock, even
riding around those nearest the road. The girl, he guessed shrewdly, had
not wandered off the main highway, else she would not have been able to
find it again. Rock City was confusing unless one was perfectly familiar
with its curious, winding lanes.
It was when he was riding slowly around the boulder marked "Palace
Hotel, Rates Reasnible," that he came upon the place where a horse had
stood, on the side best sheltered from the storm. Deep hoof marks
closely overlapping, an over-turned stone here and there gave proof
enough, and the rain-beaten soil that blurred the hoofprints farthest
from the rock told him more. Lone backed away, dismounted, and, stepping
carefully, went close. He could see no reason why a horse should have
stood there with his head toward the road ten feet away, unless his
rider was waiting for something--or some one. There were other boulders
near which offered more shelter from rain.
Next the rock he discovered a boot track, evidently made when the rider
dismounted. He thought of the wild statement of the girl about seeing
some one shoot a man and wondered briefly if there could be a basis of
truth in what she said. But the road showed no sign of a struggle,
though there were, here and there, hoofprints half washed out with the
rain.
Lone went back to his horse and rode on, still looking for the bag. His
search was thorough and, being a keen-eyed young man, he discovered the
place where Lorraine had crouched down by a rock. She must have stayed
there all night, for the scuffed soil was dry where her body had rested,
and her purse, caught in the juniper bush close by, was sodden with
rain.
"The poor little kid!" he muttered, and with, a sudden impulse he turned
and looked toward the rock behind which the horse had stood. Help had
been that close, and she had not known it, unless----
"If anything happened there last night, she could have seen it from
here," he decided, and immediately put the thought away from him.
"But nothing happened," he added, "unless maybe she saw him ride out and
go on down the road. She was out of her head and just imagined things."
He slipped the soaked purse into his coat pocket, remounted and rode on
slowly, looking for the grip and half-believing she had not been
carrying one, but had dreamed it just as she had dreamed that a man had
been shot.
He rode past the bag without seeing it, for Lorraine had thrust it far
back under a stocky bush whose scraggly branches nearly touched the
ground. So he came at last to the creek, swollen with the night's storm
so that it was swift and dangerous. Lone was turning back when John Doe
threw up his head, stared up the creek for a moment and whinnied
shrilly. Lone stood in the stirrups and looked.
A blaze-faced horse was standing a short rifle-shot away, bridled and
with an empty saddle. Whether he was tied or not Lone could not tell at
that distance, but he knew the horse by its banged forelock and its
white face and sorrel ears, and he knew the owner of the horse. He rode
toward it slowly.
"Whoa, you rattle-headed fool," he admonished, when the horse snorted
and backed a step or two as he approached. He saw the bridle-reins
dangling, broken, where the horse had stepped on them in running. "Broke
loose and run off again," he said, as he took down his rope and widened
the loop. "I'll bet Thurman would sell you for a bent nickel, this
morning."
The horse squatted and jumped when he cast the loop, and then stood
quivering and snorting while Lone dismounted and started toward him. Ten
steps from the horse Lone stopped short, staring. For down in the bushes
on the farther side half lay, half hung the limp form of a man.
CHAPTER FIVE
A DEATH "BY ACCIDENT"
Lone Morgan was a Virginian by birth, though few of his acquaintances
knew it. Lone never talked of himself except as his personal history
touched a common interest with his fellows. But until he was seventeen
he had lived very close to the center of one of the deadliest feuds of
the Blue Ridge. That he had been neutral was merely an accident of
birth, perhaps. And that he had not become involved in the quarrel that
raged among his neighbors was the direct result of a genius for holding
his tongue. He had attended the funerals of men shot down in their own
dooryards, he had witnessed the trials of the killers. He had grown up
with the settled conviction that other men's quarrels did not concern
him so long as he was not directly involved, and that what did not
concern him he had no right to discuss. If he stood aside and let
violence stalk by unhindered, he was merely doing what he had been
taught to do from the time he could walk. "Mind your own business and
let other folks do the same," had been the family slogan in Lone's home.
There had been nothing in Lone's later life to convince him that minding
his own business was not a very good habit. It had grown to be second
nature,--and it had made him a good man for the Sawtooth Cattle Company
to have on its pay roll.
Just now Lone was stirred beyond his usual depth of emotion, and it was
not altogether the sight of Fred Thurman's battered body that unnerved
him. He wanted to believe that Thurman's death was purely an
accident,--the accident it appeared. But Lorraine and the telltale
hoofprints by the rock compelled him to believe that it was not an
accident. He knew that if he examined carefully enough Fred Thurman's
body he would find the mark of a bullet. He was tempted to look, and yet
he did not want to know. It was no business of his; it would be foolish
to let it become his business.
"He's too dead to care now how it happened--and it would only stir up
trouble," he finally decided and turned his eyes away.
He pulled the twisted foot from the stirrup, left the body where it lay,
and led the blaze-faced horse to a tree and tied it securely. He took
off his coat and spread it over the head and shoulders of the dead man,
weighted the edges with rocks and rode away.
Halfway up the hill he left the road and took a narrow trail through the
sage, a short-cut that would save him a couple of miles.
The trail crossed the ridge half a mile beyond Rock City, dipping into
the lower end of the small gulch where he had overtaken the girl. The
place recalled with fresh vividness, her first words to him: "Are _you_
the man I saw shoot that other man and fasten his foot in the stirrup?"
Lone shivered and threw away the cigarette he had just lighted.
"My God, that girl mustn't tell that to any one else!" he exclaimed
apprehensively. "No matter who she is or what she is, she mustn't tell
that!"
"Hello! Who you talking to? I heard somebody talking----" The bushes
parted above a low, rocky ledge and a face peered out, smiling
good-humoredly. Lone started a little and pulled up.
"Oh, hello, Swan. I was just telling this horse of mine all I was going
to do to him. Say, you're a chancey bird, Swan, yelling from the brush,
like that. Some folks woulda taken a shot at you."
"Then they'd hit me, sure," Swan observed, letting himself down into the
trail. He, too, was wet from his hat crown to his shoes, that squelched
when he landed lightly on his toes. "Anybody would be ashamed to shoot
at a mark so large as I am. I'd say they're poor shooters." And he added
irrelevantly, as he held up a grayish pelt, "I got that coyote I been
chasing for two weeks. He was sure smart. He had me guessing. But I made
him guess some, maybe. He guessed wrong this time."
Lone's eyes narrowed while he looked Swan over. "You must have been out
all night," he said. "You're crazier about hunting than I am."
"Wet bushes," Swan corrected carelessly. "I been tramping since
daylight. It's my work to hunt, like it's your work to ride." He had
swung into the trail ahead of John Doe and was walking with long
strides,--the tallest, straightest, limberest young Swede in all the
country. He had the bluest eyes, the readiest smile, the healthiest
color, the sunniest hair and disposition the Sawtooth country had seen
for many a day. He had homesteaded an eighty-acre claim on the south
side of Bear Top and had by that means gained possession of two living
springs and the only accessible portion of Wilder Creek where it crossed
the meadow called Skyline before it plunged into a gulch too narrow for
cattle to water with any safety.
The Sawtooth Cattle Company had for years "covered" that eighty-acre
patch of government land, never dreaming that any one would ever file on
it. Swan Vjolmar was there and had his log cabin roofed and ready for
the door and windows before the Sawtooth discovered his presence. Now,
nearly a year afterwards, he was accepted in a tolerant, half-friendly
spirit. He had not objected to the Sawtooth cattle which still watered
at Skyline Meadow. He was a "Government hunter" and he had killed many
coyotes and lynx and even a mountain lion or two. Lone wondered
sometimes what the Sawtooth meant to do about the Swede, but so far the
Sawtooth seemed inclined to do nothing at all, evidently thinking his
war on animal pests more than atoned for his effrontery in taking
Skyline as a homestead. When he had proven up on his claim they would
probably buy him out and have the water still.
"Well, what do you know?" Swan turned his head to inquire abruptly.
"You're pretty quiet."
Lone roused himself. "Fred Thurman's been dragged to death by that
damned flighty horse of his," he said. "I found him in the brush this
side of Granite Creek. Had his foot caught in the stirrup. I thought I'd
best leave him there till the coroner can view him."
Swan stopped short in the trail and turned facing Lone. "Last night my
dog Yack whines to go out. He went and sat in a place where he looks
down on the walley, and he howled for half an hour. I said then that
somebody in the walley has died. That dog is something queer about it.
He knows things."
"I'm going to the Sawtooth," Lone told him. "I can telephone to the
coroner from there. Anybody at Thurman's place, do you know?"
Swan shook his head and started again down the winding, steep trail. "I
don't hunt over that way for maybe a week. That's too bad he's killed. I
like Fred Thurman. He's a fine man, you bet."
"He was," said Lone soberly. "It's a damn shame he had to go--like
that."
Swan glanced back at him, studied Lone's face for an instant and turned
into a tributary gully where a stream trickled down over water-worn
rocks. "Here I leave you," he volunteered, as Lone came abreast of him.
"A coyote's crossed up there, and I maybe find his tracks. I could go do
chores for Fred Thurman if nobody's there. Should I do that? What you
say, Lone?"
"You might drift around by there if it ain't too much out of your way,
and see if he's got a man on the ranch," Lone suggested. "But you better
not touch anything in the house, Swan. The coroner'll likely appoint
somebody to look around and see if he's got any folks to send his stuff
to. Just feed any stock that's kept up, if nobody's there."
"All right," Swan agreed readily. "I'll do that, Lone. Good-by."
Lone nodded and watched him climb the steep slope of the gulch on the
side toward Thurman's ranch. Swan climbed swiftly, seeming to take no
thought of where he put his feet, yet never once slipping or slowing. In
two minutes he was out of sight, and Lone rode on moodily, trying not
to think of Fred Thurman, trying to shut from his mind the things that
wild-eyed, hoarse-voiced girl had told him.
"Lone, you mind your own business," he advised himself once. "You don't
know anything that's going to do any one any good, and what you don't
know there's no good guessing. But that girl--she mustn't talk like
that!"
Of Swan he scarcely gave a thought after the Swede had disappeared, yet
Swan was worth a thought or two, even from a man who was bent on minding
his own business. Swan had no sooner climbed the gulch toward Thurman's
claim than he proceeded to descend rather carefully to the bottom again,
walk along on the rocks for some distance and climb to the ridge whose
farther slope led down to Granite Creek. He did not follow the trail,
but struck straight across an outcropping ledge, descended to Granite
Creek and strode along next the hill where the soil was gravelly and
barren. When he had gone some distance, he sat down and took from under
his coat two huge, crudely made moccasins of coyote skin. These he
pulled on over his shoes, tied them around his ankles and went on, still
keeping close under the hill.
He reached the place where Fred Thurman lay, stood well away from the
body and studied every detail closely. Then, stepping carefully on
trampled brush and rocks, he approached and cautiously lifted Lone's
coat. It was not a pretty sight, but Swan's interest held him there for
perhaps ten minutes, his eyes leaving the body only when the blaze-faced
horse moved. Then Swan would look up quickly at the horse, seem
reassured when he saw that the animal was not watching anything at a
distance, and return to his curious task. Finally he drew the coat back
over the head and shoulders, placed each stone exactly as he had found
it and went up to the horse, examining the saddle rather closely. After
that he retreated as carefully as he had approached. When he had gone
half a mile or so upstream he found a place where he could wash his
hands without wetting his moccasins, returned to the rocky hillside and
took off the clumsy footgear and stowed them away under his coat. Then
with long strides that covered the ground as fast as a horse could do
without loping, Swan headed as straight as might be for the Thurman
ranch.
About noon Swan approached the crowd of men and a few women who stood
at a little distance and whispered together, with their faces averted
from the body around which the men stood grouped. The news had spread as
such news will, even in a country so sparsely settled as the Sawtooth.
Swan counted forty men,--he did not bother with the women. Fred Thurman
had been known to every one of them. Some one had spread a piece of
canvas over the corpse, and Swan did not go very near. The blaze-faced
horse had been led farther away and tied to a cottonwood, where some one
had thrown down a bundle of hay. The Sawtooth country was rather
punctilious in its duty toward the law, and it was generally believed
that the coroner would want to see the horse that had caused the
tragedy.
Half an hour after Swan arrived, the coroner came in a machine, and with
him came the sheriff. The coroner, an important little man, examined the
body, the horse and the saddle, and there was the usual formula of
swearing in a jury. The inquest was rather short, since there was only
one witness to testify, and Lone merely told how he had discovered the
horse there by the creek, and that the body had not been moved from
where he found it.
Swan went over to where Lone, anxious to get away from the place, was
untying his horse after the jury had officially named the death an
accident.
"I guess those horses could be turned loose," he began without prelude.
"What you think, Lone? I been to Thurman's ranch, and I don't find
anybody. Some horses in a corral, and pigs in a pen, and chickens. I
guess Thurman was living alone. Should I tell the coroner that?"
"I dunno," Lone replied shortly. "You might speak to the sheriff. I
reckon he's the man to take charge of things."
"It's bad business, getting killed," Swan said vaguely. "It makes me
feel damn sorry when I go to that ranch. There's the horses waiting for
breakfast--and Thurman, he's dead over here and can't feed his pigs and
his chickens. It's a white cat over there that comes to meet me and rubs
my leg and purrs like it's lonesome. That's a nice ranch he's got, too.
Now what becomes of that ranch? What you think, Lone?"
"Hell, how should I know?" Lone scowled at him from the saddle and rode
away, leaving Swan standing there staring after him. He turned away to
find the sheriff and almost collided with Brit Hunter, who was glancing
speculatively from him to Lone Morgan. Swan stopped and put out his hand
to shake.
"Lone says I should tell the sheriff I could look after Fred Thurman's
ranch. What you think, Mr. Hunter?"
"Good idea, I guess. Somebody'll have to. They can't----" He checked
himself. "You got a horse? I'll ride over with yuh, maybe."
"I got legs," Swan returned laconically. "They don't get scared, Mr.
Hunter, and maybe kill me sometime. You could tell the sheriff I'm
government hunter and honest man, and I take good care of things. You
could do that, please?"
"Sure," said Brit and rode over to where the sheriff was standing.
The sheriff listened, nodded, beckoned to Swan. "The court'll have to
settle up the estate and find his heirs, if he's got any. But you look
after things--what's your name? Vjolmar--how yuh spell it? I'll swear
you in as a deputy. Good Lord, you're a husky son-of-a-gun!" The
sheriff's eyes went up to Swan's hat crown, descended to his shoulders
and lingered there admiringly for a moment, traveled down his flat,
hard-muscled body and his straight legs. "I'll bet you could put up
some fight, if you had to," he commented.
Swan grinned good-humoredly, glanced conscience-stricken at the covered
figure on the ground and straightened his face decorously.