The Desert Moon Mystery
Kay Cleaver Strahan
Published 1928 by Grosset & Dunlap (New York)
Copyright, 1927, by The Ridgway Company.
CONTENTS
I. The Cannezianos
II. John and Martha
III. Hubert Hand
IV. Chadwick Caufield
V. The Arrival
VI. The Secret
VII. Three Rings
VIII. Atmosphere
IX. The Cabin
X. A Conversation
XI. The Letter
XII. An Insight
XIII. The Quarrel
XIV. Two Departures
XV. One Return
XVI. The Murder
XVII. Suicide
XVIII. Clarence Pette
XIX. The Note
XX. A Confession
XXI. A Summons
XXII. The Pact
XXIII. An Omen
XXIV. Clues
XXV. More Clues
XXVI. The Session
XXVII. Hubert Hand Talks
XXVIII. John Talks
XXIX. Danny
XXX. An Accusation
XXXI. The Session Ends
XXXII. A Part of the Past
XXXIII. Another Confession
XXXIV. Defense
XXXV. A Visitor
XXXVI. Canneziano
XXXVII. Strangler Bauermont
XXXVIII. Lynn MacDonald
XXXIX. A Trap
XL. The Missing Box
XLI. Questions
XLII. A Revelation
XLIII. A Shadow
XLIV. The Notes
XLV. Another Key
XLVI. A Dicker
XLVII. An Aid
XLVIII. New Clues
XLIX. New Suspicions
L. Shovels
LI. Danielle’s Secret
LII. An Explanation
LIII. Another Murder
LIV. Delay
LV. The Third Murder
LVI. A Whisper
LVII. Grief
LVIII. The Puzzle
LIX. The Fatal Mistake
LX. The End
LXI. Epilogue
CHAPTER I
The Cannezianos
I knew, that evening in April, when Sam got home from Rattail and came
stamping snow into my kitchen, his good old red, white, and blue face
stretched long instead of wide in its usual grin, that he had brought
some bad news with him: a slump in the cattle market; moonshine liquor
discovered again, down in the outfit’s quarters; a delayed shipment of
groceries from Salt Lake. I, who in the months that were coming, was
to live through more shock, and fright, and distress and disaster than
should fall to the lot of a thousand women in all of their combined
lifetimes, was worrying, then, for fear we should have to be doing
without olive oil and canned mushrooms for a few weeks in the
ranch-house!
“I had a letter to-day,” he said, “from the Canneziano twins.”
I am like a lot of folks who say that they are not superstitious, who
just happen to think that it is bad luck to walk under a ladder. More
than likely the shivery, creepy sensation I felt, when Sam said that,
was due to the cold he had brought in with him, and was not due to the
fact that those words of his were the forerunners for all of the grim
mysteries and the tragedies that made the Desert Moon Ranch, before
the end of July, a place of horror.
“How much do they want?” I questioned.
“No, Mary; they want to come here to live.”
“Lands alive! For how long?”
“Danielle wrote the letter. She says they want to come here and rest,
indefinitely. There was quite a bit in it about the peace of the
deserts and the high mountains here in Nevada. She says she longs for
it with all her soul, or something like that.”
“Danielle,” I said, “always was the best of the two. You going to let
them come, Sam?”
“Anything else for me to do?”
“Not a thing—for you. There’d be plenty for others. Those girls are no
kin of yours. Let me see—they must be able-bodied young women by now.
Eight years old when they were here in 1909, makes them twenty-four
years old now, according to my figures. Why a couple of women twins,
aggregating forty-eight years, should decide to come here and rest
their souls, at your expense, is beyond me.”
“I have plenty.”
“So has Henry Ford. Why don’t they go rest their souls with him?
They’ve got as much claim on him as they have on you. None.”
“I reckon.”
“Where are they now, anyway?”
“Switzerland.”
“Lands alive! I don’t pretend to know much about foreign geography,
but I’ve understood that there were a few mountains in Switzerland.
Leave those girls rest their souls right there where they are, Sam.”
“No—I don’t know, Mary. I guess I’ll write them a letter and tell them
to come along. Lots of room.”
I didn’t argue any more about it. For twenty-five years I had been
housekeeper of the Desert Moon ranch-house, and I had learned, during
that time, that there was only one subject, concerning Sam, or the
place, on which I could never hope to have any say-so. Trying to argue
with Sam about anything that had to do, in any way, with Margarita
Ditsie, when she was Margarita Ditsie Stanley, or when she was
Margarita Ditsie Canneziano, was about as sensible as hoisting a
chiffon parasol for protection in the midst of one of our Nevada
mountain cloudbursts.
Margarita Ditsie was of French-Canadian parentage; a dark-haired,
big-eyed beauty. Her father kept a gambling hole in Esmeralda County
in the early days. Her mother had run away from a convent, after she
had become a nun, to marry him. The girl had some of the nun, some of
the runaway, and some of the gambling house proprietor in her. It made
a queer combination.
When she was eighteen years old she came from Carson to visit Lily
Trooper, over on the Three Bars Ranch, in northeastern Nevada, about
sixty miles from here. Sam met her there, at one of Ben Trooper’s big
barbecues. She and Sam were married two weeks later. She was a lot
younger than Sam; but, even then, he was the richest man in the
valley, with every unwedded woman for a hundred miles around setting
her cap for him.
Whether Margarita married him for his wealth, or whether it was to
spite the other girls who would have liked to marry him, I don’t know.
All I know is that Margarita never had a mite of love for him. She
stayed with him, though, and acted decently enough for two years,
until Dan Canneziano came to the ranch and got a job on it as
cowpuncher.
It was during those two years that Sam built this ranch-house for her.
He had an architect in New York draw the plans for it; and though now
on the outside, with its towers and trimmings, it looks kind of old
fashioned, I think it is still the finest house in Nevada. Sam’s lead
and silver mine had just come in, and there was not anything, from
Italian marble fireplaces to teakwood floors, that was too grand for
what Margarita called the Stanley Mansion. She left it, all the
elegance and the luxury, and she broke her marriage vows, for love of
this wop cowpuncher. That, I guess, is fair and full enough
description of Margarita Canneziano.
I don’t blame her. I quit blaming folks for things a good many years
ago when, after firing three Chinese cooks in six weeks, I decided
that, if we were to live healthy and wholesome, I’d have to take over
the job of cooking as well as housekeeping for the Desert Moon Ranch,
and set about it, and learned to cook. In other words, when I became a
creator myself, I got to know creations and so quit blaming all of
them. If I forget to put the soda in the sour milk pancakes, it isn’t
their fault if they don’t rise. They are as I made them. Margarita was
as the Lord made her. He, I suppose, either had His own good reasons
for turning out such a mess, or else He was tired, or flustered, or,
maybe, was just experimenting on the road to something better when He
did it.
I should explain, I suppose, wishing to be as honest as possible in
spite of the fact that I am writing a mystery story, that Canneziano
was different from the ordinary breed of cowpunchers. His father, he
claimed, had some hifaluting title in Italy, before he got into a peck
of honorable, patriotic trouble and had to skip to the United States
to save his neck. That may be true, and it may not. Canneziano had a
good education; he talked poetry, and played the violin. Margarita
heard him playing, down in the outfit’s quarters one day, and had Sam
invite him up to the house to play. She accompanied him on the grand
piano that Sam had bought for her.
Before long, Dan Canneziano was spending a good part of his time at
the ranch-house. Sam, being nobody’s fool, soon saw how the land lay;
but he, according to his custom then and now, kept his mouth shut and
his eyes open. Sure enough, one evening they tried to elope together.
Sam went after them and brought them back. I remember, yet, how the
three of them looked, coming into the house that night.
Margarita, her head high, defiant, but pretty as a fire’s flame.
Canneziano, slinking in at her heels, like a whipped cur, expecting
worse; and Sam, following behind them, calm as cold turkey. The three
of them had about half an hour’s talk together. Then Sam herded
Canneziano down to the outfit’s quarters and, I suppose, told the men
to keep him there, for there he stayed until Sam was ready for him
again.
The next morning Sam started to the county seat. He reached there that
evening. The following morning he got his divorce. He came back to the
Desert Moon on the third morning, with his divorce and with a
preacher. He sent for Canneziano, and stood by, while the preacher
married Margarita Stanley to Daniel Canneziano, decent and regular,
according to the laws of Nevada.
There it should have ended. It didn’t, because Sam never got over
loving Margarita. I don’t hold that to his credit. I see no more
virtue in keeping on loving a person who has proved unworthy of being
loved, than I see in hating a person who has turned out to be
blameless, or in continuing to do any other unreasonable thing.
At any rate, Sam did it. So when, nine years later, she came back to
the Desert Moon, with twin girls, Danielle and Gabrielle, and said
that Canneziano had deserted her and the children Sam took them all
right in. I don’t know, yet, whether or not they took him in.
Certainly he did not show much surprise when, in about ten days,
Canneziano put in an appearance. Sam allowed him to get a good start
with his threats, and then he took him across his knees and gave him a
sound spanking, and passed him over to Margarita to dry his tears, and
washed his own hands and went fishing.
That evening he had one of the men hitch up and take the whole kit and
caboodle of Cannezianos to Rattail in time to catch the east-bound
train. I am ashamed to say that Sam gave them money. I don’t know how
much. I shouldn’t be surprised if it was more than they had expected
to get from their blackmailing scheme. A tidy sum, I’ll be bound, for
shortly after we heard that Canneziano had opened the finest gambling
house south of the Mason and Dixon line, in New Orleans.
Sam wanted to keep the children. He offered to adopt them. Margarita
would not consider it. But, several times after that, pale yellow,
perfumed letters came to the Desert Moon, and Sam answered those
letters with a check. Me he answered, each time, with, “It is for the
little girls, Mary. I can’t let little girls go needing.”
When Margarita died, in France, seven years after she had paid us her
blackmailing visit, Sam, the ninny, wrote to Canneziano and again
offered to adopt the girls and give them a good home on the Desert
Moon. He got a few insulting, insinuating lines for an answer.
Canneziano had his own plans for his daughters, who had developed into
rare beauties. He would thank Sam to keep his hands off, mind his own
business, and so forth.
It would have made a milder man than Sam Stanley fighting mad. Sam
went around all that day, swearing to me that he was through; that he
had made his last offer of help to the Canneziano family, had sent his
last contribution. I know for certain, though, that he sent five
hundred dollars to Gabrielle, after that, in answer to a letter she
wrote to him. But, if Sam was soft with the women, he was not soft
with Canneziano. He had showed up here, beaming and broke, about three
years ago. He had left, suddenly, after having seen Sam and no one
else, less beaming but quite as broke as he had been when he had come.
I thought, maybe, Sam was forgetting that side of the family, and that
this might be a good time to remind him.
“Is Canneziano planning to come on later, too, and rest?” I asked.
“Just at present he is in San Quentin, serving a three years’ term.
Danielle didn’t say for what deviltry. His term’s up this summer. That
is another reason the girls want to come here. Somewhere safe from his
persecutions, I think the letter said. Poor little girls,” Sam went
on, “I reckon we haven’t any idea of what they’ve been through, all
these years.”
“I reckon not,” I agreed. “But they aren’t little girls any more.
Seems queer to me, with all the beauty their father was bragging
about, that neither of them has married. Twenty-four is getting
along.”
“I’ll bet,” Sam answered, “it is because they have never had any
decent opportunities. You know how pretty they were as little girls,
and how good——”
“Danielle was good enough,” I said. “Gabrielle was a holy terror.”
Sam let that pass. “Considering,” he continued, “the life that they’ve
had to lead, and all, I think it speaks pretty well for them that they
have come through straight and clean.”
Instead of asking him how he knew that, I said, “You’d be willing,
then, to have John marry one of them?”
John, Sam’s adopted son, was the apple of Sam’s eye. He would have the
ranch, and Sam’s fortune, other dependents provided for, when Sam
died. Whether or not the girl he married would be contented to live on
the ranch, and help John carry it on and keep up its traditions,
making it one of the proudest spots in Nevada, was a mighty important
thing to Sam.
He waited so long before answering my question that I was sure I had
hit the nail on the head.
“John,” he finally said, “is old enough to take care of himself.”
With that he turned and went out of my kitchen, not giving me a chance
to say that, though I had lived through fifty-six years, I had never
yet seen a man at the age he had just mentioned. I did not care. I
felt too vimless for even a spat with Sam. I knew that if these
Canneziano girls came to the Desert Moon, they would bring trouble
with them. I was right. A merciful Providence be thanked that, for a
time at least, the knowledge of how terribly right I was, was spared
me.