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 centre 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 neighbours 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-humouredly. 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
colour, 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 the 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-bye."
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, travelled 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-humouredly, glanced conscience-stricken at the
covered figure on the ground and straightened his face decorously.
"I could lick you good," he admitted in a stage whisper. "I'm a
son-off-a-gun all right--only I don't never get mad at somebody."
Brit Hunter smiled at that, it was so like Swan Vjolmar. But when they
were halfway to Thurman's ranch--Brit on horseback and Swan striding
easily along beside him, leading the blaze-faced horse, he glanced down
at Swan's face and wondered if Swan had not lied a little.
"What's on your mind, Swan?" he asked abruptly.
Swan started and looked up at him, glanced at the empty hills on either
side, and stopped still in the trail.
"Mr Hunter, you been longer in the country than I have been. You seen
some good riding, I bet. Maybe you see some men ride backwards on a
horse?"
Brit looked at him uncomprehendingly. "Backwards?"
Swan led up the blaze-faced horse and pointed to the right stirrup.
"Spurs would scratch like that if you jerk your foot, maybe. You're a
good rider, Mr Hunter, you can tell. That's a right stirrup, ain't it?
Fred Thurman, he's got his left foot twist around, all broke from
jerking in his stirrup. Left foot in right stirrup----" He pushed
back his hat and rumpled his yellow hair, looking up into Brit's face
inquiringly. "Left foot in right stirrup is riding backwards. That's
a damn good rider to ride like that--what you think, Mr Hunter?"