Bernat was dead! His alibi was gone! With Bernat had died his last
chance for freedom--for life itself, perhaps! What chance remained for
him to convince a jury of his innocence? He was enmeshed in a net of
overwhelming circumstantial evidence. Who would believe his story now?
Who, in the face of Fyffe’s written message, of the empty shells in
Otis’ revolver, of the widely known enmity between the cattle men and
the rangers, would hold his weak defense as anything more than a crude
and hastily conceived fabrication?
The shock of the discovery of Fyffe’s condemning scrawl and of his
subsequent arrest had been great, indeed. But through it all he had
been buoyed up by the confidence that Bernat could provide an ironclad
alibi.
Years before, one of his father’s cowhands had been cornered by a
grizzly in the Snake River valley south of the Yellowstone. The man had
raised his rifle to fire, and the rifle had jammed. Otis, then a boy,
had been one of the party which had found the torn and mutilated body,
with the jammed rifle by its side.
Now he knew how the cow-hand must have felt at the instant the rifle
jammed, with the towering grizzly approaching. For he, Otis, was left
helpless before the blind fury of the law.
Sheriff Ogden had returned to Jackson an hour after his chief deputy
had led Otis to his cell.
“Yep, Gus Bernat’s dead as a doornail,” he announced with some evidence
of sympathy. “Between you and me, looks like you’re outa luck.”
Otis shrugged, and tried to smile.
“It can’t be helped,” he replied. “Guess things aren’t breaking my
way.”
An embarrassing pause was broken by the Sheriff, who began:
“Say, Otis--are you goin’ to say anything about bein’ left handcuffed
to that tree?”
“I don’t see why it’s necessary,” Otis replied. “Why?”
“I was just thinking,” Ogden went on, “that maybe I could throw a few
favors your way that might help a lot when it comes time for the trial.
I wish you’d just forget about that part of it, if you can. I don’t
suppose you tried to advertise the fact that you was wearin’ handcuffs
when you rode into town. Everybody knows you was caught in the flood,
and that you came in and gave yourself up. It was mighty white of you,
because I know you could have made a clean get-away. It took us longer
than we thought to trail Radley, and he got away. But no one knows
about the handcuff part except you and me and the boys in the
office--and they’ll keep their mouths shut.”
Otis found that he could laugh. “I wouldn’t worry about that, Sheriff.
I tell you I don’t hold it against you that you arrested me. You were
just doing your duty.”
* * * * *
Sterling Carr called at the jail in the afternoon to visit his son.
“It aint so bad that you shot the ranger, son,” said the old cattle man
as he gripped Otis’ hand. “But I wish you’d tell me it aint true that
you plugged him in the back.”
“But I tell you that I didn’t shoot him,” Otis protested. “I was
fifteen miles away at Bernat’s cabin when it happened.”
“That’s all right to tell the jury,” the old man returned. “I’ll get
you the best lawyer in Wyoming, and he’ll make ’em believe it. But I
wish you’d tell it to me straight.”
Otis went through the story from the time he had left the Footstool
ranch until his arrest. At its conclusion Sterling Carr shook his head
sorrowfully.
“I’m sorry you feel that you can’t confide in your own father, Otis,”
he said. “You ought to know I aint going to tell on you.”
“But I tell you it’s true--every word of it!”
“Son, as soon as we heard at the ranch about your arrest, I learned
from the boys about the meeting last night. They told me how they’d
drawn lots to choose the man to run the ranger out of the country. And
they told me it had fallen to you, and you’d gotten hot under the
collar and told ’em to go to blazes--that you wouldn’t do it.”
“Doesn’t that bear out what I say? I told ’em I wouldn’t do it, and I
didn’t!”
Sterling Carr shook his head.
“How about what old man Foster says?”
“What’s that? I didn’t know he had anything to do with it.”
“Just this: he saw you early this mornin’, ridin’ down the trail from
the ranger station to the Buffalo Forks road. Couldn’t be mistaken.
Described your hat and your shirt and your vest and your hoss. And that
isn’t all. Frog-legs Ferguson of the Flying A saw you farther down the
trail. Now don’t you think you’d better tell your old Dad the truth?”
Otis was dumfounded.
“It’s a lie!” he burst out. “I tell you it’s a lie. I was never near
the ranger station till I went there with Lafe Ogden. Who told you
about Foster and Frog-legs Ferguson? Did you talk to them yourself?”
“No, but Sheriff Ogden did. And he told me about it just before I come
in here to see you.”
* * * * *
A sudden suspicion leaped into Otis’ mind. Was the Sheriff trying to
“frame” him with manufactured evidence? And if so, why? Why had he come
to Otis, begging him to say nothing of the incident of the handcuffs,
but concealing the information about the identifications which Otis
knew were false?
Why should Sheriff Ogden seek to “railroad” him? What could be the
man’s motive? He and Otis, while not close personal friends, had always
been on friendly terms.
Could it be that the Sheriff was in some way identified with the cattle
rustlers? The thought startled him. Perhaps the Sheriff deliberately
was trying to get rid of him, because of his activity against the
rustlers!
And mightn’t that theory explain the action of Ogden in chaining him to
the tree in the path of the flood? Maybe he had done it deliberately,
hoping Otis would be drowned. Maybe he feared that Otis possessed some
information against him in connection with the cattle-rustling, which
Otis might disclose if he ever came to trial.
But had the murder of the ranger been part of the plot? Otis could
hardly believe that the rustlers would kill Fyffe merely to “frame up”
a case against him. It would have been too easy to have gotten rid of
him by a shot from ambush.
And then, there was the writing on the floor of the ranger cabin. Otis
knew beyond any possibility of a doubt that the scrawl had been written
by Ranger Fyffe himself, and by no other. No, that by no stretch of the
imagination might be called a frame-up.
Otis was completely at a loss.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” he said at length, but without revealing any of the
suspicions which had come upon him so suddenly. “I guess the Sheriff
knows what he’s doing. I’ve told you all there is to tell, and I’ve
told you the truth.”
Sterling Carr slowly shook his massive head.
“But why did you pick on Gus Bernat to give your alibi, son?” he asked
uncomprehendingly. “There’s lots of others just as good, and better.
Now, I have a hunch that if you’d remember, even now, that it wasn’t
Gus Bernat, but Jess Bledsoe that seen you at the time of the killin’,
that Jess would step right up at the time of the trial an’ give ’em all
the details.”
“Dad,” began Otis, very soberly, “I know Jess would do it in a minute.
But I’m not going to ask anyone to perjure himself to save me. I
believe I could clear this thing up myself, if I had half a chance.
Maybe I can, anyway. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your
standing by me, because I know you feel that I’m lying to you. But I
tell you again, and I’ll tell you every single time I see you, that I
didn’t do it--I didn’t do it, and that’s all there is to it. How can I
make it any stronger?”
His father gazed out through the barred window, across the rolling,
wooded slopes of the Gros Ventre.
“Blamed if you don’t talk like you meant it, son. I know one person who
wont ask more than your say-so to believe it, and that’s your sister
Margaret.”
* * * * *
Otis was on the point of asking if Mariel had faith in his innocence,
but a sudden feeling of diffidence restrained the question even as his
lips were framing it. After all, why should Mariel, a comparative
stranger, have any reason to vary from what seemed to be the opinion of
the entire community? He kept silent.
Sterling Carr went on: “It may take every penny I’ve got, son, but I’ll
see you come clear of this charge. There’s more ways than one of
handling a thing like this. But why in the name of Sam Hill did you
come back here and give yourself up after you’d gotten away once?
That’s what I can’t figure out.”
“I tell you I promised Lafe I wouldn’t try to escape,” Otis replied
simply.
His father snorted. “You’re mighty p’ticular. But I don’t know but that
I’m glad you done it, even if it turns out that it costs me a pretty
wad to clear you. I would hate to think you’d light out after you’d
passed your word. Do you know why? Because it aint like a man that’d
shoot down an unarmed man, to give himself up to the Sheriff after he
was free, just because he’d told him he’d do it. That aint very clear,
but I guess you know what I mean. Well, so long, son. Don’t you worry,
’cause the old man aint the kind to lay down just ’cause he draws to a
bum hand.”
Otis gripped his father’s hand.
“And say, Dad--if you’re going back to the ranch, I wish you’d take
Pie-face with you. I guess they haven’t got any charge to hold him on.”
When his father had departed, Otis threw himself down on his bunk to go
over again and again the events of the day, seeking a clue which might
lead to the solution of the mysterious slaying of Ranger Fyffe. Before
the torrent of circumstance which was sweeping him onward toward what
seemed certain destruction, he felt more helpless than he had while
being tossed about in the flood of Red Rock creek.
He knew that his father would move heaven and earth to bring about his
acquittal. Yet, in face of the evidence against him, which seemed
incontrovertible, he knew that even the finest legal talent in the
State would be of little avail with an impartial jury.
And even so, such an acquittal would not mean vindication in the eyes
of the rangeland. He would still be known as the man who had shot the
unarmed ranger through the back. In the eyes of Mariel, for instance--
He wished that he had found courage to ask his father if she had
expressed an opinion as to his guilt.