I returned to Box Springs at a slow jog trot, thinking things over. Old
Man Hooper's warning sobered, but did not act as a deterrent of my
intention to continue with the adventure. But how? I could hardly storm
the fort single handed and carry off the damsel in distress. On the
evidence I possessed I could not even get together a storming party. The
cowboy is chivalrous enough, but human. He would not uprise
spontaneously to the point of war on the mere statement of incarcerated
beauty--especially as ill-treatment was not apparent. I would hardly
last long enough to carry out the necessary proselyting campaign. It
never occurred to me to doubt that Hooper would fulfill his threat of
having me killed, or his ability to do so.
So when the men drifted in two by two at dusk, I said nothing of my real
adventures, and answered their chaff in kind.
"He played the piano for me," I told them the literal truth, "and had me
in to the parlour and dining room. He gave me a room to myself with a
bed and sheets; and he rode out to his pasture gate with me to say
good-bye," and thereby I was branded a delicious liar.
"They took me into the bunk house and fed me, all right," said Windy
Bill, "and fed my horse. And next morning that old Mexican Joe of his
just nat'rally up and kicked me off the premises."
"Wonder you didn't shoot him," I exclaimed.
"Oh, he didn't use his foot. But he sort of let me know that the place
was unhealthy to visit more'n once. And somehow I seen he meant it; and
I ain't never had no call to go back."
I mulled over the situation all day, and then could stand it no longer.
On the dark of the evening I rode to within a couple of miles of
Hooper's ranch, tied my horse, and scouted carefully forward afoot. For
one thing I wanted to find out whether the system of high transoms
extended to all the rooms, including that in the left wing: for another
I wanted to determine the "lay of the land" on that blank side of the
house. I found my surmise correct as to the transoms. As to the blank
side of the house, that looked down on a wide, green, moist patch and
the irrigating ditch with its stunted willows. Then painstakingly I went
over every inch of the terrain about the ranch; and might just as well
have investigated the external economy of a mud turtle. Realizing that
nothing was to be gained in this manner, I withdrew to my strategic base
where I rolled down and slept until daylight. Then I saddled and
returned toward the ranch.
I had not ridden two miles, however, before in the boulder-strewn wash
of Arroyo Seco I met Jim Starr, one of our men.
"Look here," he said to me. "Jed sent me up to look at the Elder
Springs, but my hoss has done cast a shoe. Cain't you ride up there?"
"I cannot," said I, promptly. "I've been out all night and had no
breakfast. But you can have my horse."
So we traded horses and separated, each our own way. They sent me out by
Coyote Wells with two other men, and we did not get back until the
following evening.
The ranch was buzzing with excitement. Jim Starr had not returned,
although the ride to Elder Springs was only a two-hour affair. After a
night had elapsed, and still he did not return, two men had been sent.
They found him half way to Elder Springs with a bullet hole in his back.
The bullet was that of a rifle. Being plainsmen they had done good
detective work of its kind, and had determined--by the direction of the
bullet's flight as evidenced by the wound--that it had been fired from a
point above. The only point above was the low "rim" that ran for miles
down the Soda Springs Valley. It was of black lava and showed no tracks.
The men, with a true sense of values, had contented themselves with
covering Jim Starr with a blanket, and then had ridden the rim for some
miles in both directions looking for a trail. None could be discovered.
By this they deduced that the murder was not the result of chance
encounter, but had been so carefully planned that no trace would be left
of the murderer or murderers.
No theory could be imagined save the rather vague one of personal
enmity. Jim Starr was comparatively a newcomer with us. Nobody knew
anything much about him or his relations. Nobody questioned the only man
who could have told anything; and that man did not volunteer to tell
what he knew.
I refer to myself. The thing was sickeningly clear to me. Jim Starr had
nothing to do with it. I was the man for whom that bullet from the rim
had been intended. I was the unthinking, shortsighted fool who had done
Jim Starr to his death. It had never occurred to me that my midnight
reconnoitring would leave tracks, that Old Man Hooper's suspicious
vigilance would even look for tracks. But given that vigilance, the rest
followed plainly enough. A skillful trailer would have found his way to
where I had mounted; he would have followed my horse to Arroyo Seco
where I had met with Jim Starr. There he would have visualized a rider
on a horse without one shoe coming as far as the Arroyo, meeting me, and
returning whence he had come; and me at once turning off at right
angles. His natural conclusion would be that a messenger had brought me
orders and had returned. The fact that we had shifted mounts he could
not have read, for the reason--as I only too distinctly remembered--that
we had made the change in the boulder and rock stream bed which would
show no clear traces.
The thought that poor Jim Starr, whom I had well liked, had been
sacrificed for me, rendered my ride home with the convoy more deeply
thoughtful than even the tragic circumstances warranted. We laid his
body in the small office, pending Buck Johnson's return from town, and
ate our belated meal in silence. Then we gathered around the corner
fireplace in the bunk house, lit our smokes, and talked it over. Jed
Parker joined us. Usually he sat with our owner in the office.
Hardly had we settled ourselves to discussion when the door opened and
Buck Johnson came in. We had been so absorbed that no one had heard him
ride up. He leaned his forearm against the doorway at the height of his
head and surveyed the silenced group rather ironically.
"Lucky I'm not nervous and jumpy by nature," he observed. "I've seen
dead men before. Still, next time you want to leave one in my office
after dark, I wish you'd put a light with him, or tack up a sign, or
even leave somebody to tell me about it. I'm sorry it's Starr and not
that thoughtful old horned toad in the corner."
Jed looked foolish, but said nothing. Buck came in, closed the door, and
took a chair square in front of the fireplace. The glow of the leaping
flames was full upon him. His strong face and bulky figure were
revealed, while the other men sat in half shadow. He at once took charge
of the discussion.
"How was he killed?" he inquired, "bucked off?"
"Shot," replied Jed Parker.
Buck's eyebrows came together.
"Who?" he asked.
He was told the circumstances as far as they were known, but declined to
listen to any of the various deductions and surmises.
"Deliberate murder and not a chance quarrel," he concluded. "He wasn't
even within hollering distance of that rim-rock. Anybody know anything
about Starr?"
"He's been with us about five weeks," proffered Jed, as foreman. "Said
he came from Texas."
"He was a Texican," corroborated one of the other men. "I rode with him
considerable."
"What enemies did he have?" asked Buck.
But it developed that, as far as these men knew, Jim Starr had had no
enemies. He was a quiet sort of a fellow. He had been to town once or
twice. Of course he might have made an enemy, but it was not likely; he
had always behaved himself. Somebody would have known of any trouble----
"Maybe somebody followed him from Texas."
"More likely the usual local work," Buck interrupted. "This man Starr
ever met up with Old Man Hooper or Hooper's men?"
But here was another impasse. Starr had been over on the Slick Rock ever
since his arrival. I could have thrown some light on the matter,
perhaps, but new thoughts were coming to me and I kept silence.
Shortly Buck Johnson went out. His departure loosened tongues, among
them mine.
"I don't see why you stand for this old _hombre_ if he's as bad as you
say," I broke in. "Why don't some of you brave young warriors just
naturally pot him?"
And that started a new line of discussion that left me even more
thoughtful than before. I knew these men intimately. There was not a
coward among them. They had been tried and hardened and tempered in the
fierceness of the desert. Any one of them would have twisted the tail of
the devil himself; but they were off Old Man Hooper. They did not make
that admission in so many words; far from it. And I valued my hide
enough to refrain from pointing the fact. But that fact remained: they
were off Old Man Hooper. Furthermore, by the time they had finished
recounting in intimate detail some scores of anecdotes dealing with what
happened when Old Man Hooper winked his wildcat eye, I began in spite
of myself to share some of their sentiments. For no matter how flagrant
the killing, nor how certain morally the origin, never had the most
brilliant nor the most painstaking effort been able to connect with the
slayers nor their instigator. He worked in the dark by hidden hands; but
the death from the hands was as certain as the rattlesnake's. Certain of
his victims, by luck or cleverness, seemed to have escaped sometimes as
many as three or four attempts but in the end the old man's Killers got
them.
A Jew drummer who had grossly insulted Hooper in the Lone Star Emporium
had, on learning the enormity of his crime, fled to San Francisco. Three
months later Soda Springs awoke to find pasted by an unknown hand on the
window of the Emporium a newspaper account of that Jew drummer's taking
off. The newspaper could offer no theory and merely recited the fact
that the man suffered from a heavy-calibred bullet. But always the talk
turned back at last to that crowning atrocity, the Boomerang, with its
windrows of little calves, starved for water, lying against the fence.
"Yes," someone unexpectedly answered my first question at last, "someone
could just naturally pot him easy enough. But I got a hunch that he
couldn't get fur enough away to feel safe afterward. The fellow with a
hankering for a good _useful_ kind of suicide could get it right there.
Any candidates? You-all been looking kinda mournful lately, Windy;
s'pose you be the human benefactor and rid the world of this yere
reptile."
"Me?" said Windy with vast surprise, "me mournful? Why, I sing at my
work like a little dicky bird. I'm so plumb cheerful bull frogs ain't
in it. You ain't talking to me!"
But I wanted one more point of information before the conversation
veered.
"Does his daughter ever ride out?" I asked.
"Daughter?" they echoed in surprise.
"Or niece, or whoever she is," I supplemented impatiently.
"There's no woman there; not even a Mex," said one, and "Did you see any
sign of any woman?" keenly from Windy Bill.
But I was not minded to be drawn.
"Somebody told me about a daughter, or niece, or something," I said,
vaguely.