I lay in my bunk and cast things up in my mind. The patch of moonlight
from the window moved slowly across the floor. One of the men was
snoring, but with regularity, so he did not annoy me. The outside
silence was softly musical with all the little voices that at Hooper's
had so disconcertingly lacked. There were crickets--I had forgotten
about them--and frogs, and a hoot owl, and various such matters, beneath
whose influence customarily my consciousness merged into sleep so
sweetly that I never knew when I had lost them. But I was never wider
awake than now, and never had I done more concentrated thinking.
For the moment, and for the moment, only, I was safe. Old Man Hooper
thought he had put me out of the way. How long would he continue to
think so? How long before his men would bring true word of the mistake
that had been made? Perhaps the following day would inform him that Jim
Starr and not myself had been reached by his killer's bullet. Then, I
had no doubt, a second attempt would be made on my life. Therefore,
whatever I was going to do must be done quickly.
I had the choice of war or retreat. Would it do me any good to retreat?
There was the Jew drummer who was killed in San Francisco; and others
whose fates I have not detailed. But why should he particularly desire
my extinction? What had I done or what knowledge did I possess that had
not been equally done and known by any chance visitor to the ranch? I
remembered the notes in my shirt pocket; and, at the risk of awakening
some of my comrades, I lit a candle and studied them. They were
undoubtedly written by the same hand. To whom had the other been
smuggled? and by what means had it come into Old Man Hooper's
possession? The answer hit me so suddenly, and seemed intrinsically so
absurd, that I blew out the candle and lay again on my back to study it.
And the more I studied it, the less absurd it seemed, not by the light
of reason, but by the feeling of pure intuition. I knew it as sanely as
I knew that the moon made that patch of light through the window. The
man to whom that other note had been surreptitiously conveyed by the
sad-eyed, beautiful girl of the iron-barred chamber was dead; and he was
dead because Old Man Hooper had so willed. And the former owners of the
other notes of the "Collection" concerning which the old man had spoken
were dead, too--dead for the same reason and by the same hidden hands.
Why? Because they knew about the girl? Unlikely. Without doubt Hooper
had, as in my case, himself made possible that knowledge. But I
remembered many things; and I knew that my flash of intuition, absurd as
it might seem at first sight, was true. I recalled the swift, darting
onslaughts with the fly whackers, the fierce, vindictive slaughter of
the frogs, his early-morning pursuit of the flock of migrating birds.
Especially came clear to my recollection the words spoken at breakfast:
"Everything inside the walls is mine! Mine! Mine! Understand? I will
not tolerate anything that is not mine; that does not obey my will; that
does not come when I say come; go when I say go; and fall silent when I
say be still!"
My crime, the crime of these men from whose dead hands the girl's
appeals had been taken for the "Collection," was that of curiosity! The
old man would within his own domain reign supreme, in the mental as in
the physical world. The chance cowboy, genuinely desirous only of a
resting place for the night, rode away unscathed; but he whom the old
man convicted of a prying spirit committed a lese-majesty that could not
be forgiven. And I had made many tracks during my night reconnaissance.
And the same flash of insight showed me that I would be followed
wherever I went; and the thing that convinced my intuitions--not my
reason--of this was the recollection of the old man stamping the remains
of the poor little bird into the mud by the willows. I saw again the
insane rage of his face; and I felt cold fingers touching my spine.
On this I went abruptly and unexpectedly to sleep, after the fashion of
youth, and did not stir until Sing, the cook, routed us out before dawn.
We were not to ride the range that day because of Jim Starr, but Sing
was a person of fixed habits. I plunged my head into the face of the
dawn with a new and light-hearted confidence. It was one of those clear,
nile-green sunrises whose lucent depths go back a million miles or so;
and my spirit followed on wings. Gone were at once my fine-spun theories
and my forebodings of the night. Life was clean and clear and simple.
Jim Starr had probably some personal enemy. Old Man Hooper was
undoubtedly a mean old lunatic, and dangerous; very likely he would
attempt to do me harm, as he said, if I bothered him again, but as for
following me to the ends of the earth----
The girl was a different matter. She required thought. So, as I was
hungry and the day sparkling, I postponed her and went in to breakfast.