daguerreotype from a wooden box which had come in the mail. The gilt frame
was tarnished, the purple velvet lining faded, and when he handed the case
to Susie she had to hold it slanting in the light to see the picture.
"Dad!"
She looked at McArthur with eyes wide in wonder.
"Donald MacDonald, my aunt Harriet's brother, who went north to buy furs
for the Hudson Bay Company!" McArthur's eyes were smiling through the
moisture in them.
"We've got one just like it!" Susie cried, still half unable to believe
her eyes and ears.
"I was sure that day you mimicked your father when he said, 'Never forget
you are a MacDonald!' for I have heard my aunt say that a thousand times,
and in just that way. But I wanted to be surer before I said anything to
you, so I sent for this."
"Oh, pardner!" and with a sudden impulse which was neither Scotch nor
Indian, but entirely of herself, Susie threw her arms about his neck and
all but choked him in the only hug which Peter McArthur, A.M., Ph.D.,
could remember ever having had.
XXI
THE MURDERER OF WHITE ANTELOPE
It was nearly dusk, and Ralston was only a few hundred yards from the Bar
C gate, when he met Babe, highly perfumed and with his hair suspiciously
slick, coming out. Babe's look of disappointment upon seeing him was not
flattering, but Ralston ignored it in his own delight at the meeting.
"What was your rush? I was just goin' over to see you," was Babe's glum
greeting.
"And I'm here to see you," Ralston returned, "but I forgot to perfume
myself and tallow my hair."
"Aw-w-w," rumbled Babe, sheepishly. "What'd you want?"
"You know what I'm in the country for?"
Babe nodded.
"I've located my man, and he's going to drive off a big bunch to-night.
There's two of them in fact, and I'll need help. Are you game for it?"
"Oh, mamma!" Babe rolled his eyes in ecstasy.
"He has a horror of doing time," Ralston went on, "and if he has any show
at all, he's going to put up a hard fight. I'd like the satisfaction of
bringing them both in, single-handed, but it isn't fair to the Colonel to
take any chances of their getting away."
"Who is it?"
"Smith."
"That bastard with his teeth stickin' out?"
Ralston laughed assent.
"Pickin's!" cried Babe, with gusto. "I'd like to kill that feller every
mornin' before breakfast. Will I go? Will I? _Will_ I?" Babe's crescendo
ended in a joyous whoop of exultation. "Wait till I ride back and tell the
Colonel, and git my ca'tridge belt. I take it off of an evenin' these
tranquil times."
Ralston turned his horse and started back, so engrossed in thoughts of the
work ahead of him that it was not until Babe overtook him that he
remembered he had forgotten to ask Babe's business with him.
"Well, I guess the old Colonel was tickled when he heard you'd spotted the
rustlers," said Babe, as he reined in beside him. "He wanted to come
along--did for a fact, and him nearly seventy. He'd push the lid off his
coffin and climb out at his own funeral if somebody'd happen to mention
that thieves was brandin' his calves."
"You said you had started to the ranch to see me."
"Oh, yes--I forgot. Your father sent word to the Colonel that he was
sellin' off his cattle and goin' into sheep, and wanted the Colonel to
let you know."
"The poor old Governor! It'll about break his heart, I know; and I should
be there. At his time of life it's a pretty hard and galling thing to quit
cattle--to be forced out of the business into sheep. It's like bein' made
to change your politics or religion against your will."
"'Fore I'd wrangle woolers," declared Babe, "I'd hold up trains or rob
dudes or do 'most any old thing. Say, I've rid by sheep-wagons when I was
durn near starvin' ruther than eat with a sheep-herder or owe one a favor.
Where do you find a man like the Colonel in sheep?" demanded Babe. "You
don't find 'em. Nothin' but a lot of upstart sheep-herders, that's got
rich in five years and don't know how to act."
"Oh, you're prejudiced, Babe. Not all sheepmen are muckers any more than
all cattlemen are gentlemen."
"I'm not prejudiced a-_tall_!" declared Babe excitedly. "I'm perfectly
fair and square. Woolers is demoralizin'. Associate with woolers, and it
takes the spirit out of a feller quicker'n cookin.' In five years you
won't be half the man you are now if you go into sheep. I'll sure hate to
see it!" His voice was all but pathetic as he contemplated Ralston's
downfall.
"I think you will, though, Babe, if I get out of this with a whole hide."
"You'll be so well fixed you can git married then?" There was some
constraint in Babe's tone, which he meant to be casual.
Ralston's heart gave him a twinge of pain.
"I s'pose you've had every chance to git acquainted with the Schoolmarm,"
he observed, since Ralston did not reply.
"She doesn't like me, Babe."
"_What_!" yelled Babe, screwing up his face in a grimace of surprise and
unbelief.
"She would rather talk to Ling than to me--at least, she seems far more
friendly to any one else than to me."
"Say, she must be loony not to like you!"
Ralston could not help laughing outright at Babe's vigorous loyalty.
"It's not necessarily a sign of insanity to dislike me."
"She doesn't go that far, does she?" demanded Babe.
"Sometimes I think so."
"You don't care a-tall, do you?"
"Yes," Ralston replied quietly; "I care a great deal. It hurts me more
than I ever was hurt before; because, you see, Babe, I never loved a woman
before."
"Aw-w-w," replied Babe, in deepest sympathy.
Smith had congratulated himself often during the day upon the fact that he
could not have chosen a more propitious time for the execution of his
plans--at least, so far as the Bar C outfit was concerned. His uneasiness
passed as the protecting darkness fell without their having seen a single
person the entire day.
When the last glimmer of daylight had faded, Tubbs and Smith started on
the drive, heading the cattle direct for their destination. They were
fatter than Smith had supposed, so they could not travel as rapidly as he
had calculated, but he and Tubbs pushed them along as fast as they could
without overheating them.
The darkness, which gave Smith courage, made Tubbs nervous. He swore at
the cattle, he swore at his horse, he swore at the rocks over which his
horse stumbled; and he constantly strained his roving eyes to penetrate
the darkness for pursuers. Every gulch and gully held for him a fresh
terror.
"Gee! I wisht I was out of this onct!" burst from him when the howl of a
wolf set his nerves jangling.
"What'd you say?" Smith stopped in the middle of a song he was singing.
"I said I wisht I was down where the monkeys are throwin' nuts! I'm
chilly," declared Tubbs.
"Chilly? It's hot!"
Smith was light-hearted, sanguine. He told himself that perhaps it was as
well, after all, that the hold-ups had got off with the "old woman's"
money. She might have made trouble when she found that he meant to go or
had gone with Dora.
"You can't tell about women," Smith said to himself. "They're like ducks:
no two fly alike."
He felt secure, yet from force of habit his hand frequently sought his
cartridge-belt, his rifle in its scabbard, his six-shooter in the holster
under his arm. And while he serenely hummed the songs of the dance-halls
and round-up camps, two silent figures, so close that they heard the
clacking of the cattle's split hoofs, Tubbs's vacuous oaths, Smith's
contented voice, were following with the business-like persistency of the
law.
The four mounted men rode all night, speaking seldom, each thinking his
own thoughts, dreaming his own dreams. Not until the faintest light grayed
the east did the pursuers fall behind.
"We're not more'n a mile to water now"--Smith had made sure of his country
this time--"and we'll hold the cattle in the brush and take turns
watchin'."
"It's a go with me," answered Tubbs, yawning until his jaws cracked. "I'm
asleep now."
Ralston and Babe knew that Smith would camp for several hours in the
creek-bottom, so they dropped into a gulch and waited.
"They'll picket their horses first, then one of them will keep watch while
the other sleeps. Very likely Tubbs will be the first guard, and, unless
I'm mistaken, Tubbs will be dead to the world in fifteen minutes--though,
maybe, he's too scared to sleep." Ralston's surmise proved to be correct
in every particular.
After they had picketed their horses, Smith told Tubbs to keep watch for a
couple of hours, while he slept.
"Couldn't we jest switch that programme around?" inquired Tubbs
plaintively. "I can't hardly keep my eyes open."
"Do as I tell you," Smith returned sharply.
Tubbs eyed him with envy as he spread down his own and Tubbs's
saddle-blankets.
"I ain't what you'd call 'crazy with the heat.'" Tubbs shivered. "Couldn't
I crawl under one of them blankets with you?"
"You bet you can't. I'd jest as lief sleep with a bull-snake as a man,"
snorted Smith in disgust, and, pulling the blankets about his ears, was
lost in oblivion.
"I kin look back upon times when I've enj'yed myself more," muttered Tubbs
disconsolately, as he paced to and fro, or at intervals climbed wearily
out of the creek-bottom to look and listen.
Ralston and Babe had concealed themselves behind a cut-bank which in the
rainy season was a tributary of the creek. They were waiting for daylight,
and for the guard to grow sleepy and careless. With little more emotion
than hunters waiting in a blind for the birds to go over, the two men
examined their rifles and six-shooters. They talked in undertones,
laughing a little at some droll observation or reminiscence. Only by a
sparkle of deviltry in Babe's blue eyes, and an added gravity of
expression upon Ralston's face, at moments, would the closest observer
have known that anything unusual was about to take place. Yet each
realized to the fullest extent the possible dangers ahead of them. Smith,
they knew to be resourceful, he would be desperate, and Tubbs, ignorant
and weak of will as he was, might be frightened into a kind of frenzied
courage. The best laid plans did not always work out according to
schedule, and if by any chance they were discovered, and the thieves
reached their guns, the odds were equal. But it was not their way to talk
of danger to themselves. That there was danger was a fact, too obvious to
discuss, but that it was no hindrance to the carrying out of their plans
was also accepted as being too evident to waste words upon.
While the east grew pink, they talked of mutual acquaintances, of horses
they had owned, of guns and big game, of dinners they had eaten, of socks
and saddle blankets that had been stolen from them in cow outfits--the
important and trivial were of like interest to these old friends waiting
for what, as each well knew, might be their last sunrise.
Ralston finally crawled to the top of the cut-bank and looked cautiously
about.
"It's time," he said briefly.
"_Bueno_." Babe gave an extra twitch to the silk handkerchief knotted
about his neck, which, with him, signified a readiness for action.
He joined Ralston at the top of the cut-bank.
"Not a sign!" he whispered. "Looks like you and me owned the world,
Dick."
"We'll lead the horses a little closer, in case we need them quick. Then,
we'll keep that bunch of brush between us and them, till we get close
enough. You take Tubbs, and I'll cover Smith--I want that satisfaction,"
he added grimly.
It was a typical desert morning, redolent with sage, which the night's dew
brought out strongly. The pink light changing rapidly to crimson was
seeking out the draws and coulees where the purple shadows of night still
lay. The only sound was the cry of the mourning doves, answering each
other's plaintive calls. And across the panorama of yellow sand, green
sage-brush, burning cactus flowers, distant peaks of purple, all bathed
alike in the gorgeous crimson light of morning, two dark figures crept
with the stealthiness of Indians.
From behind the bush which had been their objective-point they could hear
and see the cattle moving in the brush below; then a horse on picket
snorted, and as they slid quietly down the bank they heard a sound which
made Babe snicker.
"Is that a cow chokin' to death," he whispered, "or one of them cherubs
merely sleepin'?"
In sight of the prone figures, they halted.
Smith, with his hat on, his head pillowed on his saddle, was rolled in an
old army blanket; while Tubbs, from a sitting position against a tree, had
fallen over on the ground with his knees drawn to his chin. His mouth,
from which frightful sounds of strangulation were issuing, was wide open,
and he showed a little of the whites of his eyes as he slumbered.
"Ain't he a dream?" breathed Babe in Ralston's ear. "How I'd like a
picture of that face to keep in the back of my watch!"
Smith's rifle was under the edge of his blanket, and his six-shooter in
its holster lay by his head; but Tubbs, with the carelessness of a green
hand and the over-confidence which had succeeded his nervousness, had
leaned his rifle against a tree and laid his six-shooter and
cartridge-belt in a crotch.
Ralston nodded to Babe, and simultaneously they raised their rifles and
viewed the prostrate forms along the barrels.
"Put up your hands, men!"
The quick command, sharp, stern, penetrated the senses of the men inert in
heavy sleep. Instantly Smith's hand was upon his gun. He had reached for
it instinctively even before he sat up.
"Drop it!" There was no mistaking the intention expressed in Ralston's
voice, and the gun fell from Smith's hand.
The red of Smith's skin changed to a curious yellow, not unlike the yellow
of the slicker rolled on the back of his saddle. Panic-stricken for the
moment, he grinned, almost foolishly; then his hands shot above his head.
A line of sunlight dropped into the creek-bottom, and a ray was caught by
the deputy's badge which shone on Ralston's breast. The glitter of it
seemed to fascinate Smith.
"You"--he drawled a vile name. "I orter have known!"
Still dazed with sleep, and not yet comprehending anything beyond the fact
that he had been advised to put up his hands, and that a stranger had
drawn an uncommonly fine bead on the head which he was in honor bound to
preserve from mutilation, Tubbs blinked at Babe and inquired peevishly:
"What's the matter with you?" He had forgotten that he was a thief.
"Shove up your hands!" yelled Babe.
With an expression of annoyance, Tubbs did as he was bid, but dropped them
again upon seeing Ralston.
"Oh, hello!" he called cheerfully.
"Put them hands back!" Babe waved his rifle-barrel significantly.
"What's the matter with you, feller?" inquired Tubbs crossly. Though he
now recollected the circumstances under which they were found, Ralston's
presence robbed the situation of any seriousness for him. It did not occur
to Tubbs that any one who knew him could possibly do him harm.
"Keep your hands up, Tubbs," said Ralston curtly, "and, Babe, take the
guns."
"What for a josh is this anyhow?"--in an aggrieved tone. "Ain't we all
friends?"
"Shut up, you idjot!" snapped Smith irritably. His glance was full of
malevolence as Babe took his guns. The yellow of his skin was now the only
sign by which he betrayed his feelings. To all other appearances, he was
himself again--insolent, defiant.
When it thoroughly dawned upon Tubbs that they were cornered and under
arrest, he promptly went to pieces. He thrust his hands so high above his
head that they lifted him to tiptoe, and they shook as with palsy.
"Stack the guns and get our horses, Babe," said Ralston.
"Mine's hard for a stranger to ketch," said Smith surlily. "I'll get him,
for I don't aim to walk."
"All right; but don't make any break, Smith," Ralston warned.
"I'm not a fool," Smith answered gruffly.
Ralston's face relaxed as Smith sauntered toward his horse. He was glad
that they had been taken without bloodshed, and, now the prisoners' guns
had been removed, that possibility was passed.
Smith's horse was a newly broken bronco, and he was a wild beggar, as
Smith had said; but he talked to him reassuringly as the horse jumped to
the end of his picket-rope and stood snorting and trembling in fright, and
finally laid his hand upon his neck and back. The fingers of one hand were
entwined in the horse's mane, and suddenly, with a cat-like spring made
possible only by his desperation, Smith landed on the bronco's back. With
a yell of defiance which Ralston and Babe remembered for many a day, he
kicked the animal in the ribs, and, as it reared in fright, it pulled
loose from the picket-stake. Smith reached for the trailing rope, and they
were gone!
Ralston shot to cripple the horse, but almost with the flash they were
around the bend of the creek and out of sight. The breathless, speechless
seconds seemed minutes long before he heard Babe coming.
"Aw-w-w!" roared that person in consternation and chagrin, as he literally
dragged the horses behind him.
Ralston ran to meet him, and a glance of understanding passed between them
as he leaped into the saddle and swept around the bend like a whirlwind,
less than thirty seconds behind Smith.
Babe knew that he must secure Tubbs before he joined in the pursuit, and
he was pulling the rawhide riata from his saddle when Tubbs, inspired by
Smith's example and imbued with the hysterical courage which sometimes
comes to men of his type in desperate straits, made a dash for his rifle,
and reached it. He threw it to his shoulder, but, quick as he was, Babe
was quicker.
[Illustration: SMITH REACHED FOR THE TRAILING ROPE AND THEY WERE GONE!]
With the lightning-like gesture which had made his name a byword where
Babe himself was unknown, he pulled his six-shooter from its holster and
shot Tubbs through the head. He fell his length, like a bundle of
blankets, and, even as he dropped, Babe was in the saddle and away.
It was a desperate race that was on, between desperate men; for if Smith
was desperate, Ralston was not less so. Every fibre of his being was
concentrated in the determination to recapture the man who had twice
outwitted him. The deputy sheriff's reputation was at stake; his pride and
self-respect as well; and the blood-thirst was rising in him with each
jump of his horse. Every other emotion paled, every other interest faded,
beside the intensity of his desire to stop the man ahead of him.
Smith knew that he had only a chance in a thousand. He had seen Ralston
with a six-shooter explode a cartridge placed on a rock as far away as he
could see it, and he was riding the little brown mare whose swiftness
Smith had reason to remember.
But he had the start, his bronco was young, its wind of the best, and it
might have speed. The country was rough, Ralston's horse might fall with
him. So long as Smith was at liberty there was a fighting chance, and as
always, he took it.
The young horse, mad with fright, kept to the serpentine course of the
creek-bottom, and Ralston, on the little mare, sure-footed and swift as a
jack-rabbit, followed its lead.
The race was like a steeple-chase, with boulders and brush and fallen logs
to be hurdled, and gullies and washouts to complicate the course. And at
every outward curve the _pin-n-gg!_ of a bullet told Smith of his
pursuer's nearness. Lying flat on the barebacked horse, he hung well to
the side until he was again out of sight. The lead plowed up the dirt
ahead of him and behind him, and flattened itself against rocks; and at
each futile shot Smith looked over his shoulder and grinned in derision,
though his skin had still the curious yellowness of fear.
The race was lasting longer than Smith had dared hope. It began to look as
if it were to narrow to a test of endurance, for although Ralston's shots
missed by only a hair's breadth at times, still, they missed. If Smith
ever had prayed, he would have prayed then; but he had neither words nor
faith, so he only hoped and rode.
A flat came into sight ahead and a yell burst from Ralston--a yell that
was unexpected to himself. A wave of exultation which seemed to come from
without swept over him. He touched the mare with the spur, and she skimmed
the rocks as if his weight on her back were nothing. It was smoother, and
he was close enough now to use his best weapon. He thrust the empty rifle
into its scabbard, and shot at Smith's horse with his six-shooter. It
stumbled; then its knees doubled under it, and Smith turned in the air.
The game was up; Smith was afoot.
He picked up his hat and dusted his coat-sleeve while he waited, and his
face was yellow and evil.
"That was a dum good horse," was Babe's single comment as he rode up.
"Get back to camp!" said Ralston peremptorily, and Smith, in his
high-heeled, narrow-soled boots, stumbled ahead of them without a word.
He looked at Tubbs's body without surprise. Sullen and surly, he felt no
regret that Tubbs, braggart and fool though he was, was dead. Smith had no
conscience to remind him that he himself was responsible.
Babe shook out Smith's blue army blanket and rolled Tubbs in it. Smith had
bought it from a drunken soldier, and he had owned it a long time. It was
light and almost water-proof; he liked it, and he eyed Babe's action with
disfavor.
"I reckon this gent will have to spend the day in a tree," said Babe
prosaically.
"Couldn't you use no other blanket nor that?" demanded Smith.
It was the first time he had spoken.
"Don't take on so," Babe replied comfortingly. "They furnish blankets
where you're goin'."
He went on with his work of throwing a hitch around Tubbs with his
picket-rope.
Ralston divided the scanty rations which Smith and Tubbs, and he and Babe,
had brought with them. He made coffee, and handed a cup to Smith first.
The latter arose and changed his seat.
"I never could eat with a corp' settin' around," he said disagreeably.
Smith's fastidiousness made Babe's jaw drop, and a piece of biscuit which
had made his cheek bulge inadvertently rolled out, but was skillfully
intercepted before it reached the ground.
"I hope you'll excuse us, Mr. Smith," said Babe, bowing as well as he
could sitting cross-legged on the ground. "I hope you'll overlook our
forgittin' the napkins and toothpicks."
When they had finished, they slung Tubbs's body into a tree, beyond the
reach of coyotes. The cattle they left to drift back to their range.
Tubbs's horse was saddled for Smith, and, with Ralston holding the lead
rope and Babe in the rear, the procession started back to the ranch.
Smith had much time to think on the homeward ride. He based his hopes upon
the Indian woman. He knew that he could conciliate her with a look. She
was resourceful, she had unlimited influence with the Indians, and she had
proven that she was careless of her own life where he was concerned. She
was a powerful ally. The situation was not so bad as it had seemed. He had
been in tighter places, he told himself, and his spirits rose as he rode.
Without the plodding cattle, they retraced their steps in half the time it
had taken them to come, and it was not much after midday when they were
sighted from the MacDonald ranch.
The Indians that Smith had missed were at the ford to meet them: Bear
Chief, Yellow Bird, Running Rabbit, and others, who were strangers to him.
They followed as Ralston and Babe rode with their prisoner up the path to
put him under guard in the bunk-house.
Susie, McArthur, and Dora were at the door of the ranch-house, and Susie
stepped out and stopped them when they would have passed.
"You can't take him there; that place is for our _friends_. There's the
harness-house below. The dogs sleep there. There'll be room for one
more."
The insult stung Smith to the quick.
"What _you_ got to say about it? Where's your mother?"
With narrowed eyes she looked for a moment into his ugly visage, then she
laid her hand upon the rope and led his horse close to the open window of
the bedroom.
"There," and she pointed to the still figure on its improvised bier.
"There's my mother!"
Smith looked in silence, and once more showed by his yellowing skin the
fear within him. The avenue of escape upon which he had counted almost
with certainty, was closed to him. At that moment the harsh, high walls of
the penitentiary loomed close; the doors looked wide open to receive him;
but, after an instant's hesitation, he only shrugged his shoulders and
said:
"Hell! I sleeps good anywhere."