They took Custer down to the village of Ganado, where they had left
their cars and obtained horses. Here they left the animals, including
the Apache, with instructions that he should be returned to the Rancho
del Ganado in the morning.
The inhabitants of the village, almost to a man, had grown up in
neighborly friendship with the Penningtons. When he from whom the
officers had obtained their mounts discovered the identity of the
prisoner, his surprise was exceeded only by his anger.
“If I’d known who you was after,” he said, “you’d never have got no
horses from me. I’d ’a’ hamstrung ’em first! I’ve known Cus Pennington
since he was knee high to a grasshopper, and whatever you took him for
he never done it. Wait till the colonel hears of this. You won’t have
no more job than a jack rabbit!”
The marshal turned threateningly toward the speaker.
“Shut up!” he advised. “If Colonel Pennington hears of this before
morning, you’ll wish to God you was a jack rabbit, and could get out of
the country in two jumps! Now you get what I’m telling you--you’re to
keep your trap closed until morning. Hear me?”
“I ain’t deaf, but sometimes I’m a leetle mite dumb.” The last he added
in a low aside to Pennington, accompanying it with a wink; and aloud:
“I’m mighty sorry, Cus--_mighty_ sorry. If I’d only knowed it was you!
By gosh, I’ll never get over this--furnishin’ horses to help arrest a
friend, and a Pennington!”
“Don’t worry about that for a minute, Jim. I haven’t done anything.
It’s just a big mistake.”
The officers and their prisoner were in the car ready to start. The
marshal pointed a finger at Jim.
“Don’t forget what I told you about keeping your mouth shut until
morning,” he admonished.
They drove off toward Los Angeles. Jim watched them for a moment, as
the red tail light diminished in the distance. Then he turned into the
office of his feed barn and took the telephone receiver from its hook.
“Gimme Ganado No. 1,” he said to the sleepy night operator.
It was five minutes before continuous ringing brought the colonel to
the extension telephone in his bedroom. He seemed unable to comprehend
the meaning of what Jim was trying to tell him, so sure was he that
Custer was in bed and asleep in a near-by room; but at last he was
half convinced, for he had known Jim for many years, and well knew his
stability and his friendship.
“If it was anybody but you, Jim, I’d say you were a damned liar,” he
commented in characteristic manner; “but what in hell did they take the
boy for?”
“They wouldn’t say. Just as I told ’em. I don’t know what he done, but
I know he never done it.”
“You’re right, Jim--my boy couldn’t do a crooked thing!”
“I’m just like you, colonel--I know there ain’t a crooked hair in Cus
Pennington’s head. If there’s anything I can do, colonel, you jest let
me know.”
“You’ll bring the Apache up in the morning? Thank you again, Jim, and
good-by.”
He hung up the receiver. While he dressed hastily, he explained to his
wife the purport of the message he had just received.
“What are you going to do, Custer?” she asked.
“I’m going to Los Angeles, Julia. Unless that marshal’s driving a
racing car, I’ll be waiting for him when he gets there!”
Shortly before breakfast the following morning two officers, armed with
a warrant, searched the castle on the hill. In Custer Pennington’s
closet they found something which seemed to fill them with elation--two
full bottles of whisky and an empty bottle, each bearing a label
identical with those on the bottles they had found in the cases borne
by the burros. With this evidence and the laden pack train, they
started off toward the village.
Shannon Burke had put in an almost sleepless night. For hours she
had lain watching the black silhouette of the big cupola against the
clear sky, waiting for the light which would announce that Custer had
returned home in safety; but no light had shone to relieve her anxiety.
She had strained her ears through the long hours of the night for the
sound of shooting from the hills; but only the howling of coyotes
and the hooting of owls had disturbed the long silence. She sought
to assure herself that all was well--that Custer had returned and
forgotten to switch on the cupola light--that he had not forgotten, but
that the bulb was burned out. She manufactured probable and improbable
explanations by the score; but always a disturbing premonition of evil
dispersed the cohorts of hope.
She was up early in the morning, and in the saddle at the first streak
of dawn, riding directly to the stables of the Rancho del Ganado. The
stableman was there, saddling the horses while they fed.
“No one has come down yet?” she asked.
“The Apache’s gone,” he replied. “I don’t understand it. He hasn’t been
in his box all night. I was just thinkin’ of goin’ up to the house to
see if Custer was there. Don’t seem likely he’d be ridin’ all night,
does it?”
“No,” she said. Her heart was in her mouth. She could scarcely speak.
“I’ll ride up for you,” she managed to say.
Wheeling Baldy, she put him up the steep hill to the house. The iron
gate that closed the patio arch at night was still down, so she rode
around to the north side of the house and _coo-hooed_ to attract the
attention of some one within. Mrs. Pennington, followed by Eva, came to
the door. Both were fully dressed. When they saw who it was, they came
out and told Shannon what had happened.
He was not injured, then. The sudden sense of relief left her
weak, and for a moment she did not consider the other danger that
confronted him. He was safe! That was all she cared about just then.
Later she commenced to realize the gravity of his situation, and the
innocent part that she had taken in involving him in the toils of the
scheme which her interference must have suggested to those actually
responsible for the traffic in stolen liquor, the guilt of which
they had now cleverly shifted to the shoulders of an innocent man.
Intuitively she guessed Slick Allen’s part in the unhappy contretemps
of the previous night; for she knew of the threats he had made against
Custer Pennington, and of his complicity in the criminal operations of
the bootleggers.
How much she knew! More than any other, she knew all the details of
the whole tragic affair. She alone could untangle the knotted web,
and yet she dared not until there was no other way. She dared not let
them guess that she knew more of the matter than they. She could not
admit such knowledge without revealing the source of it and exposing
herself to the merited contempt of these people whose high regard had
become her obsession, whose friendship was her sole happiness, and the
love she had conceived for one of them the secret altar at which she
worshiped.
In the last extremity, if there was no alternative, she would sacrifice
everything for him. To that her love committed her; but she would wait
until there was no other way. She had suffered so grievously through no
fault of her own that she clung with desperation to the brief happiness
which had come into her life, and which was now threatened, once again
because of no wrong-doing on her part.
Fate had been consistently unkind to her. Was it fair that she should
suffer always for the wickedness of another? She had at least the right
to hope and wait.
But there was something that she could do. When she turned Baldy down
the hill from the Penningtons’, she took the road home that led past
the Evanses’ ranch, and, turning in, dismounted and tied Baldy at the
fence. Her knock was answered by Mrs. Evans.
“Is Guy here?” asked Shannon.
Hearing her voice, Guy came from his room, drawing on his coat.
“You’re getting as bad as the Penningtons,” he said, laughing. “They
have no respect for Christian hours!”
“Something has happened,” she said, “that I thought you should know
about. Custer was arrested last night by government officers and taken
to Los Angeles. He was out on the Apache at the time. No one seems to
know where he was arrested, or why; but the supposition is that they
found him in the hills, for the man who runs the feed barn in the
village--Jim--told the colonel that the officers got horses from him
and rode up toward the ranch, and that it was a couple of hours later
that they brought Custer back on the Apache. The stableman just told me
that the Apache had not been in his stall all night, and I know--Custer
told me not to tell, but it will make no difference now--that he was
going up into the hills last night to try to catch the men who have
been bringing down loads on burros every Friday night for a long time,
and who cut his fence last Friday.”
She looked straight into Guy’s eyes as she spoke; but he dropped his as
a flush mounted his cheek.
“I thought,” she continued, “that Guy might want to go to Los Angeles
and see if he could help Custer in any way. The colonel went last
night.”
“I’ll go now,” said Guy. “I guess I can help him.”
His voice was suddenly weary, and he turned away with an air of
dejection which assured Shannon that he intended to do the only
honorable thing that he could do--assume the guilt that had been thrown
upon Custer’s shoulders, no matter what the consequences to himself.
She had had little doubt that Guy would do this, for she realized
his affection for Custer, as well as the impulsive generosity of his
nature, which, however marred by weakness, was still fine by instinct.
Half an hour later, after a hasty breakfast, young Evans started for
Los Angeles, while his mother and Shannon, standing on the porch of
the bungalow, waved their good-bys as his roadster swung through the
gate into the county road. Mrs. Evans had only a vague idea as to what
her son could do to assist Custer Pennington out of his difficulty;
but Shannon Burke knew that Pennington’s fate lay in the hands of Guy
Evans, unless she chose to tell what she knew.
Colonel Pennington had overtaken the marshal’s car before the
latter reached Los Angeles, but after a brief parley on the road
he had discovered that he could do nothing to alter the officer’s
determination to place Custer in the county jail pending his
preliminary hearing before a United States commissioner. Neither the
colonel’s plea that his son should be allowed to accompany him to a
hotel for the night, nor his assurance that he would be personally
responsible for the young man’s appearance before the commissioner on
the following morning, availed to move the obdurate marshal from his
stand; nor would he permit the colonel to talk with the prisoner.
This was the last straw. Colonel Pennington had managed to dissemble
outward indications of his rising ire, but now an amused smile lighted
his son’s face as he realized that his father was upon the verge of an
explosion. He caught the older man’s eye and shook his head.
“It’ll only make it worse,” he cautioned.
The colonel directed a parting glare at the marshal, muttered something
about homeopathic intellects, and turned back to his roadster.