Shannon Burke, after a restless night, rose early in the morning to
ride. She always found that the quiet and peace of the hills acted as a
tonic on jangling nerves, and dispelled, at least for the moment, any
cloud of unhappiness that might be hovering over her.
The first person to see her that morning was the flunky from the
K. K. S. camp who was rustling wood for the cook’s morning fire. So
interested was he in her rather remarkable occupation that he stood
watching her from behind a bush until she was out of sight. As long
as he saw her, she rode slowly, dragging at her side a leafy bough,
which she moved to and fro, as if sweeping the ground. She constantly
looked back, as if to note the effect of her work; and once or twice
he saw her go over short stretches of the road a second time, brushing
vigorously.
It was quite light by that time, as it was almost five o’clock, and the
sun was just rising as she dismounted at the Ganado stables and hurried
up the steps toward the house. The iron gate at the patio entrance had
not yet been raised, so she went around to the north side of the house
and knocked on the colonel’s bedroom door.
He came from his dressing room to answer her knock, for he was fully
dressed and evidently on the point of leaving for his morning ride. The
expression of her face denoted that something was wrong, even before
she spoke.
“Colonel,” she cried, “Wilson Crumb has been killed. I rode early this
morning, and as I came into Sycamore over El Camino Largo I saw his
body lying under the big tree there.”
They were both thinking the same thought, which neither dared
voice--where was Custer?
“Did you notify the camp?” he asked.
“No--I came directly here.”
“You are sure that it is Crumb, and that he is dead?” he asked.
“I am sure that it is Crumb. He was lying on his back, and though I
didn’t dismount I am quite positive that he was dead.”
Mrs. Pennington had joined them, herself dressed for riding.
“How terrible!” she exclaimed.
“Terrible nothing,” exclaimed the colonel. “I’m damned glad he’s dead!”
Shannon looked at him in astonishment, but Mrs. Pennington understood,
for the colonel had told her all that Eva had told him.
“He was a bad man,” said Shannon. “The world will be better off without
him.”
“You knew him?” Colonel Pennington asked in surprise.
“I knew him in Hollywood,” she replied.
She knew now that they must all know sooner or later, for she could not
see how she could be kept out of the investigation and the trial that
must follow. In her heart she feared that Custer had killed Crumb. The
fact that he had drunk so heavily that afternoon indicated not only
that he had overheard, but that what he had heard had affected him
profoundly--profoundly enough to have suggested the killing of the man
whom he believed to have wronged the woman he loved.
“The first thing to do, I suppose,” said the colonel, “is to notify the
sheriff.”
He left the room and went to the telephone. While he was away Mrs.
Pennington and Shannon discussed the tragedy, and the older woman
confided to the other the experience that Eva had had with Crumb the
previous night.
“The beast!” muttered Shannon. “Death was too good for him!”
Presently the colonel returned to them.
“I think I’ll go and see if the children are going to ride with us,” he
said. “There is no reason why we shouldn’t ride as usual.”
He went to Eva’s door and looked in. Apparently she was still fast
asleep. Her hair was down, and her curls lay in soft confusion upon her
pillow. Very gently he closed the door again, glad that she could sleep.
When he entered his son’s room he found Custer lying fully clothed
upon his bed, his belt about his waist and his gun at his hip. His
suspicions were crystallized into belief.
But why had Custer killed Crumb? He couldn’t have known of the man’s
affront to Eva, for she had seen no member of the family but her
father, and in him alone had she confided.
He crossed to the bed and shook Custer by the shoulder. The younger man
opened his eyes and sat up on the edge of his bed. He looked first at
his father and then at himself--at his boots and spurs, and breeches,
and the gun about his waist.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Five o’clock.”
“I must have fallen asleep. I wish it was dinner time! I’m hungry.”
“Dinner time! It’s only a matter of a couple of hours to breakfast.
It’s five o’clock in the morning.”
Custer rose to his feet in surprise.
“I must have loaded on more than I knew,” he said with a wry smile.
“What do you mean?” asked his father.
“I had a blue streak yesterday afternoon, and I took a few drinks; and
here I have slept all the way through to the next morning!”
“You haven’t been out of the room since yesterday afternoon?” asked the
colonel.
“No, of course not. I thought it was still yesterday afternoon until
you told me that it is the next morning,” said Custer.
The colonel ran his fingers through his hair.
“I am glad,” he said.
Custer didn’t know why his father was glad.
“Riding?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be with you in a jiffy. I want to wash up a bit.”
He met them at the stables a few minutes later. The effect of the
liquor had entirely disappeared. He seemed his normal self again, and
not at all like a man who had the blood of a new murder on his soul. He
was glad to see Shannon, and squeezed her hand as he passed her horse
to get his own.
In the few moments since his father had awakened him, he had reviewed
the happenings of the previous day, and his loyalty to the girl he
loved had determined him that he had nothing to grieve about. Whatever
had been between her and Crumb she would explain. Only the fact that
Eva had interrupted her had kept him from knowing the whole truth the
previous day.
They were mounted, and had started out, when the colonel reined to
Custer’s side.
“Shannon just made a gruesome find up in Sycamore,” he said, and paused.
If he had intended to surprise Custer into any indication of guilty
knowledge, he failed.
“Gruesome find!” repeated the younger man. “What was it?”
“Wilson Crumb has been murdered. Shannon found his body.”
“The devil!” ejaculated Custer. “Who do you suppose could have done it?”
Then, quite suddenly, his heart came to his mouth, as he realized that
there was only one present there who had cause to kill Wilson Crumb. He
did not dare to look at Shannon for a long time.
They had gone only a hundred yards when Custer pulled up the Apache and
dismounted.
“I thought so,” he said, looking at the horse’s off forefoot. “He’s
pulled that shoe again. He must have done it in the corral, for it was
on when I put him in last night. You folks go ahead. I’ll go back and
saddle Baldy.”
The stableman was still there, and helped him.
“That was a new shoe,” Custer said. “Look about the corral and the box,
and see if you can find it. You can tack it back on.”
Then he swung to Baldy’s back and cantered off after the others.
A deputy sheriff came from the village of Ganado before they returned
from their ride, and went up the cañon to take charge of Crumb’s body
and investigate the scene of the crime.
Eva was still in bed when they were called to breakfast. They insisted
upon Shannon’s remaining, and the four were passing along the arcade
past Eva’s room.
“I think I’ll go in and waken her,” said Mrs. Pennington. “She doesn’t
like to sleep so late.”
The others passed into the living room, and were walking toward the
dining room when they were startled by a scream.
“Custer! Custer!” Mrs. Pennington called to her husband.
All three turned and hastened back to Eva’s room, where they found Mrs.
Pennington half lying across the bed, her body convulsed with sobs. The
colonel was the first to reach her, followed by Custer and Shannon. The
bedclothes lay half thrown back, where Mrs. Pennington had turned them.
The white sheet was stained with blood, and in Eva’s hand was clutched
a revolver that Custer had given her the previous Christmas.
“My little girl, my little girl!” cried the weeping mother. “Why did
you do it?”
The colonel knelt and put his arms about his wife. He could not speak.
Custer Pennington stood like a man turned to stone. The shock seemed to
have bereft him of the power to understand what had happened. Finally
he turned dumbly toward Shannon. The tears were running down her
cheeks. Gently she touched his sleeve.
“My poor boy!” she said.
The words broke the spell that had held him. He walked to the opposite
side of the bed and bent close to the still, white face of the sister
he had worshiped.
“Dear little sister, how could you, when we love you so?” he said.
Gently the colonel drew his wife away, and, kneeling, placed his ear
close above Eva’s heart. There were no outward indications of life,
but presently he lifted his head, an expression of hope relieving that
of grim despair which had settled upon his countenance at the first
realization of the tragedy.
“She is not dead,” he said. “Get Baldwin! Get him at once!” He was
addressing Custer. “Then telephone Carruthers, in Los Angeles, to get
down here as soon as God will let him.”
Custer hurried from the room to carry out his father’s instructions.
It was later, while they were waiting for the arrival of the doctor,
that the colonel told Custer of Eva’s experience with Crumb the
previous night.
“She wanted to kill herself because of what he told her about Guy,” he
said. “There was no other reason.”
Then the doctor came, and they all stood in tense expectancy and
mingled dread and hope while he made his examination. Carefully and
deliberately the old doctor worked, outwardly as calm and unaffected as
if he were treating a minor injury to a stranger; yet his heart was as
heavy as theirs, for he had brought Eva into the world, and had known
and loved her all her brief life.
At last he straightened up, to find their questioning eyes upon him.
“She still lives,” he said, but there was no hope in his voice.
“I have sent for Carruthers,” said the colonel. “He is on his way now.
He told Custer that he’ll be here in less than three hours.”
“I arranged to have a couple of nurses sent out, too,” said Custer.
Dr. Baldwin made no reply.
“There is no hope?” asked the colonel.
“There is always hope while there is life,” replied the doctor; “but
you must not raise yours too high.”
They understood him, and realized that there was very little hope.
“Can you keep her alive until Carruthers arrives?” asked the colonel.
“I need not tell you that I shall do my best,” was the reply.
Guy had come, with his mother. He seemed absolutely stunned by the
catastrophe that had overwhelmed him. There was a wildness in his
demeanor that frightened them all. It was necessary to watch him
carefully, for fear that he might attempt to destroy himself when he
realized at last that Eva was likely to die.
He insisted that they should tell him all the circumstances that had
led up to the pitiful tragedy. For a time they sought to conceal a part
of the truth from him; but at last, so great was his insistence, they
were compelled to reveal all that they knew.
Of a nervous and excitable temperament, and endowed by nature with a
character of extreme sensitiveness and comparatively little strength,
the shock of the knowledge that it was his own acts that had led Eva
to self-destruction proved too much for Guy’s overwrought nerves and
brain. So violent did he become that Colonel Pennington and Custer
together could scarce restrain him, and it became necessary to send for
two of the ranch employees.
When the deputy sheriff came to question them about the murder of
Crumb, it was evident that Guy’s mind was so greatly affected that he
did not understand what was taking place around him. He had sunk into a
morose silence broken at intervals by fits of raving. Later in the day,
at Dr. Baldwin’s suggestion, he was removed to a sanatorium outside of
Los Angeles.
Guy’s mental collapse, and the necessity for constantly restraining
him, had resulted in taking Custer’s mind from his own grief, at least
for the moment; but when he was not thus occupied he sat staring
straight ahead of him in dumb despair.
It was eleven o’clock when the best surgeon that Los Angeles could
furnish arrived, bringing a nurse with him, and Eva was still breathing
when he came. Dr. Baldwin was there, and together the three worked for
an hour while the Penningtons and Shannon waited almost hopelessly in
the living room, Mrs. Evans having accompanied Guy to Los Angeles.
Finally, after what seemed years, the door of the living room opened,
and Dr. Carruthers entered. They scanned his face as he entered, but
saw nothing there to lighten the burden of their apprehension. The
colonel and Custer rose.
“Well?” asked the former, his voice scarcely audible.
“The operation was successful. I found the bullet and removed it.”
“She will live, then!” cried Mrs. Pennington, coming quickly toward him.
He took her hands very gently in his.
“My dear madam,” he said, “it would be cruel of me to hold out useless
hope. She hasn’t more than one chance in a hundred. It is a miracle
that she was alive when you found her. Only a splendid constitution,
resulting from the life that she has led, could possibly account for
it.”
The mother turned away with a low moan.
“There is nothing more that you can do?” asked the colonel.
“I have done all that I can,” replied Carruthers.
“She will not last long?”
“It may be a matter of hours, or only minutes,” he replied. “She is
in excellent hands, however. No one could do more for her than Dr.
Baldwin.”
The two nurses whom Custer had arranged for had arrived, and when Dr.
Carruthers departed he took his own nurse with him.
It was afternoon when deputies from the sheriff’s and coroner’s offices
arrived from Los Angeles, together with detectives from the district
attorney’s office. Crumb’s body still lay where it had fallen, guarded
by a constable from the village of Ganado. It was surrounded by members
of his company, villagers, and near-by ranchers, for word of the murder
had spread rapidly in the district in that seemingly mysterious way
in which news travels in rural communities. Among the crowd was Slick
Allen, who had returned to the valley after his release from the county
jail.
A partially successful effort had been made to keep the crowd from
trampling the ground in the immediate vicinity of the body, but beyond
a limited area whatever possible clews the murderer might have left in
the shape of footprints had been entirely obliterated long before the
officers arrived from Los Angeles.
When the body was finally lifted from its resting place, and placed
in the ambulance that had been brought from Los Angeles, one of the
detectives picked up a horseshoe that had lain underneath the body.
From its appearance it was evident that it had been upon a horse’s hoof
very recently, and had been torn off by force.
As the detective examined the shoe, several of the crowd pressed
forward to look at it. Among them was Allen.
“That’s off of young Pennington’s horse,” he said.
“How do you know that?” inquired the detective.
“I used to work for them--took care of their saddle horses. This young
Pennington’s horse forges. They had to shoe him special, to keep him
from pulling the off fore shoe. I could tell one of his shoes in a
million. If they haven’t walked all over his tracks, I can tell whether
that horse had been up here or not.”
He stooped and examined the ground close to where the body had lain.
“There!” he said, pointing. “There’s an imprint of one of his hind
feet. See how the toe of that shoe is squared off? That was made by the
Apache, all right!”
The detective was interested. He studied the hoofprint carefully, and
searched for others, but this was the only one he could find.
“Looks like some one had been sweeping this place with a broom,” he
remarked. “There ain’t much of anything shows.”
A pimply-faced young man spoke up.
“There was some one sweeping the ground this morning,” he said. “About
five o’clock this morning I seen a girl dragging the branch of a tree
after her, and sweeping along the road below here.”
“Did you know her?” asked the detective.
“No--I never seen her before.”
“Would you know her if you saw her again?”
“Sure I’d know her! She was a pippin. I’d know her horse, too.”