STARTLING REVELATIONS.
If the Utes remained in the vicinity, they kept out of sight and were
not seen again.
Old Nomad and the baron had heard the shot of the Indians; but,
thinking it had come from the rifle of Buffalo Bill, they had
abandoned the trail they were following, and came over to see if the
scout was in trouble.
“We allowed you was,” explained old Nomad, “er you wouldn’t opened up
in thet way. Glad ter know it was a false alarm.”
Juniper Joe, standing up, with the noose of the lariat removed, was
walking about, apparently testing his strength; suddenly he started
off at a clipping gait, showing how little he had been hurt by his
fall.
The baron and Nomad yelled when they saw him start.
Buffalo Bill, instead of yelling, plucked out a revolver, swung it
round his head, and hurled it at the fleeing man.
It struck him in the back of the neck and knocked him sprawling.
Though he fell heavily, and was somewhat stunned, Juniper Joe still
had full use of his tongue, as his raving showed when they ran up to
him. He demanded the reason for such treatment.
“Well, we’re going to hold you, you know!” Buffalo Bill told him.
Juniper Joe tried to pretend surprise.
“What fer?” he howled.
“For the murder of Jackson Dane--if that was his name.”
Juniper Joe declared that he did not know what they were talking
about.
“You tried to kill him once, at the time of your wedding, when you
claimed he was Tim Benson, the road agent.”
“Waal, that feller was Tim Benson; but I ain’t seen him since.”
“As we think you know all about it, and for other reasons, we’re now
going to take you back to Blossom Range,” Buffalo Bill told him.
Juniper Joe protested against this loudly.
“Perhaps you will tell us who, then, was with you?”
Juniper Joe denied that any one had been with him.
“Waugh! We won’t fool wi’ no sech liar,” Nomad whooped. “You’ve
showed thet ye kin walk--you done some runnin’ a while ago; so we’re
goin’ to tie ye and march ye ahead of us, wi’ the understandin’ ef
yer don’t go peaceable you’ll go some other way.”
When he saw that neither lying nor anything else would do him any
good, Juniper Joe submitted, but with bad grace; after which he
became sullen, refusing to answer questions.
On the return to the town, as they were able to pick an easier
trail than they had followed in getting there, the scout’s party
made better progress. They did not stop to follow the trail of the
supposed woman; but Nomad was detached to see what he could do with
it, under instructions not to waste too much time, but to report in
the town by nightfall. The baron’s head still troubling him, he went
along with Buffalo Bill.
When Buffalo Bill entered Blossom Range with his prisoner, the
afternoon stage was coming in from Calumet Springs. So he took
his prisoner right down to the stage stables, though Juniper Joe
protested against this outrage.
One of the passengers by the stage was the marshal of Calumet
Springs, who had with him a woman, Miss Vera Bright, whom he had
brought back to Blossom Range.
She stared at Buffalo Bill’s prisoner.
“I think it will be well if we take them into a room here together,
and see if they won’t do some talking,” was the scout’s statement to
the Calumet Springs marshal.
“If you can get anything out of her, you’re ahead of me,” the marshal
admitted; “she fit like a wildcat, when I told her she would have
to come back here, and only stopped it when I threatened I’d put
irons on her. She weakened at that, and come along; but she’s a plum
furious beauty, I tell you, git her started.”
The blonde woman and Juniper Joe were taken into a back room of the
stage office, where they were brought face to face. In the room at
the time was the marshal of Calumet Springs, with Nomad and the
baron, and, of course, the scout, together with the local manager of
the stage line.
Buffalo Bill, a shrewd reader of human nature, opened the ball by
telling the woman that Juniper Joe was under arrest for the murder of
the man called Jackson Dane, but whom Joe had said was Tim Benson.
Her face paled at that, and her eyes flashed, and she turned on the
prisoner like a tigress.
“Is that so?” she cried.
“It’s a lie!” Juniper Joe declared to her.
She turned to Buffalo Bill.
“Is it true,” she said, “that he has killed him?”
“Dane has been killed, and we believe this man did it; we have
evidence which it seems to us proves it.”
“I’m sure he did--if he is dead.”
She bent her burning eyes on Juniper Joe; and he seemed to wither
under them.
“Where is Tim?” she demanded.
“I--I don’t know what you’re sayin’!” he said.
“Oh, yes, you do!” she flashed at him. “Where is the man who was
pretending to be your wife--the man you made everybody believe was a
woman, when you had that fake wedding at your cabin? That was a fine
game; and I nearly died laughing when I knew about it. What’s become
of him?”
It was an astonishing revelation; and Buffalo Bill questioned her
about it.
“Well, that’s the straight truth I’m giving you,” she said defiantly;
“I don’t care anything about this scoundrel here; you can hang him,
if you want to, and I think he needs it; but I do want to know what
has become of the man who played that game with him. I want to know
if he is dead, too, or what has become of him.”
“He isn’t dead!” the scout told her.
“No! Then, if you know where he is, you had better arrest him at
once; for that man is Tim Benson, the road agent.”
“You’re sure of that?” the scout demanded.
“Well, I reckon I am. Didn’t he come down to the Casino to see me
yesterday, and just because he was jealous of Dane?”
“Is Dane the name of the man who was killed by Juniper Joe?”
A dash of tears came into her eyes.
“Well, no, it isn’t, if I have to tell; and as he is dead, it doesn’t
matter now. His name was Ward--John Ward.”
It was another surprise; for John Ward was almost as notorious an
outlaw as Tim Benson.
“It was a case of jealousy between Ward and Benson,” she explained.
“Benson came down to the Casino, and threatened to kill me there,
because Ward had been to see me. Then Ward got mad, when I told him
about it, and swore he would kill Benson, or tell the authorities who
Benson really was. He didn’t like Benson, and he didn’t like Juniper
Joe; and he thought Juniper was the biggest scoundrel of the two.
There had been bad blood between them a long time.”
“Aw! Go ahead with yer lies!” Juniper Joe snarled at her, giving her
baleful glances. “Make up some good ones while you’re at it.”
“I’m going to tell the truth,” she said; “they can’t do anything with
me, for I’m not mixed up in the thing, except that Ward came to see
me, and he and Benson quarreled about it. I’ll tell the whole thing,
you murderer; you killed Ward, and I’ll get even with you by blabbing
everything!”
She “blabbed.”
According to her statement, Tim Benson had discovered that Buffalo
Bill was hot on his trail, and was coming to Blossom Range, where
Benson had been doing a lot of hold-up work recently. To throw him
off the track, he and Juniper Joe, who was secretly his partner in
crime, concocted the dazzling scheme of the “jubilee” wedding, when
Juniper Joe pretended to marry Tim Benson, who was posing as Mrs.
Rafferty, the widow from the East. No one could deny that the thing
had been cleverly carried out; the whole of Blossom Range had been
neatly hoodwinked.
It was Juniper Joe’s plan, after that, to have the gold shipments
sent out by the way of Eagle Gap, in charge of the prospectors. He
and Benson held them up there, killing one and wounding the other.
They got safely back to the cabin with the plunder, after bringing
the burros near to the town, and then turning them loose in the hills.
Ward had knowledge of all this, and had told the woman about it when
he called on her. He had said that he meant to kill Benson; and there
could not be any doubt, from evidence gathered later, that in the
night, or just before morning, he had gone to the cabin, where he
had attacked Juniper Joe and Benson. Probably, as he had left Benson
unconscious, he believed he had killed him.
Benson had already been wounded in the head by a bullet from the
baron’s revolver. In the fight with Ward, the latter had rapped
Benson on the head, opening the unhealed wound made by the baron’s
bullet; thus producing a condition which had puzzled Buffalo Bill;
who, it will be recalled, had found Juniper Joe and his “wife” in
the cabin that morning; Juniper Joe tied and gagged, and his “wife”
unconscious on the floor.
Ward had got out with some of the nuggets in buckskin bags, a part of
the loot from the burro shipments; and had tried to cache them at
the time he was followed and seen by the baron.
Juniper Joe and his “wife” had also followed Ward; and they had
killed him. After that, becoming frightened, they had tried to hide
the body in a cañon, had thrown away the bags of nuggets, and had
shaped their course to get out of the country, sure that at last
Buffalo Bill had discovered the truth and was after them hotfooted.
Juniper Joe bitterly denied the statements of Vera Bright, raving
thunderously in making his denials; he was a much-abused and
injured man, he declared, of good intentions and wholly innocent of
wrongdoing.
Some proof against him was found when the mine was again gone over
by Buffalo Bill and the local officers, and a thorough search
brought out of various hiding places the whole of the gold shipments
which the Wells Fargo had tried to send across the hills by the
prospectors. This was good evidence that Juniper Joe had been
concerned in that hold-up, and that when John Ward attacked the
occupants of the cabin he found but a small part of the treasure.
As for Juniper Joe’s mine, it was a “fake.” The indications showed
that no rich pockets had ever been struck in it; so that it was
apparent that the nuggets which Juniper Joe pretended he had dug out
had been obtained in hold-ups.