CHAPTER I_Mystery Ranch

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MYSTERY RANCH

BY ARTHUR CHAPMAN

AUTHOR OF "OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS," AND "CACTUS CENTER"

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1921

CHAPTER I

There was a swift padding of moccasined feet through the hall leading to

the Indian agent's office.

Ordinarily Walter Lowell would not have looked up from his desk. He

recognized the footfalls of Plenty Buffalo, his chief of Indian police,

but this time there was an absence of the customary leisureliness in the

official's stride. The agent's eyes were questioning Plenty Buffalo

before the police chief had more than entered the doorway.

The Indian, a broad-shouldered, powerfully built man in a blue uniform,

stopped at the agent's desk and saluted. Lowell knew better than to ask

him a question at the outset. News speeds best without urging when an

Indian tells it. The clerk who acted as interpreter dropped his papers

and moved nearer, listening intently as Plenty Buffalo spoke rapidly in

his tribal tongue.

"A man has been murdered on the road just off the reservation,"

announced the interpreter.

Still the agent did not speak.

"I just found him," went on the police chief to the clerk, who

interpreted rapidly. "You'd better come and look things over."

"How do you know he was murdered?" asked the agent, reaching for his

desk telephone.

"He was shot."

"But couldn't he have shot himself?"

"No. He's staked down."

Lowell straightened up suddenly, a tingle of apprehension running

through him. Staked down--and on the edge of the Indian reservation!

Matters were being brought close home.

"Is there anything to tell who he is?"

"I didn't look around much," said Plenty Buffalo. "There's an auto in

the road. That's what I saw first."

"Where is the body?"

"A few yards from the auto, on the prairie."

The agent called the sheriff's office at White Lodge, the adjoining

county seat. The sheriff was out, but Lowell left the necessary

information as to the location of the automobile and the body. Then he

put on his hat, and, gathering up his gloves, motioned to Plenty Buffalo

and the interpreter to follow him to his automobile which was standing

in front of the agency office. Plenty Buffalo's pony was left at the

hitching-rack, to recover from the hard run it had just been given. The

wooden-handled quirt at the saddle had not been spared by the Indian.

Flooded with June sunshine the agency had never looked more attractive,

from the white man's standpoint. The main street was wide, with a

parkway in the center, shaded with cottonwoods. The school buildings,

dormitories, dining-hall, auditorium, and several of the employees'

residences faced this street. The agent's house nestled among trees and

shrubbery on the most attractive corner. The sidewalks were wide, and

made of cement. There was a good water system, as the faithfully

irrigated lawns testified. Arc lights swung from the street

intersections, and there were incandescents in every house. A sewer

system had just been completed. Indian boys and girls were looking after

gardens in vacant lots. There were experimental ranches surrounding the

agency. In the stables and enclosures were pure-bred cattle and sheep,

the nucleus of tribal flocks and herds of better standards.

In less than four years Walter Lowell had made the agency a model of its

kind. He had done much to interest even the older Indians in

agriculture. The school-children, owing to a more liberal educational

system, had lost the customary look of apathy. The agent's work had been

commended in annual reports from Washington. The agency had been

featured in newspaper and magazine articles, and yet Lowell had felt

that he was far from accomplishing anything permanent. Ancient customs

and superstitions had to be reckoned with. Smouldering fires

occasionally broke out in most alarming fashion. Only recently there had

been a serious impairment of reservation morale, owing to the

spectacular rise of a young Indian named Fire Bear, who had gathered

many followers, and who, with his cohorts, had proceeded to dance and

"make medicine" to the exclusion of all other employment. Fire Bear's

defection had set many rumors afloat. Timid settlers near the

reservation had expressed fear of a general uprising, which fear had

been fanned by the threats and boastings sent broadcast by some of Fire

Bear's more reckless followers.

Lowell was frankly worried as he sped away from the agency with Plenty

Buffalo and the interpreter. Every crime, large or small, which occurred

near the reservation, and which did not carry its own solution, was laid

to Indians. Here was something which pointed directly to Indian

handiwork, and Lowell in imagination could hear a great outcry going up.

Plenty Buffalo gave little more information as the car swayed along the

road that led off the reservation.

"He says he was off the reservation trailing Jim McFann," remarked the

interpreter. "He thought Jim was going along the road to Talpers's

store, but Plenty Buffalo was mistaken. He did not find Jim, but what he

did find was this man who had been killed."

"Jim McFann isn't a bad fellow at heart, but this bootlegging and

trailing around with Bill Talpers will get him in trouble yet," replied

the agent. "He's pretty clever, or Plenty Buffalo's men would have

caught him long before this."

They were approaching Talpers's store as the agent spoke. The store was

a barn-like building, with a row of poplars at the north, and a big

cottonwood in front. A few houses were clustered about. Bill Talpers,

store-keeper and postmaster, looked out of the door as the automobile

went past. Generally there were Indians sitting in front of the store,

but to-day there were none. Plenty Buffalo volunteered the information

that there had been a "big sing" on a distant part of the reservation

which had attracted most of the residents from this neighborhood.

Talpers was seen running out to his horse, which stood in front of the

store.

"He'll be along pretty soon," said the agent. "He knows there's

something unusual going on."

The road over which the party was traveling was sometimes called the

Dollar Sign, for the reason that it wound across the reservation line

like a letter S. After leaving White Lodge, which was off the

reservation, any traveler on the road crossed the line and soon went

through the agency. Then there was a curve which took him across the

line again to Talpers's, after which a reverse curve swept back into the

Indians' domain. All of which was the cause of no little trouble to the

agent and the Indian police, for bootleggers found it easy to operate

from White Lodge or Talpers's and drop back again across the line to

safety.

Another ten miles, on the sweep of the road toward the reservation, and

the automobile was sighted. The body was found, as Plenty Buffalo had

described it. The man had been murdered--that much was plain enough.

"Buckshot, from a sawed-off shotgun probably," said the agent,

shuddering.

Whoever had fired the shot had done his work with deadly accuracy. Part

of the man's face had been carried away. He had been well along in

years, as his gray hair indicated, but his frame was sturdy. He was

dressed in khaki--a garb much affected by transcontinental automobile

tourists. The car which he had been driving was big and expensive.

Other details were forgotten for the moment in the fact that the man had

been staked to the prairie. Ropes had been attached to his hands and

feet. These ropes were fastened to tent-stakes driven into the prairie.

"The man had been camping along the route," said the agent, "and whoever

did this shooting probably used the victim's own tent-stakes."

This opinion was confirmed after a momentary examination of the tonneau

of the car, which disclosed a tent, duffle-bag, and other camping

equipment.

"Look around the prairie and see if you can find any of this man's

belongings scattered about," said Lowell.

"Plenty Buffalo wants to know if you noticed all the pony tracks," said

the interpreter.

"Yes," replied Lowell bitterly. "I couldn't very well help seeing them.

What does Plenty Buffalo think about them?"

"They're Indian pony tracks--no doubt about that," said the interpreter,

"but there is no telling just when they were made."

"I see. It might have been at the time of the murder, or afterward."

Lowell looked closely at the pony tracks, which were thick about the

automobile and the body. Plainly there had been a considerable body of

horsemen on the scene. Plenty Buffalo, skilled in trailing, had not

hesitated to announce that the tracks were those of Indian ponies. If

more evidence were needed, there were the imprints of moccasined feet in

the dust.

Lowell surveyed the scene while Plenty Buffalo and the interpreter

searched the prairie for more clues. The agent did not want to disturb

the body nor search the automobile until the arrival of the sheriff, as

the murder had happened outside of Government jurisdiction, and the

local authorities were jealous of their rights. The murder had been done

close to the brow of a low hill. The gently rolling prairie stretched to

a creek on one side, and to interminable distance on the other. There

was a carpet of green grass in both directions, dotted with clumps of

sagebrush. It had rained a few days before--the last rain of many, it

chanced--and there were damp spots in the road in places and the grass

and the sage were fresh in color. Meadow-larks were trilling, and the

whole scene was one of peace--provided the beholder could blot out the

memory of the tenantless clay stretched out upon clay.

In a few minutes Sheriff Tom Redmond and a deputy arrived in an

automobile from White Lodge. They were followed by Bill Talpers, in the

saddle.

Redmond was a tall, square-shouldered cattleman, who still clung to the

rough garb and high-heeled boots of the cowpuncher, though he seldom

used any means of travel but the automobile. Western winds, heated by

fiery Western suns, had burned his face to the color of saddle-leather.

His eyebrows were shaggy and light-colored, and Nature's bleaching

elements had reduced a straw-colored mustache to a discouraging

nondescript tone.

"Looks like an Injun job, Lowell, don't it?" asked Redmond, as his sharp

eyes took in the situation in darting glances.

"Isn't it a little early to come to that conclusion?" queried the agent.

"There ain't no other conclusion to come to," broke in Talpers, who had

joined the group in an inspection of the scene. "Look at them pony

tracks--all Injun."

Talpers was broad--almost squat of figure. His complexion was brick red.

He had a thin, curling black beard and mustache. He was one of the men

to whom alkali is a constant poison, and his lips were always cracked

and bleeding. His voice was husky and disagreeable, his small eyes

bespoke the brute in him, and yet he was not without certain qualities

of leadership which seemed to appeal particularly to the Indians. His

store was headquarters for the rough and idle element of the

reservation. Also it was the center of considerable white trade, for it

was the only store for miles in either direction, and in addition was

the general post-office.

Knowing of Talpers's friendliness for the rebellious element among the

Indians, Lowell looked at the trader in surprise.

"You didn't see any Indians doing this, did you, Talpers?" he asked.

The trader hastened to qualify his remark, as it would not do to have

the word get out among the Indians that he had attempted to throw the

blame on them.

"No--I ain't exactly sayin' that Injuns done it," said the trader, "but

I ain't ever seen more signs pointin' in one direction."

"Well, don't let signs get you so far off the right trail that you can't

get back again," replied the agent, turning to help Tom Redmond and his

deputy in the work of establishing the identity of the slain man.

It was work that did not take long. Papers were found in the pockets

indicating that the victim was Edward B. Sargent, of St. Louis. In the

automobile was found clothing bearing St. Louis trademarks.

"Judging from the balance in this checkbook," said the sheriff, "he was

a man who didn't have to worry about financial affairs. Probably this is

only a checking account, for running expenses, but there's thirty

thousand to his credit."

"He's probably some tourist on his way to the coast," observed the

deputy, "and he thought he'd make a detour and see an Injun reservation.

Somebody saw a good chance for a holdup, but he showed fight and got

killed."

"Nobody reported such a machine as going through the agency," offered

Lowell. "The car is big enough and showy enough to attract attention

anywhere."

"I didn't see him go past my place," said Talpers. "And if my clerk'd

seen him he'd have said somethin' about it."

"Well, he was killed sometime yesterday--that's sure," remarked the

sheriff. "He might have come through early in the morning and nobody saw

him, or he might have hit White Lodge and the agency and Talpers's late

at night and camped here along the Dollar Sign until morning and been

killed when he started on. The thing of it is that this is as far as he

got, and we've got to find the ones that's responsible. This kind of a

killing is jest going to make the White Lodge Chamber of Commerce get up

on its hind legs and howl. There's bound to be speeches telling how,

just when we've about convinced the East that we've shook off our wild

Western ways, here comes a murder that's wilder'n anything that's been

pulled off since the trapper days."

"Accordin' to my way of thinkin'," said Talpers, "that man wasn't

tortured after he was staked down. Any one who knows anything about

Injun character knows that when they pegged a victim out that way, they

intended for him to furnish some amusement, such as having splinters

stuck into him and bein' set afire by the squaws."

"They probably thought they seen some one coming," said the sheriff,

"and shot him after they got him tied down, and then made a quick

getaway."

"That man was shot before he was tied down," interposed Lowell quietly.

"What makes you think that?" Redmond said quickly.

"There are no powder marks on his face. And any one shot at such close

range, by some one standing over him, would have had his head blown

away."

Redmond assented, grudgingly.

"What does Plenty Buffalo think about it all?" he asked.

Lowell called the police chief and the interpreter. Plenty Buffalo

declared that he was puzzled. He was not prepared to make any statement

at all as yet. He might have something later on.

"Very well," said the agent, motioning to Plenty Buffalo to go on with

the close investigations he had been silently carrying on. "We may get

something of value from him when he has finished looking. But there's no

use coaxing him to talk now."

"I s'pose not," rejoined Redmond sneeringly. "What's more, I s'pose he

can't even see them Injun pony tracks around the body."

"He called my attention to them as soon as we arrived here," said

Lowell. "But as far as that goes he didn't need to. Those things are as

evident as the bald fact that the man has been killed."

"Well, that's about the only clue there is, as far as I can figger out,"

remarked the sheriff testily, "and that points straight and clean to

some of your wards on the reservation."

"Count on me for any help," replied Lowell crisply. "All I'm interested

in, of course, is seeing the guilty brought out into the light."

Turning away and ending a controversy, which he knew would be fruitless,

Lowell made another searching personal examination of the scene. He

examined the stakes, having in mind the possibility of finger-prints.

But no tell-tale mark had been left behind. The stakes were too rough to

admit the possibility of any finger-prints that might be microscopically

detected. The road and prairie surrounding the automobile were examined,

but nothing save pony tracks, numerous and indiscriminately mingled,

rewarded his efforts.

"Them Injuns jest milled around this machine and the body of that

hombrey," said Talpers. "There must have been twenty-five of 'em in the

bunch, anyway, ain't I right, Plenty Buffalo?" added the trader,

repeating his remark in the Indian's tribal tongue, in which the white

man was expert.

"Heap Injun here," agreed Plenty Buffalo, not averse to showing off a

large part of his limited English vocabulary.

"That trouble-maker, Fire Bear, is the only one who travels much with a

gang, ain't he?" demanded Redmond.

"Yes," assented the agent. "He has had from fifty to one hundred young

Indians making medicine with him on Wolf Mountain. Rest assured that

Fire Bear and every one with him will have to give an account of

himself."

"That's the talk!" exclaimed Redmond, pulling at his mustache. "I ain't

afraid of your not shooting straight in this thing, Mr. Lowell, but

you've got to admit that you've stuck up for Injuns the way no other

agent has ever stuck up for 'em before, and natchelly--"

"Naturally you thought I might even cover up murder for them," added

Lowell good-naturedly. "Well, get that idea out of your head. But also

get it out of your head that I'm going to see any Indian or Indians

railroaded for a crime that possibly he or they didn't commit."

"All right!" snapped the sheriff, instantly as belligerent and

suspicious as ever. "But this thing is going to be worked out on the

evidence, and right now the evidence--"

"Which is all circumstantial."

"Yes, circumstantial it may be, but it's mighty strong against some of

your people over that there line, and it's going to be followed up."

Lowell shrugged his shoulders, knowing the futility of further argument

with the sheriff, who was representative of the considerable element

that always looked upon Indians as "red devils" and that would never

admit that any good existed in race or individual.

The agent assisted in removing the body of the murdered man to the big

automobile that had been standing in the road, a silent witness to the

crime. Lowell drove the machine to White Lodge, at the request of the

sheriff, and sent telegrams which might establish the dead man's

identity beyond all doubt.

Meantime the news of the murder was not long in making its devious way

about the sparsely settled countryside. Most of the population of White

Lodge, and ranchers from remote districts, visited the scene. One

fortunate individual, who had arrived before the body had been removed,

interested various groups by stretching himself out on the prairie on

the exact spot where the slain man had been found.

"Here he laid, jest like this," the actor would conclude, "right out

here in the bunch grass and prickly pear, with his hands and feet tied

to them tent-stakes, and pony tracks and moccasin tracks all mixed

around in the dust jest as if a hull tribe had been millin' here. If a

lot of Injuns don't swing for this, then there's no use of callin' this

a white man's country any more."

The flames of resentment needed no fanning, as Lowell found. The agent

had not concluded his work with the sheriff at White Lodge before he

heard thinly veiled threats directed at all Indians and their friends.

He paid no attention to the comments, but drove back to the agency,

successfully masking the grave concern he felt. In the evening, his

chief clerk, Ed Rogers, found Lowell reading a magazine.

"The talk is that you'll have to get Fire Bear for this murder," said

Rogers. Then the chief clerk added, bluntly: "I thought sure you'd be

working on this case."

Lowell smiled at the clerk's astonishment.

"There's nothing more that requires my attention just now," he said. "If

Fire Bear is wanted, we can always get him. That's one thing that

simplifies all such matters, where Indians are concerned. An Indian

can't lose himself in a crowd, like a white man. Furthermore, he never

thinks of leaving the reservation."

Here the young agent rose and yawned.

"Anyway," he remarked, "it isn't our move right now. Until it is, I

prefer to think of pleasanter things."

But the agent's thoughts were not on any of the pleasant things

contained in the magazine he had flung into a corner. They were dwelling

most consistently upon a pleasing journey he had enjoyed, a few days

before, with a young woman whom he had taken from the agency to Mystery

Ranch.