A GUARDED CONFERENCE
With flaming eyes Winifred Waverly whirled upon her uncle.
"Why do you suffer it?" she cried hotly. "The man knows that I was not
deceived by his idiotic mask, he knows that I have told you, and still
you let him go free where he pleases, swagger about with brawlers like
that horrible Kid Bedloe, and dribble your money over the bars for drink
and over the poker tables! Why do you suffer it?"
A fleeting smile of deep satisfaction brightened Pollard's eyes. They
had ridden home in silence and now, with the door barely closed behind
them, she had turned upon him with her indignant question.
"I am waiting," began Pollard.
"Waiting for what?" she demanded. "Until he can have had time to
squander what is rightfully yours, until there be no chance of getting
it back or bringing such a man to justice!"
"You little fire-eater!" he laughed at her. "Come with me in here." He
turned and led the way into the room just off the hall and at the front
of the house where he had his office. When the door was closed behind
him he dropped into a chair, his face a little white and drawn from the
exertion of his ride, the first he had had since the girl had come. "I
want to talk with you, and I don't want anybody, Mrs. Riddell in
particular, to overhear. She's too fond of talking."
Winifred stood across the room from him, her quirt in her hand switching
restlessly at the carpet, her eyes showing a little sympathy for his
illness but more anger at Buck Thornton.
"You ask why I don't bring that man to reckoning, and I tell you that I
am waiting. Then you ask, for what?" He leaned a little forward, and she
saw again in his eyes the look she had surprised there on that first day
she had come to Hill's Corners, a look of hate and of a sinister
satisfaction. "Waiting for the time when I am sure there will be no
loophole for him to crawl through! You are ready to go into a court room
and swear that he robbed you; that is a great deal and it will go a long
way toward convicting him. But it isn't enough. It's only your word
against his; don't you see? He will swear that he did _not_ rob you,
won't he? We can prove that you left Dry Town with the five thousand
dollars; we might even prove that you didn't bring it on to me. But we
couldn't prove, beyond the last shadow of doubt, that you didn't lose
it, or that somebody else didn't rob you of it."
"But," she asked, frowning in her perplexity, "what good will it do to
wait?"
"Your evidence," he went on slowly, as though working the thing out for
himself, "is enough to convince eleven jurors out of the twelve; now we
must make sure of the twelfth. How will we do it? One way is to find the
lost bank notes in Thornton's possession. The other way is to get other
evidence to add to yours, cumulative evidence all of which will point
one way, to one conclusion!"
"To one conclusion?" she repeated after him, prompting him, so eager was
she for him to go on.
"To the fact that Buck Thornton is the man who, for six months now, has
been committing the series of crimes, running the gamut from the murder
of a stage driver to the theft of cattle from Kemble's place! That is
the thing I am waiting for!"
She frowned. A mental picture of the cowboy rose quickly and vividly
before her. She saw the clear, steadfast eyes, the free, upright
carriage, the flash of a smile that was like a boy's. She had come to be
firm in her belief that he was the man who had robbed her, had forced
the insult of his kiss upon her, but it was hard, with that picture of
him before her, to think him a murderer, too. But then, as though to
sweep away her last shred of doubt, the vision widened and into it came
another man: she saw Buck Thornton as she had seen him only a few
minutes ago, in seeming friendly conversation with the youngest Bedloe
whose eyes soiled the woman they rested upon, whose name had travelled
even to her home in Crystal City and beyond as a roisterer, a brawler,
a man of unsavoury deeds done boldly and shamelessly.
"I am a little sick of it all," she said wearily. "I want to go back
home, uncle."
He had looked for that and had his answer ready.
"I know, Winifred. And I don't blame you. But I want you to stay a
little longer, won't you? Your evidence is going to be the strongest
card in our deck. Will you stay and give it?"
"How long?"
"Not long now. I expect Dalton here today."
"Who is Dalton?"
"Cole Dalton, the sheriff. He is as anxious as I am to get his hands on
Thornton. The whole country has been growing hotter in its criticisms of
him every day for the last six months, blaming him for not rounding up
the man who has committed one depredation on top of another, and gotten
away with it."
"And you are sure," she hesitated a little in spite of herself,
repeating, "you are sure ... that Buck Thornton is that man?"
"Yes. I guessed it a long time ago. I know it now that he has robbed
you. You will wait a few days, won't you?"
"Yes, I'll wait. But, oh," she cried out with sudden vehemence, swinging
about when half way to the door, "I hate this sort of thing! Get it over
with quick, Uncle Henry!"
She left him then and went upstairs to her own room where for a little
she tried to concentrate her wandering thoughts upon a book. But in the
end she flung the volume aside impatiently and went to her window,
staring down into the neglected tangle of the front yard and the glimpse
of the street through the straggling branches of the pear trees. She
tried to see only that men like Kid Bedloe and Buck Thornton were not to
be thought of as men, but rather as some rare species of clear-eyed,
unscrupulous, conscienceless animals; that they were not human, that it
would not be humane but foolish to regard them with any kind of
sympathy; that the law should set its iron heel upon them as a man might
set his heel upon a snake's flat, venomous head.
And she felt a hard contempt of self, she hated herself, when again and
again there rose before her mind's eye the form and face of the man who
surely was the worst of the lot, and yet who looked like a gentleman and
who knew how to carry himself like a gentleman, who knew what courtesy
to a woman was when he wanted to know, who had in a few hours made upon
her an impression which she realized shamefacedly would stay with her
always.
She had been in her room for an hour, driven by her loneliness had run
downstairs to chat a few minutes with Mrs. Riddell in the kitchen and,
unusually restless, had gone back upstairs. As she came again to her
window, she saw two men leave their horses at the front gate and turn
toward the house along the walk under the pear trees. Both were men whose
very stature would have drawn one's thoughts away from even pleasant
preoccupation, and Winifred Waverly's thoughts were sick of the channel
in which they had been running.
One, the one who came on slightly in front of his companion, was very
broad and heavy and thick. Thick of arm, of thigh, of neck. He was not
short, standing close to six feet, and yet his bigness of girth made him
seem of low, squat stature as she looked down upon him. She did not see
his face under the wide, soft hat but guessed it to be heavy like the
rest of him, square jawed and massive. She noted curiously that his
tread was light, that his whole being spoke of energy and swift
initiative, that the alertness of his carriage was an incongruity in a
man so heavily built from the great, monster shoulders of him to the
bulging calves.
The face of the other man she saw. His hat was far back upon his head
and as he come on his dark features fascinated her. He was tall, as tall
or nearly as tall as the Kid or Buck Thornton, she thought, slender,
full of the grace of perfect physical manhood. There was a dash to him
that, to the girl, was not without its charm. It spoke from the finely
chiselled lips, curved to a still, contemptuous smile, from the eyes,
long lashed, well set far apart, from the swinging careless stride. A
handsome devil, as handsome in his own way as the Kid in his, as defiant
an insolence in his smiling eyes, as cool an assurance and a vague added
charm which was not so readily classified.
The two men came to the door. She heard Pollard greet them, calling
them by name, and thus learned that one was Cole Dalton, the sheriff,
one Broderick. Then there came up to her the hum of voices from her
uncle's office, the heavy, rasping voice which she was certain belonged
to the thicker-set man, the light, careless pleasant tones of the taller
man. She found herself listening, not for the words which were lost in
the indistinct hum, but to the qualities of tone, idly speculating as to
which man was the sheriff, which Broderick. She wondered if now they
were going to arrest Buck Thornton and if Broderick were a deputy? And
again she hated herself with a quick spurt of contemptuous indignation
that she allowed a feeling of sympathy for the tall cattleman to slip
into her heart.
For a long time the low toned conversation in the room below her
continued. At first it was her uncle who did the greater part of the
talking, his utterances at once emphatic and yet guarded. She had the
uneasy feeling that the tones were hushed less because of Mrs. Riddell
whom she could hear clattering with her pots and pans in the kitchen,
than because of herself. A little hurt, half angry that he should think
of her as a possible eavesdropper, she took up her book again, turning
the pages impatiently in search of the place which she had a great deal
of trouble in finding since she had understood so little of what she had
read that day. And even then one half of her mind was on the men below
as she wondered why they should not want her to know what it was they
said.
Evidently Pollard had finished what he had to say. She supposed that he
had been telling them of his loss and her robbery. Then the heavy,
rasping voice, Cole Dalton's she was right in guessing it to be, as
guarded as Pollard's had been, broke in and for several minutes it was
the only sound that came to her, save twice when a low laugh from
Broderick interrupted. She frowned at that; to her it seemed that in
this stern discussion which had for theme crime and retribution there
was no place for a man's laughter; even then her dislike for Ben
Broderick had begun.
Then Cole Dalton had finished and Broderick was talking. It was as
though each man in turn were making his report to the others. As before
not a word came to the ears which she strove futilely to make
inattentive. A certain quality in the speaker's voice drew fresh
speculation from her. He spoke quietly, with no single interruption from
the others and with a positiveness that was like a command, as though he
whom she had thought possibly a deputy were coolly telling both Pollard
and Cole Dalton what they should do, when they should do it and how. The
voice was arrogant, cool and confident.
Again the sheriff's voice floated up to her, raised a little, rasping
out what sounded like a protest. And Broderick's answer was another
short laugh, full of contempt and followed by a few emphatic, crisp
words which she did not catch.
That ended the consultation. She knew it from the silence which
followed the curt finality of Broderick's retort and from the scraping
of chair legs followed by the sound of the men pacing back and forth and
speaking in new, unguarded tones. Now their conversation came to her for
the first time.
"You'll be going out tonight, Dalton?" Pollard asked.
"No. The first thing in the morning."
"And you, Broderick?"
"I'll trot along tonight, Henry. But not," the cool voice carelessly,
"until I've had something to eat. I know you're going to ask me to stay
to supper!"
"What do you want to stay for, Ben?" demanded Pollard with something of
irritation in the question. "Haven't you got enough on your hands...."
Broderick's ready laugh, slow, easy, vaguely insolent, rose clearly to
Winifred's ears.
"You're sure a hospitable cuss," he retorted. "Don't be a hog on top of
it, Henry. I want to see that pretty niece of yours."
The girl's cheeks went red at the light tone. She waited to hear her
uncle's short rejoinder. And she heard nothing beyond the sheriff's
rasping chuckle.
When Mrs. Riddell called from the foot of the stairs that supper was
ready Winifred had fully made up her mind that she would not go down.
She heard the three men chatting lightly and decided that she would get
something to eat after they had finished and gone. But as though her
uncle had caught her thought he too came to the foot of the stairs,
calling to her.
"Winifred," he was saying, "supper's ready. Sheriff Dalton is here, and
Mr. Broderick, a friend of mine. I want you to tell them what you have
told me."
She hesitated a moment, biting her lip. Then she answered, "All right,
Uncle Henry; I'll be right down." She went to her wash-stand, arranged
her hair swiftly, saw that the flush had gone out of her cheeks, that
her eyes were cool and told nothing, and went down to join the three men
who had already taken their places at the dinner table.
As she came through the door, her head up, her lips a little hard,
Broderick was the first to see her and was upon his feet in a flash, as
graceful as a cavalier, as debonair in his big boots and soft white silk
shirt as though he had been a courtly gentleman dressed for the ball,
his eyes frankly filled with the appreciation of her dainty beauty.
Pollard, remembering, rose too, and last of all Cole Dalton, his shrewd
eyes intense and keen upon her. Winifred's gaze passed by Broderick as
though she had not seen him and travelled to her uncle while she waited
for the introductions.
Dalton, who was first to be presented, put out a big, hard, square hand,
capturing and releasing Winifred's suddenly as though it were a part of
the day's work to be done and over with. He had stepped forward and now
stepped back to his chair, his keen, watchful eyes never leaving her
face.
Then Broderick took the hand which she did not like to refuse to her
uncle's friend and guest and yet which she disliked giving him, saw the
little flush which his gaze drove into her cheeks, and with a hint of
laughter in his eyes bowed over it gallantly, murmuring his happiness in
knowing her. And it was Broderick who stepped quickly to her chair,
drawing it out for her to be seated. She found herself wondering where
this man had learned to do these little things which are no part of the
training of the far out cattle men.
During the first half of the meal there was no reference to the
happening at Harte's Camp. Broderick, with a mood contagiously care free
and sparkling, did the greater part of the talking, and though he
elicited from the girl rare words beyond a brief "yes" or "no," he
seemed content. And he interested her. He talked well, with little slurs
of grammar that seemed rather due to the man's carelessness of nature
than to ignorance, his vocabularly not without picturesque force. It
seemed natural that he should do the talking, that he should address
himself largely to her, and that Pollard and Cole Dalton should listen
and watch him.
Within ten minutes she gleaned that Broderick was a miner, that he had a
claim of some sort in the mountains back of Hill's Corners, to the
eastward, that a couple of years ago he had made his "pile" in the
Yukon country and that he had lost it in unwise speculation, that he
knew more than the names of the streets of the chief cities of both
coasts, that he had strong hopes of making a strike where he was and of
selling out at a good figure to a mining concern with which he was
already corresponding. And yet this light miscellany of information was
so brightly sprinkled into the flow of talk upon a score of other
matters that it did not seem that the man was ever talking of himself.
Finally Pollard, catching a sharp look from Sheriff Dalton, got up and
stepped into the kitchen where Mrs. Riddell was. The woman went out into
the yard and Pollard came back. Before he had taken his chair again
Dalton said abruptly, turning upon the girl:
"Pollard mentioned your seeing the stick-up man at Harte's cabin. Tell
us about it."
She told him swiftly, eager to have it over with, conscious that the
eyes of all three of the men watched her with a very intense interest.
From her account she omitted only that which concerned her personally
and alone and of which she had not even spoken to her uncle.
"You're sure it was Thornton?" demanded the sheriff when she had
finished. "Dead sure?"
"Yes," she answered resolutely, defiant of her own self that hesitated
to fix on an absent man the crime of which she believed him guilty.
Dalton sat still save for the drumming of his thick fingers upon the
table cloth. Presently his big stocky body turned slowly in his chair as
he looked from Broderick to Pollard, the hint of a smile merely making
his eyes the harder.
"So," he said, his wide shoulders rising to his deep breath, "it looks
like all we got to do is just go out and put our rope on Mr. Badman!"
"It looks like it, Cole," laughed Broderick gently. "Only when you get
ready to pull off your little roping party I wish you'd let me know. He
don't look like he's the kind to lie down and let you hog-tie him, does
he, Miss Waverly? They say he's half Texan an' the other half panther.
You want to be quick on the throw, Cole. Remember the way he got the Kid
last winter!"
"The only wonder," growled Dalton, "is that the Kid hasn't taken him off
our hands and got him long ago!"
"But," put in Winifred hastily, "they're friends now. Uncle Henry and I
saw them talking together this afternoon."
She saw the start that her words gave the sheriff, and turning toward
Broderick glimpsed a look, steely and hard and glittering with suspicion
that had driven the smile from his eyes.
"If Bedloe...." began Dalton sharply, his great fist clenched. But he
stopped short. He saw and understood the warning glance Broderick shot
at him; Winifred saw, too, but did not understand.
"Let's go into the other room," the miner said carelessly, "and see what
Henry's cigars are made out of."
They rose and went back to Pollard's office. And Ben Broderick, who had
suggested cigars, was the only one of the three men who rolled his own
cigarette, rolled it slowly and with deep thoughtfulness.