For a long time after Sheriff Warburton rode away, Dot followed him
with her eyes. Not until he was but a wisp of dust in the gray
distance, did she turn to reënter the house. She was considerably
shaken by the ordeal, relieved that it was over. Ten thousand
dollars reward, he had said. A fortune! What a store of untold
pleasures it would buy—surcease of worry, regeneration! Thoughtfully
she walked to her room and unlocked the door. The fearful eyes of
the fugitive fastened on hers questioningly.
“He’s gone. It was Sheriff Warburton. He’s hunting for you—to arrest
you.” She said this in quiet tones.
“I—I don’t know how to thank you, Miss Huntington,” he stammered
huskily. “My—my own mother couldn’t ’a’ done more. I ain’t
deservin’. I’m no good. I’ll never ferget you as long as I live.” A
strange spasm crossed his face. He settled feebly back on the bed,
the tears coursing down his cheeks in little rivulets.
“There now! Don’t think about it,” she said gently. “I’ll fix you
something to eat. Then you can sleep. But my father must not even
suspect that you are here, understand? To-night, when you’re
stronger, I’ll help you out of the house. I’ll spread a few blankets
in the hayloft for you. You’ll be safe there.”
She made to leave the room, but he stopped her.
“Would you mind gettin’ me them—them saddlebags ag’in, Miss
Huntington? An’—an’ keep ’em by me, won’t you? I got things in ’em
I—I can’t afford to lose, so to speak.”
For the second time Dot obeyed his request, bringing the bulging
twin leather pouches from under the parlor lounge and storing them
under the head of the bed. Now, she began to wonder curiously what
they contained. While she prepared him his meal she still wondered.
Of a sudden it dawned on her that in her nervousness and excitement
she had forgotten to ask Sheriff Warburton about the fugitive—who he
was, the nature of his crime, everything. What if she should be
harboring a murderer? The thought chilled the blood in her veins. It
filled her with apprehension, misgivings—horrified her. She turned
it over in her mind, deciding finally that she would not allow
herself to believe it. He was not the type who would kill a man, of
that she became firmly convinced. A murderer must have something of
viciousness stamped on his face, she fancied. The result of these
reflections made her resolve to ask her patient about himself. There
was no great hurry. He could not leave inside of several days
anyway.
Later that afternoon she gathered together a number of old blankets
and quilts, and spread a bed for the wounded fugitive in an obscure
corner of the hayloft under the eaves of the barn. She hid the
blood-spattered saddle. Then she drove the exhausted horse to wander
with their handful of stock in the far end of the field.
Around five o’clock she made out her father galloping home along the
road from camp. Giving the outlaw a few specific instructions she
ran out beyond the gate to meet Lemuel as was her custom. But
Huntington had no smile for his daughter to-day. She marked the ill
humor in his face, the hard, accusing look he gave her, and half
suspected the reason.
A tall, angular, wiry man was Lemuel Huntington, a sprinkle of gray
in his hair and mustache, a countenance more pathetic than
aggressive. Association with Geerusalem’s uppish fraternity had
inspired him to assume its dashy swagger garb—stiff-brim gray
Stetson, corduroy suit, his trousers stuffed into yellow, laced,
three-quarter boots resplendent with steel buckles, his coat,
box-pleated and belted à la Norfolk. Just now, as he rode up,
scowling on Dot, he looked more the prosperous mining man of
sectional influence than the humble, unimportant rancher he really
was.
“What’s this talk of you side-kickin’ it with a bandit, Dot?” he
began sharply as he dismounted.
“I suppose you’ve met Sheriff Warburton, and he’s told you——”
“Yes, I did. He says you helped Billy Gee git away, patched him up,
give him a hoss, an’——”
“Billy Gee!” she gasped aloud. Her patient was the notorious
desperado who, for years, had terrorized the border settlements far
to the south!
“Yes—Billy Gee. He stuck up the paymaster’s car of the Mohave &
Southwestern last night at a gradin’ camp east of Mirage an’ skinned
out with twenty thousand dollars. Bob Warburton was on his trail
when he done it. Posses are out thicker’n fleas—three from
Geerusalem alone. The country’s all riled up. What d’you mean by
actin’ that fool way, Dot? Ain’t you got no sense?”
“How did I know he was Billy Gee, daddy? Please be a little
reasonable.” She spoke, a tinge of impatience in her voice, her eyes
on the ground.
“He must ’a’ acted suspicious, didn’t he? An’ he was winged, to
boot.”
“He was about dead. Father, would you have me run a dying man off
the place, brutally—like a dog? Is that the kind of daughter you
want to be proud of?” She was looking steadily at him now.
Lemuel was silent a moment. He glanced down at the buckles on his
boots.
“By gosh, honey! I reckon you’ve got the ol’ man holed up,” he
admitted rather ruefully. “But can’t you see, if it’d bin any one
else, ’cept Bob Warburton, we’d have a tough time provin’ we wasn’t
in cahoots with this thievin’ kiyote. It’s mighty ticklish business,
I’m tellin’ you. He was bad hit, eh?”
She gave him a detailed account of the fugitive’s arrival at the
ranch, but very carefully omitted to mention that she had taken him
into the house. Adroitly, also, she evaded saying that he had
departed. She dwelt in particular on the seriousness of his
condition because of his loss of blood and his need of immediate
care. Lemuel said no more following this explanation, though it was
quite plain to her that some thought still troubled him.
While he attended to his chores Dot went into the kitchen and
started getting supper ready. Now she was afire with excitement.
Billy Gee, that terrible personage of whom she had heard such wild,
thrilling things, was locked in her room—lying on her bed! _Her_
prisoner! Her romantic brain reeled with ecstasy at the realization.
And Sheriff Warburton, posses galore, were frantically beating brush
the length and breadth of Soapweed Plains for Billy Gee, in pursuit
of a ten-thousand-dollar reward. She had outwitted them—she, Dot
Huntington!
The whole situation struck her as ridiculously funny. She leaned
against the kitchen table and choked with silent laughter. This
indeed was the big, exciting adventure she had longed for all these
past years—infinitely big and exciting, pregnant with thrilling
possibilities.
Then she remembered her father saying that Billy Gee had stolen
twenty thousand dollars just the night before. She grew anxiously
grave. From reflecting on the robbery she presently interpreted the
cause of her patient’s singular concern over the safety of his
saddlebags. They contained his stealings—currency, most likely;
twenty thousand dollars in bills would make a bulky package, she
believed.
Lemuel sauntered in from the barn some minutes afterward. He
prepared to wash.
“I don’t see his horse, Dot,” he began abruptly, as he poured a
dipperful of water into the basin.
“I turned it out with the rest—after I fed it. The poor thing was——”
“You give him Baldy, I s’pose?”
“No. Sheriff Warburton appeared to get the notion from what I said
that I traded horses, and I didn’t tell him different. I didn’t see
why I should,” she explained frankly.
Lemuel, in the act of rolling up his sleeves, glanced around at her.
He frowned.
“Are you meanin’ to tell me, Dot, that a dyin’ man with a sheriff at
his heels’d resk a get-away on foot—pertickler, a hard case like
this here Billy Gee? D’you think I’m a fool, Dot?”
“Well, count your stock if you don’t believe me, daddy.
You’re—you’re doubting everything I say, to-day. I don’t know why.
You’ve never done that before.”
She spoke in such a meek, sorrowful voice that it moved him to cross
the room to her side and kiss her tenderly on the cheek.
“Lord bless you, hon!” he murmured in loving tones. “I ain’t aimin’
to doubt my leetle gal never. You know that.” He laughed. “The on’y
thing I got to say is, it’ll be good-by, Billy Gee, ’fore the week’s
up, if he don’t git somepn faster’n two laigs under him. He must ’a’
left his saddle an’ everythin’, eh?” he added craftily.
“Everything,” nodded Dot, in a very decisive manner.
Lemuel went back to the basin and silently proceeded with his
washing, but he said to himself: “No bandit livin’ would do sech a
crazy thing—shot up, into the bargain. You might fool Bob Warburton,
daughter, but you can’t fool yore ol’ man. There’s ten thousand
dollars hidin’ on this ranch this minute.”
After supper, Lemuel composed himself in his favorite chair and
smoked his pipe and mused as usual. It was a quiet
night—exceptionally quiet, thought Dot, who, mindful that only a
thin board partition separated her room from the kitchen, grew more
and more fearful as the evening dragged on, in the knowledge that an
accidental sound or movement by her outlaw patient would lead her
father to investigate. She trembled at the consequences to herself.
By the hour she kept busy with the noisy task of scouring pots and
pans, giving the cupboard a thorough overhauling, burnishing the
stove, making all the distracting sounds possible, and wishing and
wishing that Lemuel might go to bed. But he had no such inclination.
“At three dollars a day, a man’d work over twenty years for twenty
thousand dollars, Dot,” he observed pointedly, breaking a long
silence. “An’ this Billy Gee gits it overnight.”
“Yes, daddy. But he doesn’t enjoy it. How can he?” she replied,
vigorously rubbing at the stove lids. “Think of him being hunted
from place to place like a wild animal, the target for any man’s
gun, without home or any one to care for him when he’s sick. Think
of such a terrible existence!”
“When a feller tries an’ tries till the heart’s kicked outer him,
’tain’t hard to tempt him. That’s how I feel about it.” There was an
ugly, suggestive note in his voice.
She paused in her scrubbing and gave him a quick, searching look.
Some grim expression she saw in his face, a dangerous flicker in his
eyes, filled her with sudden misgivings.
“I mean that!” he said harshly, with a vicious jerk of his head. He
had taken the pipe from his mouth; his gaze was fastened on her
accusingly. “Look at me! I bin kicked an’ kicked! Year in an’ year
out I bin a-goin’ it, till I’m bruck down—petered out, an’ not a
cussed thing to show for it. An’ look at other men who ain’t half as
deservin’! What’ve I got, eh? What’ve you got?” He stiffened in his
chair, gulped out suddenly in tones that reverberated through the
silent little house: “An’ I’ve tried—God Almighty knows! An’ yore
poor ma she—she died a-tryin’ an’ skimpin’ an’ dreamin’——”
“Father!” cried Dot aghast. Her face was white, drawn; her eyes wide
with alarm.
Sitting there in the yellow lamplight, Lemuel Huntington was wild to
behold; his features distorted into hideous lines; his hands
clenched, his whole body trembling spasmodically. He burst into a
horrible laugh.
“To-day, you doctor up a low-down murd’rous skunk that’d cut our
throats to-morrow for the fun of it. An’ ten thousand dollars gits
by us, eh? D’you hear that! D’you hear that? Ten thousand dollars
for Billy Gee, dead or alive! D’you know what that means to us? An’
d’you reckon I’m goin’ to sit still an’ let you——”
“Blood money!” she broke in, gasping out the words. “Daddy, would
you want to buy your food and drink—mine—our clothes,
pleasures—would you be so inhuman as to find happiness at the
expense of a miserable fellow creature?”
“It’s the law—like the ten-dollar bounty on the hide of the kiyote.
Money is money,” he slung in savagely. “I want you to c’nsider me,
yoreself, our c’ndition. I bin wantin’ to give you an edjucation, to
carry out yore ma’s dyin’ wish. I want you to be somebody. We bin
livin’ like dogs too long. I’m damn sick of it! Outside o’ Agatha
Liggs, look at how them town hussies treat you! An’ them edjucated
shysters who ain’t fit to grease my boots—what do I git from them?
We need money. We got to git money—_now_. Right off, see? An’ if you
can’t help me git it honest, ’cordin’ to law, I’ll start out to
steal it! I’ll turn bandit, an’ it’ll be for you to hide me out an’
take care of me! What d’you say to that, eh? What’re you goin’ to
do?”
He had risen to his feet as he spoke. He crossed the kitchen to her
side and stood now, glowering down on her, cupidity, fury,
desperation flaming from his eyes. Terrified, she stared at him. She
knew at last the reason for the marked change in him, what he
intimated. There was no way for her to dodge the issue.
“You think I know where Billy Gee is——” she began with an effort.
“You got him hid out, an’ don’t lie to me!” he roared. “He’s too
sick to ride, an’ you’re nursin’ him some place on this ranch. You
can’t make no damn fool out of me, young lady. Where is he? You’re
goin’ to tell me, or by hell, I’ll——” He raised his clenched fists
menacingly above her head.