"Yes," he assured her unmoved, "you are. At least you are going to do
that, or go to jail."
"What do you want me to say to Stone?"
"Nothing much," he told her. He and Taylor could take care of the
talking. Her part would be just to stand by and pay attention.
"And after that?"
"After that, as I said before, you may go."
He suggested that the sooner she felt that she could go the better, as
she had been a good deal of a burden to the Taylors.
She laughed scornfully. "It ain't me that asked them to take me in," she
said; "I'm as glad to go as they are to have me." She wore a calico
wrapper that Cairness had bought for her, and other garments that had
been gathered together in the town. Now she put a battered sombrero on
her head, and told him she was ready.
He and the parson followed her out of the house. She had not cared to
say good-by to Mrs. Taylor, and she glared at the little Reverend, who
balanced himself on his uncertain small feet and clutched at a chair,
watching her with his precocious eyes and an expression combined of his
mother's virtuous disapproval and his father's contemplative scrutiny,
the while the tufts of his hair stood out stiffly.
The Reverend Taylor and Cairness had managed, with a good deal of
adroitness, to keep the identity of their patient a secret. Stone was
consequently not at all prepared to have her stride in upon him. But he
was not a man to be caught exhibiting emotions. The surprise which he
showed and expressed was of a perfectly frank and civil, even of a
somewhat pleased, sort. He called her "my dear madam," and placed a
chair for her. She sat in it under protest. He kept up the social aspect
of it all for quite five minutes, but sociability implies conversation,
and Cairness and the minister were silent. So was the woman--rigidly.
When all his phrases were quite used up, Stone changed the key. What
could be done for Mr. Taylor? Mr. Taylor motioned with his usual
urbanity that the burden of speech lay with Cairness. What could he do
for Mr. Cairness, then?
"Well," said Cairness, twisting at the small mustache, and levelling his
eyes straight as the barrels of a shot-gun--and they gave the journalist
a little of the same sensation--"I think, Mr. Stone, that you can get
out of the country within the next three days."
Stone did not understand. He believed that he missed Mr. Cairness's
meaning. "I don't think you do," said Cairness; "but I'll make it
plainer, anyway. I want you to get out of the country, for the country's
good, you know, and for your own. And I give you three days to do it
in, because I don't wish to hurry you to an inconvenient extent."
Stone laughed and inquired if he were joking, or just crazy.
"Neither," drawled Cairness. "But Mrs. Lawton, here, has been good
enough to tell me that you have known the exact truth about the Kirby
massacre ever since a week after its occurrence, and yet you have
shielded the criminals and lied in the papers. Then, too," he went on,
"though there is no real proof against you, and you undoubtedly did
handle it very well, I know that it was you that set Lawton on to try
and bribe for the beef contract. You see your friends are unsafe, Mr.
Stone, and I have been around yours and Lawton's ranches enough to have
picked up a few damaging facts."
"Always supposing you have," interposed Stone, hooking his thumbs in his
sleeve holes and tipping back his chair, "always supposing you have,
what could you do with the facts?"
"Well," drawled Cairness again,--he had learned the value of the word in
playing the Yankee game of bluff,--"with those about the beef contract
and those about the Kirby massacre, also a few I gathered around San
Carlos (you may not be aware that I have been about that reservation off
and on for ten years), with those facts I could put you in the
penitentiary, perhaps, even with an Arizona jury; but at any rate I
could get you tarred and feathered or lynched in about a day. Or failing
all those, I could shoot you myself. And a jury would acquit me, you
know, if any one were ever to take the trouble to bring it before one,
which is doubtful, I think."
Stone glanced at the Lawton woman. She was grinning mirthlessly at his
discomfiture. "What have you been stuffing this fellow here with?" he
asked her contemptuously.
"Just what he's dishin' up to you now," she told him.
"It's a lot of infernal lies, and you know it." But she only shook her
head and laughed again, shortly.
Stone made a very creditable fight. A man does not throw up the results
of years of work without a strong protest. He treated it lightly, at
first, then seriously. Then he threatened. "I've got a good deal of
power myself," he told Cairness angrily; "I can roast you in the press
so that you can't hold up your head."
"I don't believe you can," Cairness said; "but you might try it, if it
will give you any pleasure. Only you must make haste, because you've got
to get out in three days."
"I can shoot, myself, when it comes to that," suggested Stone.
Cairness said that he would of course have to take chances on that. "You
might kill me, or I might kill you. I'm a pretty fair shot. However, it
wouldn't pay you to kill me, upon the whole, and you must take
everything into consideration." He was still twisting the curled end of
his small mustache and half closing his eyes in the way that Stone had
long since set down as asinine. "My friend Mr. Taylor would still be
alive. And if you were to hurt him,--he's a very popular man,--it might
be bad for your standing in the community. It wouldn't hurt me to kill
you, particularly, on the other hand. You are not so popular anyway, and
I haven't very much to lose."
Then the journalist tried entreaty. He had a wife and children.
Cairness reminded him that Kirby had had a wife and children, too.
"Well, I didn't kill them, did I?" he whined.
"Not exactly, no. But you were an accessory after the fact."
"Why are you so all-fired anxious to vindicate the law?" He dropped
easily into phrases.
Cairness assured him that he was not. "It is not my mission on earth to
straighten out the territories, heaven be praised. This is purely a
personal matter, entirely so. You may call it revenge, if you like.
Lawton's in jail all safe, as you know. I got him there, and if he gets
out anyway, I'll put him back again on this count."
Mrs. Lawton started forward in her chair. "What's he in for now? Ain't
it for this?" she demanded.
"For destruction of government property," Cairness told her, and there
was just the faintest twinkle between his lids. "I didn't know all these
interesting details about the Kirbys until you told me, Mrs. Lawton."
She sat with her jaw hanging, staring at him, baffled, and he went on.
"I've got Lawton jailed, as I was saying. I'll have you out of the
country in three days, and as for Mrs. Lawton, I'll keep an eye on her.
I'll know where she is, in case I need her at any time. But I'm not
fighting women."
He stood up. "I'll see you off inside of three days then, Stone," he
said amicably.
"Where do you want me to go?" he almost moaned, and finished with an
oath.
"Anywhere you like, my dear chap, so that it's neither in Arizona or New
Mexico. I want to stop here myself, and the place isn't big enough for
us both. You'll be a valuable acquisition to any community, and you can
turn your talent to showing up the life here. You are right on the
inside track. Now I won't ask you to promise to go. But I'll be round to
see that you do."
He held the door open for the Texan woman and the parson to go out. Then
he followed, closing it behind him.
Two days later Stone left the town. He took the train for California,
and his wife and children went with him. He was a rich man by many an
evil means, and it was no real hardship that had been worked him, as
Cairness well knew.
The Lawton woman had heard of an officer's family at Grant, which was in
need of a cook, and had gone there.
"And now," said the Reverend Taylor, fingering the lock of hair over the
little Reverend's right ear, as that wise little owl considered with
uncertain approval a whistle rattle Cairness had bought for him, "and
now what are you going to do?"
Cairness stood up, ran his hands into his pockets, and going over to the
window looked down at the geraniums as he had done once, long before.
"I am going back to my ranch on the reservation," he said measuredly.
"Cairness," said the parson, fixing his eyes upon the back of the bent
head, as if they were trying to see through into the impenetrable brain
beneath, "are you going to spend the rest of your life at this sort of
thing?"
"I don't know," Cairness answered, with a lightness that was anything
but cheering.
"You are too good for it."
"I am certainly not good enough for anything else." He began to whistle,
but it was not a success, and he stopped.
"See here," insisted Taylor; "turn round here and answer me." Cairness
continued to stand with his head down, looking at the geraniums. The
parson was wiser than his wife in that he knew when it was of no use to
insist. "What's keeping you around here, anyway? You ought to have
gotten out when you left the service--and you half meant to then. What
is it?"
Cairness raised his shoulders. "My mines," he said, after a while. The
Reverend Taylor did not believe that, but he let it go.
"Well," he said more easily, "you've accomplished the thing you set out
to do, anyway."
"One thing," muttered Cairness.
"Eh?" the parson was not sure he had heard.
"Just nothing," Cairness laughed shortly, and breaking off one of the
treasured geranium blossoms, stuck it in a buttonhole of his flannel
shirt.
"I heard you," said the little man; "what's the other?"--"Oh, I dare say
I'll fail on that," he answered indifferently, and taking up his
sombrero went out to saddle his horse.