"I don't believe it!" Anita Richmond exclaimed with conviction and
clutched at Fairchild's arm. "I don't believe it!"
"I can't!" Robert answered. Then he turned to the accuser. "How could
it be possible for Harry to be down here robbing a dance hall when he
's out working the mine?"
"Working the mine?" This time it was the sheriff. "What's the
necessity for a day and night shift?"
The question was pertinent--and Fairchild knew it. But he did not
hesitate.
"I know it sounds peculiar--but it's the truth. We agreed upon it
yesterday afternoon."
"At whose suggestion?"
"I 'm not sure--but I think it was mine."
"Young fellow," the sheriff had approached him now, "you 'd better be
certain about that. It looks to me like that might be a pretty good
excuse to give when a man can't produce an alibi. Anyway, the
identification seems pretty complete. Everybody in this room heard
that man talk with a Cousin Jack accent. And Mr. Rodaine says that he
saw his face. That seems conclusive."
"If Mr. Rodaine's word counts for anything."
The sheriff looked at him sharply.
"Evidently you have n't been around here long." Then he turned to the
crowd. "I want a couple of good men to go along with me as deputies."
"I have a right to go." Fairchild had stepped forward.
"Certainly. But not as a deputy. Who wants to volunteer?"
Half a dozen men came forward, and from them the sheriff chose two.
Fairchild turned to say good-by to Anita. In vain. Already Maurice
Rodaine had escorted her, apparently against her will, to a far end of
the dance hall, and there was quarreling with her. Fairchild hurried
to join the sheriff and his two deputies, just starting out of the
dance hall. Five minutes later they were in a motor car, chugging up
Kentucky Gulch.
The trip was made silently. There was nothing for Fairchild to say; he
had told all he knew. Slowly, the motor car fighting against the
grade, the trip was accomplished. Then the four men leaped from the
machine at the last rise before the tunnel was reached and three of
them went forward afoot toward where a slight gleam of light came from
the mouth of the Blue Poppy.
A consultation and then the creeping forms made the last fifty feet.
The sheriff took the lead, at last to stop behind a boulder and to
shout a command:
"Hey you, in there."
"'Ey yourself!" It was Harry's voice.
"Come out--and be quick about it. Hold your light in front of your
face with both hands."
"The 'ell I will! And 'oo 's talking?"
"Sheriff Adams of Clear Creek County. You 've got one minute to come
out--or I 'll shoot."
"I 'm coming on the run!"
And almost instantly the form of Harry, his acetylene lamp lighting up
his bulbous, surprised countenance with its spraylike mustache,
appeared at the mouth of the tunnel.
"What the bloody 'ell?" he gasped, as he looked into the muzzle of the
revolver. From down the mountain side came the shout of one of the
deputies:
"Sheriff! Looks like it's him, all right. I 've found a horse down
here--all sweated up from running."
"That's about the answer." Sheriff Adams went forward and with a
motion of his revolver sent Harry's hands into the air. "Let's see
what you 've got on you."
A light gleamed below as an electric flash in the hands of one of the
deputies began an investigation of the surroundings. The sheriff,
finishing his search of 'Arry's pockets, stepped back.
"Well," he demanded, "what did you do with the proceeds?"
"The proceeds?" Harry stared blankly. "Of what?"
"Quit your kidding now. They 've found your horse down there."
"Would n't it be a good idea--" Fairchild had cut in acridly--"to save
your accusations on this thing until you're a little surer of it?
Harry has n't any horse. If he 's rented one, you ought to be able to
find that out pretty shortly."
As if in answer, the sheriff turned and shouted a question down the
mountain side. And back came the answer:
"It's Doc Mason's. Must have been stolen. Doc was at the dance."
"I guess that settles it." The officer reached for his hip pocket.
"Stick out your hands, Harry, while I put the cuffs on them."
"But 'ow in bloody 'ell 'ave I been doing anything when I 've been up
'ere working on this chiv wheel? 'Ow--?"
"They say you held up the dance to-night and robbed us," Fairchild cut
in. Harry's face lost its surprised look, to give way to a glance of
keen questioning.
"And do you say it?"
"I most certainly do not. The identification was given by that
honorable person known as Mr. Maurice Rodaine."
"Oh! One thief identifying another--"
"Just cut your remarks along those lines."
"Sheriff!" Again the voice from below.
"Yeh!"
"We 've found a cache down here. Must have been made in a hurry--two
new revolvers, bullets, a mask, a couple of new handkerchiefs and the
money."
Harry's eyes grew wide. Then he stuck out his hands.
"The evidence certainly is piling up!" he grunted. "I might as well
save my talking for later."
"That's a good idea." The sheriff snapped the handcuffs into place.
Then Fairchild shut off the pumps and they started toward the machine.
Back in Ohadi more news awaited them. Harry, if Harry had been the
highwayman, had gone to no expense for his outfit. The combined
general store and hardware emporium of Gregg Brothers had been robbed
of the articles necessary for a disguise,--also the revolvers and their
bullets. Robert Fairchild watched Harry placed in the solitary cell of
the county jail with a spirit that could not respond to the
Cornishman's grin and his assurances that morning would bring a
righting of affairs. Four charges hung heavy above him: that of
horse-stealing, of burglary, of highway robbery, and worse, the final
one of assault with attempt to kill. Fairchild turned wearily away; he
could not find the optimism to join Harry's cheerful announcement that
it would be "all right." The appearances were otherwise. Besides, up
in the little hospital on the hill, Fairchild had seen lights gleaming
as he entered the jail, and he knew that doctors were working there
over the wounded body of the fiddler. Tired, heavy at heart, his
earlier conquest of the night sodden and overshadowed now, he turned
away from the cell and its optimistic occupant,--out into the night.
It was only a short walk to the hospital and Fairchild went there, to
leave with at least a ray of hope. The probing operation had been
completed; the fiddler would live, and at least the charge against
Harry would not be one of murder. That was a thing for which to be
thankful; but there was plenty to cause consternation, as Fairchild
walked slowly down the dark, winding street toward the main
thoroughfare. Without Harry, Fairchild now felt himself lost. Before
the big, genial, eccentric Cornishman had come into his life, he had
believed, with some sort of divine ignorance, that he could carry out
his ambitions by himself, with no knowledge of the technical details
necessary to mining, with no previous history of the Blue Poppy to
guide him, and with no help against the enemies who seemed everywhere.
Now he saw that it was impossible. More, the incidents of the night
showed how swiftly those enemies were working, how sharp and
stiletto-like their weapons.
That Harry was innocent was certain,--to Robert Fairchild. There was
quite a difference between a joke which a whole town recognized as such
and a deliberate robbery which threatened the life of at least one man.
Fairchild knew in his heart that Harry was not built along those lines.
Looking back over it now, Fairchild could see how easily Fate had
played into the hands of the Rodaines, if the Rodaines had not
possessed a deeper concern than merely to seize upon a happening and
turn it to their own account. The highwayman was big. The highwayman
talked with a "Cousin-Jack" accent,--for all Cornishmen are "Cousin
Jacks" in the mining country. Those two features in themselves,
Fairchild thought, as he stumbled along in the darkness, were
sufficient to start the scheming plot in the brain of Maurice Rodaine,
already ugly and evil through the trick played by Harry on his father
and the rebuke that had come from Anita Richmond. It was an easy
matter for him to get the inspiration, leap out of the window, and then
wait until the robber had gone, that he might flare forth with his
accusation. And after that--.
Either Chance, or something stronger, had done the rest. The finding
of the stolen horse and the carelessly made cache near the mouth of the
Blue Poppy mine would be sufficient in the eyes of any jury. The
evidence was both direct and circumstantial. To Fairchild's mind,
there was small chance for escape by Harry, once his case went to
trial. Nor did the pounding insistence of intuitive knowledge that the
whole thing had been a deliberately staged plot on the part of the
Rodaines, father and son, make the slightest difference in Fairchild's
estimation. How could he prove it? By personal animosity? There was
the whole town of Ohadi to testify that the highwayman was a big man,
of the build of Harry, and that he spoke with a Cornish accent. There
were the sworn members of the posse to show that they, without
guidance, had discovered the horse and the cache,--and the Rodaines
were nowhere about to help them. And experience already had told
Fairchild that the Rodaines, by a deliberately constructed system, held
a ruling power; that against their word, his would be as nothing.
Besides, where would be Harry's alibi? He had none; he had been at the
mine, alone. There was no one to testify for him, not even Fairchild.
The world was far from bright. Down the dark street the man wandered,
his hands sunk deep in his pockets, his head low between his
shoulders,--only to suddenly galvanize into intensity, and to stop
short that he might hear again the voice which had come to him. At one
side was a big house,--a house whose occupants he knew instinctively,
for he had seen the shadow of a woman, hands outstretched, as she
passed the light-strewn shade of a window on the second floor. More,
he had heard her voice, supplemented by gruffer tones. And then it
came again.
It was pleading, and at the same time angered with the passion of a
person approaching hysteria. A barking sentence answered her,
something that Fairchild could not understand. He left the old board
sidewalk and crept to the porch that he might hear the better. Then
every nerve within him jangled, and the black of the darkness changed
to red. The Rodaines were within; he had heard first the cold voice of
the father, then the rasping tones of the son, in upbraiding. More,
there had come the sobbing of a woman; instinctively Fairchild knew
that it was Anita Richmond. And then:
It was her voice, high, screaming. Hysteria had come,--the wild,
racking hysteria of a person driven to the breaking point:
"Leave this house--hear me! Leave this house! Can't you see that
you're killing him? Don't you dare touch me--leave this house! No--I
won't be quiet--I won't--you 're killing him, I tell you--!"
And Fairchild waited for nothing more. A lunge, and he was on the
veranda. One more spring and he had reached the door, to find it
unlocked, to throw it wide and to leap into the hall. Great steps, and
he had cleared the stairs to the second floor.
A scream came from a doorway before him; dimly, as through a red
screen, Fairchild saw the frightened face of Anita Richmond, and on the
landing, fronting him angrily, stood the two Rodaines. For a moment,
Fairchild disregarded them and turned to the sobbing, disheveled little
being in the doorway.
"What's happened?"
"They were threatening me--and father!" she moaned. "But you shouldn't
have come in--you should n't have--"
"I heard you scream. I could n't help it. I heard you say they were
killing your father--"
The girl looked anxiously toward an inner room, where Fairchild could
see faintly the still figure of a man outlined under the covers of an
old-fashioned four-poster.
"They--they--got him excited. He had another stroke. I--I could n't
stand it any longer."
"You 'd better get out," said Fairchild curtly to the Rodaines, with a
suggestive motion toward the stairs. They hesitated a moment and
Maurice seemed about to launch himself at Robert, but his father laid a
restraining hand on his arm. A step and the elder Rodaine hesitated.
"I 'm only going because of your father," he said gruffly, with a
glance toward Anita.
Fairchild knew differently, but he said nothing. The gray of Rodaine's
countenance told where his courage lay; it was yellow gray, the dirty
gray of a man who fights from cover, and from cover only.
"Oh, I know," Anita said. "It's--it's all right. I--I 'm sorry.
I--did n't realize that I was screaming--please forgive me--and go,
won't you? It means my father's life now."
"That's the only reason I am going; I 'm not going because--"
"Oh, I know. Mr. Fairchild should n't have come in here. He should
n't have done it. I 'm sorry--please go."
Down the steps they went, the older man with his hand still on his
son's arm; while, white-faced, Fairchild awaited Anita, who had
suddenly sped past him into the sick room, then was wearily returning.
"Can I help you?" he asked at last.
"Yes," came her rather cold answer, only to be followed by a quickly
whispered "Forgive me." And then the tones became louder--so that they
could be heard at the bottom of the stairs: "You can help me
greatly--simply by going and not creating any more of a disturbance."
"But--"
"Please go," came the direct answer. "And please do not vent your
spite on Mr. Rodaine and his son. I 'm sure that they will act like
gentlemen if you will. You should n't have rushed in here."
"I heard you screaming, Miss Richmond."
"I know," came her answer, as icily as ever. Then the door downstairs
closed and the sound of steps came on the veranda. She leaned close to
him. "I had to say that," came her whispered words. "Please don't try
to understand anything I do in the future. Just go--please!"
And Fairchild obeyed.