THE INQUIRY
A Ree scout scoured every foot of ground leading up to the shack. He
trailed the mules, The Squaw, the troopers. He followed those moccasin
prints that came across the draw and went again. He found the last
behind the lean-to, along the side nearest the coulee, on the back-fire
strip in front. And declared they had been made by a white man.
Two circumstances pointed strongly to the truth of this: The body had
been carried away in the direction of Shanty Town; a white man would
have taken so much trouble, not an Indian, who would have left his
handiwork for all to see. And again, when Shanty Town was searched, one
of the huts was found to contain evidence of late occupancy--scraps of
food that were not yet stale, and, in a rusty stove, fresh coals. But
though the coulee, the road, the prairie and the timber edging the river
were all faithfully scanned, one thing concerning the murderer's doings
remained a mystery. At Shanty Town, the traces of him began and ended.
But how had he reached Shanty Town?
Old Michael furnished the clue of time. He related how he had heard the
crack of a gun to the eastward the previous evening, "about th' ind av
th' furst dog-watch."
Captain Oliver stayed until the last rod had been travelled and the last
stone turned. Then, he was ferried to Brannon. On landing, he went at
once to the wife of his colonel, who had vacated her home when the
command left and was now living with Mrs. Martin at Major Appleton's.
"Mrs. Cummings," he said, "the old man on the Bend is missing. It looks
like murder. His two girls are left, orphaned and heart-broken. They
need a woman's comfort, ma'am. Will you not go to them, and will you
find a woman to stay with them for a few nights?"
"Oh, how very sad!" exclaimed that lady; then, turned away as if
suddenly perplexed. "I--I--really don't care to go myself," she went on,
when she had given his request a moment's thought. "I know these country
people--so touchy and taciturn, always ready to think one is patronising
them."
"_One_ usually is," retorted the captain, sharply. "Then, I must ask
somebody else?"
"One of the troopers' wives would probably be glad to go."
"You are evidently quite mistaken regarding these young women," declared
Oliver, with some heat. "Mrs. Oliver will think differently."
"Really, I haven't thought of them," she answered petulantly. "But why,
may I ask, don't they come to the post?"
"They prefer to stay in their own little home. In their present trouble
and grief, it is particularly dear to them--would be to anyone."
"I think it odd, Captain, that they should choose to stay over there
alone. Can--can they be--eh--quite nice?"
"Madame," replied Oliver, sternly, "they wish to do what would please
their father; they wish to be independent."
"Ah!" Mrs. Cummings threw up her head.
"And let me say that I heartily commend them," Oliver fairly roared.
"They are made of the stuff of our forefathers, who pushed their way
into the wilderness. Their spirit is the spirit of the frontier." With
which, bowing and fuming, the captain stamped out.
Mrs. Oliver, a motherly chunk of a woman, thought very "differently."
Work and babies she consigned to a thrifty trooper's wife and, in a
jiffy, pinned on a bonnet that had stood various seasons. "I'll be back
in the morning," she said, with a kiss for each of the seven. Then,
stuffing a tidbit or two into the wide pockets of a duster, she hastened
away.
Captain Oliver, meanwhile, had cleared the front room of his progeny and
summoned the surgeon, Lieutenant Fraser and Matthews.
Matthews came last. As he entered, the three men were struck by a
curious change in him. He was erect and somewhat soldierly in his
bearing; he had let his hair grow until it rested upon the handkerchief
knotted about his throat; while his dress now aped that of the more
picturesque scouts, yet was still half military. Buckskin trousers, down
which, at the outer seams, was a dripping of fringe, were tucked into
high boots. Over his red flannel shirt he wore a tunic or blouse, also
of buckskin, fringed the length of the arms, and belted at the waist
like a hunting-shirt. A vest no longer concealed his revolvers; his
weapons were at his side, like a trooper's. In one gauntleted hand, he
held a wide, grey hat.
"You want to see me, Cap'n?" he asked, meeting that officer's look
squarely.
"Yes," answered Oliver, shortly. "I demand an exact account of your time
for the past thirty-six hours, beginning with the evening after the
departure of the command. I need not tell you why I ask this, and I make
no apology for asking. There are reasons for your wanting that old man
over there out of the way. You attacked his house in the winter during
his absence, when two defenceless women were at home to repel your
attack. That lays you open to mistrust. I may add that Lancaster's
eldest girl regards you as her father's murderer."
As Oliver talked, his woe-begone face had grown fierce and dark. Now, he
arose, lifting clenched fists. "Murder," he cried; "under my very nose,
and against a household that I had sworn to guard. Speak, Matthews,
_speak_!"
Matthews screwed up his mouth thoughtfully and looked into space.
"Beginning the ev'ning after the command left?" he said. "Let me see.
Why, I ain't crossed since the Colonel left."
"Account for your time," repeated Oliver.
"I messed at Blakely's that night. Afterward, me and Kippis had a little
game."
"What game?"
"Cards."
"Ah!" At once, Oliver sent for the sutler and the sergeant, and, waiting
for them, tramped up and down. When the men came, he halted and with
pointed finger asked Matthews to repeat his story. The interpreter did
so.
"And how long did that game last?" demanded Oliver.
Without looking in Kippis' direction, the interpreter answered. "Till
revelly," he said.
Fraser grunted, the surgeon smiled broadly. But the captain frowned.
"Of that, later," he said significantly. "Kippis?"
The sergeant stepped forward. "Hit's hall true, sir," he faltered. It
was Kippis' misfortune always to look more guilty than he was. With
Oliver's angry gaze upon him, he flushed redder than fire.
The captain was only half satisfied. He turned to the sutler. "And
_you_, Blakeley?"
The sutler had a round, jolly figure--a figure that was a living
advertisement of the fat-producing quality of his edible wares. At
Oliver's question that figure gave a startled bounce, like a kernel of
corn on a hot grid. "True, sir, true," he vowed huskily, and coughed in
apprehension behind a plump hand.
The captain looked keenly from man to man. "Very well," he said. Those
twelve hours accounted for, Matthews was shown innocent of planting the
pole. "Tell me what you did yesterday from revelly on."
"Slept till stables."
"I know that's so," said Fraser.
"After that?" Oliver asked.
"I goes into the stockade. Little Thief was carving his bride."
The captain glanced at Fraser. The latter nodded back.
"I remember," said Oliver, slowly. "Then----?"
"Cards till revelly."
The listening officers laughed.
But there was no softening of the captain's face. "Who played with
you?"
Matthews indicated the sutler and the sergeant by a sideways move of the
head. "Them two," he answered.
"Blakely?"
"True--true." And Blakely gave another bounce.
"Sergeant?"
"True's far's _Hi_ know, sir."
The thirty-six hours were now covered. Oliver sat down. "That'll do. I
want The Squaw and the men who have been on duty at the stockade since
the command left. Matthews, you may go."
Matthews bowed, Blakely and the sergeant saluted, and the three
withdrew. Outside, beyond hearing, they exchanged congratulatory shakes
of the hand.
"My! but the dander!" breathed the relieved sutler, rolling his
apple-round head. "I was that scairt!"
"Make you happreciate the K. Ho. w'en you got 'im," returned Kippis,
sagely.
Matthews shrugged his shoulders pityingly. But he had nothing to say.
The three gone, Oliver had turned to those with him. "A complete alibi,"
he said.
"I knew it," said Fraser. "But I wanted you to get it first hand."
"You knew?"
"Yes, sir. And I hope you'll be easy on Kippis. He and Blakely have been
helping me keep tab on Matthews to prevent the very thing that's
happened."
An hour later, a second group of men gathered in the captain's front
room. These were the troopers for whom the commanding officer had asked.
With them came Squaw Charley, quaking in his tatters, flinching at every
look. As Oliver appeared, the wretched Indian was half-dragged,
half-pushed before him.
The examination was short. The sentries who had tramped the high board
walk vouched for The Squaw's constant presence in the stockade
throughout the whole of the required time. The guards at the
sliding-panel lent corroboration. From sun-up till taps of the previous
day, Charley had fleshed at the hide of an elk, the scarred fury,
Afraid-of-a-Fawn, hanging over him the while. Both nights, from taps on,
he had watched outside the lodge occupied by the hag and an Indian girl.
Captain Oliver crossed to the bend to tell Dallas his results. "Matthews
has witnesses who know where he was every minute of the time," he said.
"Undoubtedly he had no active part in this affair."
"He knows about it, though," she answered.
"That would be hard to prove."
Before he went, the captain proposed certain defensive improvements for
the shack. She accepted them gratefully. Later, a carpenter nailed thick
cleats across the warped door, and the post blacksmith put heavy lashes
of iron over the eyes of the shack.
At nightfall, a detachment landed on the east bank, divided, and went on
a scout in opposite directions. It was only part of Oliver's plan of
guarding, for he did one thing more--spoke plainly to Matthews in regard
to the bend.
"I advise you to relinquish all claim to the Lancaster place," he said.
"I shall allow no warring on girls."
Matthews gave his promise.
During the first few days that followed, Marylyn's heart beat
pendulum-like between grief and dread. It was grief when, in a moment of
forgetfulness, she found that she had set the table for three; or when,
missing her father sorely--for in the past year he had been much with
her--she spoke of him to Dallas. At such times, with sweet impartiality,
she mourned him as sincerely as she had mourned her mother. But at
night, when the detachment came back from its scouting, she felt a
terrible dread--dread least the hunt had been successful, and the
troopers should ride across the prairie to the shack door, bearing
something solemnly home.
Those first days past, however, the sharp edge of her sorrow, together
with her fears, wore gradually away. She had the elastic spirit of
eighteen. And she was impatient of this new heartache, which possessed
none of the romantic qualities of the old. A doubt of her father's
death, fostered by Dallas, grew until it became a conviction. He had
been taken away, or he had fled; he would return. Meanwhile, though
nothing could have induced her to leave the shack after dark, it fretted
her sorely, that, in the daytime, she was not permitted to go as far as
the grove.
That restriction was the only hardship that the elder girl allowed the
younger to bear. Dallas believed that their father had come to mortal
harm. But she never shared that belief with Marylyn.
"We got to keep a stiff upper lip, baby sister," she would say, with an
encouraging pat. And her smile was always hopeful and cheering.
Mrs. Oliver came daily, and spent her time with Marylyn. She did not
feel that Dallas needed buoying--Dallas, quiet, self-poised, and
staunch. Yet, all the while, the elder girl was growing wan under the
strain. For, having given generously of her strength, there was no one
from whom, in turn, she might take. And so her thoughts came often to be
of the one who had faithfully watched over them, how faithfully, shown
by the fact that catastrophe had followed swift upon his leaving. And in
her heart she cried out for him.
The tragedy on the bend furnished a nine days' wonder for Brannon. But
the garrison felt little grief over it. Lancaster had earned their
dislike by insults open and veiled, and by his determination to cut his
family off from every friendly influence. The enlisted men were even
inclined to treat his disappearance facetiously. When they heard about
the pole, they declared that in his fright over it, he had fired a shot,
cut a finger, broken a crutch--and "lit out." One wag announced that the
section-boss was mired in some alkali mud-hole; another, that he had
been bitten by a polecat; a third composed some doggerel lines in which
Lancaster was described as having gone "over the range." Notwithstanding
this, the troopers had deep sympathy for the bereaved girls.
Oliver, never too popular, they scored roundly for his treatment of
Matthews, and vowed to the latter that he had ample grounds for walking
off and leaving the whole "shooting-match." But Matthews gently chided
them, reminding them that any moment an interpreter might be badly
needed. Furthermore, he said, he would disregard the unfairness shown
him, for he knew his duty.
Brannon was still asking Who? and Why? and How? in the Lancaster affair
when Squaw Charley discovered and showed to Captain Oliver the
testimony that had in some way escaped the scout. Under a willow clump
on the beach before Shanty Town, was a well-defined mark in the sand,
V-shaped, long, and quite deep. It was the mark left by the prow of a
boat that had been pulled out of the water and hidden at the river's
edge. It was almost certain proof of the route taken, going and coming,
by Lancaster's assailant.
But no absolute facts were unearthed. As the days slipped by, this cruel
one became apparent: the section-boss, with his wild outbursts of anger,
his implacable hatreds, his suspicions, and his tantrums of
jealousy--was gone.