by Bliss Lomax
Clay straightened up, his face as grave as those ringed around him. “What’s the use of telling you he’s going to be all right? You know I’d be lying; you can see the shape he’s in; he’s let this thing go till his life is hanging in the balance. If you boys have any drag with him, I advise you to make him change his mind about letting me take him in. We can tie him in his saddle. I’ll put him in a wagon at the Santa Bonita and have him in Mescal by daylight. I promise you he’ll be fairly treated.”
“He won’t listen to me!” Slick growled. “Mebbe you can talk him into it, Utah!”
Utah Sims, a pint-size little man, shook his head. “Nobody makes up Steve’s mind for him. If you want to do somethin’ for him, Roberts, why can’t you git the doctor out here on yore own hook and tell Big John and the rest of ’em about it afterward?”
“Do you think I could get Doctor Deering to come on those terms?” Clay countered. “You ought to know he wouldn’t; he’s got to go on making a living out of his doctoring in these parts. Don’t expect him to do anything that would put him in wrong with the members of the Association.”
“You’re right, Clay,” Steve muttered. “If I got to die, I’ll do my dyin’ here,” he added grimly. “I’d just as soon be dead as spend twenty to thirty years in that rat-trap in Florence.”
Carroll motioned for Clay to walk over to the fire with him. “There’s some meat in the pot; might as well have a bite to eat.” He glanced back at Steve and shook his head. “I’d feel as he does about giving myself up. We can’t move him; it means we’ll have to keep you here.”
Clay nodded woodenly. He declined anything to eat. With a preoccupied air, he sipped a cup of hot coffee.
“Who does the cooking in your outfit?” he asked.
“We all take a hand at it,” said Carroll.
“Build up the fire, then, and put some water on to boil. I’ll need a couple pots of it. Have you got a sharp barlow knife among you?”
“Yeh, I’ve got one.” Slick eyed him darkly. “What’s the idea?”
“I’m going to make Steve a proposition of my own. You better put a running iron in the fire to heat. Come on! We’ll see what he’s got to say about it!”
He walked briskly back to where Jennings lay. “Steve, let me have a look at that leg. Something’s got to be done for you.” Without waiting for the outlaw’s consent, he told Carroll and the others to pick Jennings up in his blanket and carry him over to the fire.
“Somebody better put a slug into me and have it over with,” Steve groaned. “I can’t stand any more of this!”
“You’ll stand it!” Clay rapped. “You used to have some guts, Steve. It isn’t going to hurt you any to let me look at your leg.”
With Carroll’s knife, he cut away the bloodstained bandage. A sickening smell rose from the badly infected wound.
“Looks bad, eh?” Jennings questioned weakly.
“It’s rotten. Steve, you listen to me. You offered me a deal, now I’m going to offer you one. I’m not a doctor, but I’ve picked up enough buckshot surgery in my time to know what to do for your leg. There’s poison working through your system. It may be too late for the best man in the world to help you. All I’m offering you is a chance, and it’s the only one you’ve got. I’ll do the best I can if you’ll agree to the rest of the bargain.”
“Well?”
“I want your word that I’ll be free to leave tomorrow, and I’m to go with the distinct understanding that I’ll be back forty-eight hours later with a posse to round you up if you haven’t cleared out. That’ll give you two days in which to gather strength enough to move on.”
Every man in the rustler camp had heard the proposition. They held their eyes on Jennings, waiting for his answer.
“I’ll pass you my word on that,” Steve muttered. “I know you’ll shoot square with me.”
Clay’s preparations were simple. He sterilized the knife in boiling water and washed his hands carefully. The men found several clean undershirts in their saddlebags. He tore them into strips.
“It’s going to take three or four of you to hold him down,” he told them. “Don’t let him get away from you.”
Knowing how sore the wound was, Clay tried his best to be careful as he started to wash it out. At the first touch of hot water, Jennings stiffened convulsively. The groan of pain died on his lips suddenly and he fell back limply.
“He’s out cold!” Carroll growled.
“Good,” Clay responded. “He won’t feel the rest of this.”
He worked quickly now, removing the disintegrated tissue before he started probing for the bullet. The point of the knife blade touched the leaded pellet. He lost it three or four times before he was able to extract it.
The wound was bleeding freely. Jennings was still unconscious.
“Get that iron out of the fire and let me have it in a hurry!” Clay rapped.
The point of the running iron was white hot when Utah Sims handed it to him. Clay knocked off the ashes that clung to it and slapped it down on Steve’s leg. There was an immediate smell of scorched flesh. Carroll turned away, sick to his stomach.
With the wound cauterized, nothing remained to be done but bind it up.
“We’ll carry him away from the fire now,” said Clay. “For the rest of the night I want cold compresses put on his head. It’s the best we can do to check his fever.”
The spring water was ice-cold. Clay washed Steve’s face. The latter opened his eyes but slipped back into unconsciousness almost at once.
“We’ll have to take turns at this,” Clay told the men. “Just dip the cloth into the water, wring it out, and fold it over his forehead. Come on, Utah; you can be the first.”
Clay sat down on a log and lighted, a cigarette.
“What do you think, Roberts?” Slick asked, his face still a bilious yellow.
“We won’t be able to tell for a few hours. If his heart is strong enough, he ought to make it.”
Jennings had several lucid intervals during the night. Clay was with him at daylight. His patient was perspiring freely, which he took for a good sign, and the wound was draining.
Steve watched him with puckered eyes. “Beats hell—you bein’ here and takin’ care of me.”
“Yeh,” Clay agreed. “I wouldn’t expect any stockman to understand it. I know what it’ll do to my professional reputation if it gets noised around; I’ll be accused of being in cahoots with you on the quiet. You’re still running a high fever, but you seem to be holding your own. I’ll stick around until evening.”
By noon, Steve had improved enough to take a little nourishment. When he asked for a cigarette, Clay lighted one for him. The outlaw smiled his thanks.
“We’ve come a long way since we first met,” he said. “I know this was for old times’ sake, Clay. I won’t forget it.”
“I wish you would, Steve; you know what I told you this morning. You get a little sleep when you finish that smoke.”
Jennings slept most of the afternoon. It was after five when Clay told him he was pulling out.
“It’ll take me three hours to get down to the ranch. You’ll be all right if you go easy; don’t let them move you tomorrow.”
Carroll rode down to the mouth of the canyon with him. “Reckon you can find yore way back,” he said.
“Yeh! You’ve got forty-eight hours.”
“Okay,” Slick muttered. “That ought to be time enough.”
When he rode into the yard at the Santa Bonita, Big John came out to meet him. He was not his usual phlegmatic self.
“Where have you been, Clay?” the big man asked at once.
“Across the ledge and beyond. I’ve located Jennings’s bunch. They’re holed up in a box canyon; Steve is in tough shape. There’s no hurry about going after them; we can organize a strong posse tomorrow and go up the following day.”
“That’s good news!” Ringe declared. “We’ll play our cards close to our vest this time and see if we can’t round �
�em up. You haven’t had supper?”
“No—”
“Neither have I; I just got back from town. The basin is in an uproar again. Shad Caney’s son Jeb was killed sometime during the afternoon.”
“What!” Clay’s head went up and his mouth turned hard. “Don’t tell me they’re going to try to pin this job on me too! I didn’t have anything against the kid!”
“If you did, you wouldn’t lay out to kill him,” Big John jerked out fiercely. “No one’s being accused yet. The boy was tending the old man’s sheep when it happened. You know where that little knoll rises on the north side of the road, about two miles east of the schoolhouse?” Clay nodded. “Someone hid out on the knoll and got the lad from there. Some folks say he was killed by mistake; that it was his old man who was to have been rubbed out. Jeb was wearing one of Shad’s hats; he and the boy were about the same size.”
Clay’s thoughts winged to Eudora. “I’ll have to grab a bite to eat in a hurry, John; I’ve got to go down to the basin this evening!”
Ringe understood why Clay found his going so imperative. “That young woman’s got a lot of grit and common sense, Clay; if I’ve got things sized up correctly, you’ll find her more concerned about you than herself.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Clay acknowledged gravely. “It doesn’t ease my nerves any. The last time I saw Harvey, we talked about Caney and Nichols. He was of the opinion that Caney wouldn’t waste any time about getting even for that business on Jerusalem Creek. I reminded Harvey that Nichols wouldn’t let the grass grow under his feet, either, knowing Shad was certain to try to square his account. This seems to bear it out.”
“Then you figure it was Webb, and he killed the boy by mistake—”
“I do not! Jeb wasn’t killed by mistake. Just as sure as we’re standing here, Webb Nichols sent Verne out to git that kid!”
“Huh!” Big John grunted grimly. “I wonder if that’s the way it was!”
Chapter Fifteen
A MURDER CONFESSION
FOUR DAYS LATER, Roberts, Big John, and Coconino Williams followed a wagon into town, with a Diamond R puncher handling the team. Steve Jennings lay weak and helpless in the wagon.
Doc Deering examined him before he was lodged in jail and pronounced him suffering from almost complete physical collapse.
When Clay had led the posse to the box canyon, he had found it deserted, as he expected. Picking up the gang’s trail had not been too difficult. Its general direction left no doubt that the rustlers were retreating into Utah.
Just before night fell, the posse had found Steve. He was alone; realizing he was too weak to continue, he had ordered Carroll and the others to save their own hides and leave him behind. He had Clay to thank that he was in Mescal, alive, for Ed Stack had wanted him strung up on the nearest tree.
With a prisoner of Steve Jennings’s caliber in his custody, Frank Dufors suddenly became an important figure again. Temporarily, the clamor over the killing of Jeb was overshadowed. But Dufors had no intention of permitting it to die down. Mart Singer, the town constable, was impressed to guard the prisoner, so that Dufors might be free to give his time and attention to the murder. He visited the Caney ranch several times and spent hours at the scene of the killing, failing, however, to uncover anything remotely resembling a clue. His failure to find any evidence didn’t discourage him, for he was not intent on solving the crime; he had his man picked out, and he didn’t propose to let him slip through his fingers this time.
Though he publicly scoffed at the whisper that Clay Roberts, stung by Shad’s blundering attempt to fasten the Jerusalem Creek shooting on him, had killed Jeb in revenge, he not only managed to spread it but found ways to enlarge on it.
Clay expected Caney to take it up. To his surprise Shad remained grimly silent. Harvey Hume had an explanation.
“He’s keeping quiet because he knows who got Jeb; lie doesn’t like you any better than he did, but he isn’t interested in seeing you accused; he wants the killing charged up where it belongs, Clay. I went up to the funeral after you left here yesterday. I talked with Shad before I came home. I can tell you he’s a changed man; the fire’s all gone out of him and he just sits iround, brooding.”
“Was Eudora at the services?” Clay asked.
“Yes, she was there. Has she heard anything about this talk against you?”
“She hasn’t mentioned it.” Clay’s eyes were unconsciously bleak. “She will hear it, of course. She’s deeper than you might think. It’s barely two weeks to the end of school; she could come over with you and your mother for that time easily enough. But she won’t consider it; she says she’s got to remain where she is.”
“Did she give you a reason?”
Clay shook his head. “I can only guess at it.”
“She’s awfully fond of little Elly. That may have something to do with it.”
“She’s got a better reason than that, Harvey. I’m on my way over to see her now. I better be moving; school will be out before I get there.”
Eudora waved to him from the schoolhouse door as he was tethering his horse at the fence. The children had left for the day. With a glad cry she surrendered herself to his embrace.
“Hold me tight, Clay!” she whispered. “You’re never out of my thoughts, my darling! Will I spoil you, telling you such things?”
“Terribly! I’m just running over with conceit already.” In quite another tone, he said, “I wish we were leaving for Texas this evening. I’ve got the longest two weeks of my life ahead of me—waiting!”
They sat down and talked across Eudora’s desk.
“The Association paid me up in full this morning,” he said. “Ringe grinned when I told him I’d like to stay on at the ranch for another two weeks.”
“Did you tell him why you were staying, Clay?”
“I didn’t have to! He guessed the reason. He said he’d been figuring for some time that the board would have to look for a new teacher for the fall term. John Ringe is a good man, Eudora. I wouldn’t want a better friend; he’s like a rock—solid and reliable.”
Eudora had always admired Big John, but she had a more important matter on her mind this afternoon. She looked up, a great soberness in her blue eyes.
“Clay—Elsie Tulliver told me this noon that her father says there’s talk going around that you shot Jeb. Have you heard it?”
“I have,” he acknowledged. “I was hoping it wouldn’t get to you. There’s nothing to it.”
“I know there isn’t! My heavens, Clay, you don’t think I doubt it, do you? I know you, darling! You would never resort to anything like that no matter what the provocation!”
“Is that the only reason—your faith in me?”
The question took Eudora by surprise. “Why—isn’t that enough?” she asked, trying to hide her confusion.
“It’s enough for me,” Clay replied. “It might not be enough for a jury.”
Her face paled and she gazed at him with a sudden tightening of her throat. “You can’t mean that seriously, Clay; that you might have to face a jury, I mean?”
“No, I don’t believe it will get to that. But something’s going to be done about murdering that boy. The county is offering a thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. I heard this afternoon that some newspaper in Tucson is offering five hundred more. I ran into the Jennings gang. I was riding up in the hills that afternoon. Unfortunately I can’t prove it. If I could get them to testify to it, they’d be discredited witnesses before they opened their mouths; no one would believe them.”
There were other reasons why he couldn’t avail himself of that alibi. What had transpired in the box canyon with Steve and his men could be twisted into damaging evidence if it came out now.
“I think we’re worrying needlessly,” Eudora said bravely.
It sounded convincing enough, but she was immediately sorry she had said it. She knew Clay was regarding her closely. In a vague feel
ing of panic, she got up and walked over to the window, where she stood with her back to him. He followed and turned her around and tilted her chin.
“Eudora, let’s stop this fencing.” His tone was sterner than he had ever used with her. “When Shad Caney was shot, you got hold of something that Webb Nichols was afraid to face. I think that’s what is happening this time. You’re not saying all you know, Eudora. If you’ve got a reason for not being frank with me, it must be a powerful one.”
“Clay—you’ll have to let me be the judge of that!” she got out desperately. “You know my first loyalty is to you!”
“I couldn’t go on if I thought otherwise,” he said tensely. “I’m not going to try to drag the truth out of you.”
He let her go and reached for his hat. Eudora ran to him and caught his hands.
“Clay, don’t go like this! You’re angry with me, darling! That man Dufors is behind this vicious gossip; he’s so discredited we don’t have to fear him!”
His sternness faded as her arms went around his neck. “Maybe we don’t,” he said, “but there’s fifteen hundred dollars riding on this case now, and I don’t know of anything Frank Dufors wouldn’t do for fifteen hundred dollars.”
Eudora winced. “It’s cruel of you to frighten me by saying such things. I know you don’t mean to.”
Clay didn’t attempt to press her further. He could have told her that if she had any evidence implicating either Webb or his son, or both, in the killing of young Caney, and they knew it, that she was playing a dangerous game in holding the sword of her silence over their heads, whatever her reason.
Had he been aware of the true situation, and how deeply she was committed to it, he would have insisted on her leaving the Nichols ranch at once. It wasn’t only a bit of evidence Eudora had, but Verne’s detailed confession that he had killed Jeb. On the day following the shooting, shortly after supper, Verne had come to her cabin with some vague excuse for his presence, his real purpose being to discover if she suspected him and, if so, for what reason.
Eudora had bluntly accused him of the crime and in a few minutes forced some damaging admissions from Verne. Stricken with fear, when he realized how he had given himself away, he tried to recant, but his floundering only entangled him deeper than ever. In snivelling panic, he had finally blurted out the whole miserable story.