by Alan Lemay
"How is it going?" 1 asked Jack Doyle.
"Take your elbow out of my gizzard," he said. "They've got Tom Beckwith sewed up, is how it's going. You missed it. They had to hold Tommy down when they brought out what reason he had for killing Lije."
1 saw that Judge Rumbaugh was looking kind of sorrowful, as if he already knew he was going to have to bind Tommy over.
"Judge," said Pete Crabtree, "I guess that's about all there is to this case."
I gave Rollie Marshall a poke in the ribs, and he swung his hat above the heads of the crowd. "Wait a minute," he said. "I've got a little dope that 1'd like to throw in the pot."
"Come on up, Rollie," said Rumbaugh, and Marshall went up.
"Judge," said Rollie, "I just want to make sure there's no possible suspicion going to be left on anybody that hasn't got it coming. Now, Salt River Smith, here, has already explained where he was at. 1 just want to put in to back up his alibi."
Salt River looked kind of surprised. "It don't look like 1 need any...," he began.
"Shut up, Smith," said Judge Rumbaugh.
"Well, Judge," said Rollie, "the day that Lije Evers was going to be killed that night, 1 was up beyond the head of the Little Vermilion looking for some lost stock. And along about nightfall 1 come up to the Blackcap Stope, and Salt River Smith was there cleaning some fish. And he said Lije Evers had rid on down to town, and would I light and squat for a bite. And after supper I rode on down to McTarnahan, getting in right late."
"That backs up Salt River," said Judge Rumbaugh, "if there'd ever been any question concerning him in the first place. Salt River, how come you didn't mention that Rollie Marshall was up there?"
Salt River Smith hesitated for just a second. He had a lean, bony, kind of dried-up face, very hard to read. "This ain't my hearing," he said. "1 haven't seen any call to drag nobody else in.,,
"is this all?" asked Judge Rumbaugh.
"Wait a minute," said Barney Donovan. "Leave me dab in my rope." He come shoving up, and they swore him in.
"And what do you know about this?" said Rumbaugh.
"I'm like Rollie Marshall," said Barney. "1 come up here to say that 1 was with Marshall, and back up what he says."
"Rollie," said Judge Rumbaugh, "you never said Barney Donovan was with you."
"I'm like Salt River," said Marshall. "I didn't see no sense in dragging no extra people in."
"Well, if this is all the testimony...," Judge Rumbaugh began.
"I'd just like to say one word, Judge," Happy Dixon sung out, and he come pushing forward. There was a general stir and buzz in the pack of people.
"1 wasn't exactly with these other two," Happy Dixon told Judge Rumbaugh. "Me, 1 was prospecting up the other side, and come evening 1 dropped down to the Blackcap in hopes of something to eat. 1 et with Salt River, too, and then rode on down to McTarnahan with Marshall and Donovan. And I back up everything they said."
Judge Rumbaugh began to look kind of funny. "What was this," he said, "Old Home Week at the Blackcap?"
"We just happened to be up that way, Judge," Barney put in.
"And you all just decided to spend practically the whole night riding spent horses," Judge Rumbaugh said, looking at him square.
Just then Bill Eads butted in. "Judge," he said, "1 suppose it's none of my business, but something is haywire around here. 1 just happen to know that two of these fellers that just testified have lied.. .because 1 was with them two the night they're speaking of, and they wasn't no such a place!"
A big rumble of surprise went up from the crowd, and Judge Rumbaugh began to get mad. "Now you people look here," he said. "Just because 1 don't hoist you with all the technical procedure 1 have in stock doesn't mean that this court isn't handling serious business. You four fellers come up here and stand in front of me," he said.
The four of them stood up there, Bill Eads looking kind of stubborn and dogged, and the other three sheepish and resentful.
"If two of you have perjured yourselves in this court," said Rumbaugh, "you may just as well own up to it. Because, by God! ...1 mean to hook you for it in the end."
The four of them just stood there.
"Judge Rumbaugh," I said, "1 guess right here 1 ought to put in a say myself, bearing on this same point."
"Come on with it, then," he said.
1 went up, and 1 took out of my back pocket that six-inch square of board that 1 had sawed off of Salt River's pine table up at the Blackcap Stope. And 1 told them what it was, and when 1 got it.
"I'll read you what's written on this board," 1 said. Of course, you understand 1 hadn't found anything written on that board. "It says here on this board," 1 said, "`I owe Salt River Smith for one meal, together with oats for horse, et here in this cabin Thursday night, October Twenty-Seventh."' That was the night Lije Evers was killed. "And it's signed," I said, "by one man...the one of these three that really did stop by at the Blackcap Stope that night."
"And whose name is signed?" said Judge Rumbaugh.
I turned to him slow, and I laid the piece of pine board on his desk, face up, so that he could read what was wrote. All that was on it was just six words 1 had marked on it:
Make Salt River name the man.
1 waited, and 1 knew that a turning point had come in Tommy Beckwith's life, and in Lyn Clayton's, too, and Salt River's - and maybe, for all I knew, in mine. And quite a little minute passed.
Then Judge Rumbaugh turned the pine board over, face down, quiet and slow, so that those that was craning their necks forward couldn't see what was really wrote. And 1 knew then that he was going to play out the hand.
"This writing on the board," he said, "ain't hardly needed, 1 guess. Two of these three men, in testifying that they were at Salt River's cabin, have sworn to a lie. The other was really there. But. ..all we need to do to find out which is which is to ask Salt River Smith. Salt River, which of these men was at your cabin that night?"
I looked at Salt River Smith. His dried-up old face was as hard to read as ever, and he didn't answer right away.
"Salt River," said Judge Rumbaugh, quiet and slow, "you have done your part toward swearing away a man's life. Part of your testimony is that you were at your cabin at the time we know Lije Evers was killed. Now we discover that one other man was at your cabin that night. I'm asking you, and you'll have to answer... which of these men was there?"
It was so quiet in there that you could hear people breathe, and still for a minute Salt River Smith didn't speak. You see, he didn't know! For he hadn't been there himself. He'd been riding down the trail that night, Lije Evers across his saddle horn. At first, when Rollie Marshall come forward, Smith had thought it was just a friendly lie, to help out. But now....
He could name any one of the three, in hopes that he would guess it right. Or, if he should happen to see through it that it was all a put-up job, he could just say - "They've all lied. There was no one there." And that was his only out, to save his alibi.
Almost he made it through. Almost. But just at the very last second it was too much for him, and he broke. Salt River Smith's voice just naturally exploded in that quiet courtroom. "1 don't believe a damn' one of them was there!" he said.
There was silence for a little minute more. "You don't believe," Judge Rumbaugh repeated after him finally, his voice quiet, but fit to take the hide off a mule. "You have sworn you were there, and that Lije Evers was not, and now you don't believe that anyone else stopped by the cabin that night. But, Smith," he finished, "you... don't... know!"
The rumble of voices that rose in the courtroom then came pretty near up to a roar, and here and there in the crowd was fellers that was looking mighty black.
Judge Rumbaugh just sat looking at Salt River Smith, as bitter hard as if Smith was something he had never seen in this world before, so that for two or three minutes there the old judge didn't seem to notice all that noise that had rose up around him.
Finally, though, he begun pounding with his little wooden maul
.
"Judge Rumbaugh," I said when he got it quiet, "me and these four boys want to apologize for messing around somewhat with the facts. But 1 guess you can see where some free-hand lying has helped bring the truth out, after all. And now I'd like to lay all joking aside, and make a few serious statements about Lije Evers's hat."
"Go ahead, Coffee," said Judge Rumbaugh, "and speak your piece."
Pete Crabtree was awful put out about that case. Pete put in to have the case continued over for a week, to rake up some more evidence, or at least to leave Judge Rumbaugh cool off; and the old judge continued it like he asked.
Right there the thing begun to unravel some, like these things sometimes do when you pass the turn. First thing, it come out that the Blackcap partnership didn't have any money in the McTarnahan bank, Salt River Smith having transferred it all over to somewheres else. No doubt Salt River could have explained that some way - but Salt River had high-tailed it right shortly after court adjourned.
A hunter that had a cabin over the other side of little Dutchman Pass come in to say that Salt River had been boarding a good horse there since a week before the murder, and that he had just now come and swapped a ridden-out pony for the good one and pushed right on. And another fellow brought in about the same story from fifty miles farther down. And they found out now where Salt River had transferred all that Blackcap money to, which was at Riverton, and that he had just now drawn all of it out, and a garage at Riverton put in that Salt River had bought a fair-sized car a little while before, and left it there until just now - he had come and got it and headed south. After that, it wasn't any trouble to find out where Salt River had got over the border into old Mexico, considerable widespread interest having been roused up in Salt River Smith by then.
Pete Crabtree was smoking mad. He jumped me about it one day.
"Why, you old fool," he said, "you'll never convict Salt River! Even if we lay hands on him again, which 1 doubt."
"I wasn't trying to convict him. What do 1 want with a conviction? I got Beckwith loose, didn't 1?"
"Oh, of course," he said, real bitter, "if you figure that was anything worth doing...."
Fact is, 1 hadn't much, not to set any real store by it. But about a week later something came up that made me see the whole business in a new light.
It was after nine o'clock, and 1 was turning in mighty tired, owing to running a lion. But now the dogs started a fresh whoop hurrah, and their sarcastic tone told me somebody was coming up the trail.
Sure enough, it was Lyn Clayton again, only, this time Tommy Beckwith was with her. They was riding out of the Frying Pan country, as quiet as they could, and they aimed to get married when they got across the pass. 1 put them up for the night. And it was all kind of awkward and funny, none of us wanting to talk about that killing case much.
But the next morning, when they were leaving, Lyn Clayton stuck out her hand. "Mister Coffee," she said, "if it hadn't been for you and your dogs, I don't know what would have become of us."
1 started to pass it off. "Tommy sure is lucky," 1 said, "that Salt River lost Lije Evers's hat. If it hadn't been for that one thing, no question about Salt Rivers's part in it would ever have come up."
Lyn Clayton looked at me very queer. "It was funny about that hat," she said.
Something in the way she said that gave me a kind of a turn. "Just what," 1 asked her, "do you know about Lije Evers's hat?"
She held back a minute. Then: "Mister Coffee," she said, "1 knew all the time that, if 1 could get you and your dogs onto the case, the truth would show up in the end. All 1 was afraid of was that you would jump to the wrong idea, like the rest, and never set your mind to it. So that was how it was about the hat."
"So what was how it was about the hat?"
"I kicked that hat under a rock in the Little Vermilion," she said, "when 1 rode up there with Pete Crabtree and his bunch."
There was a girl, 1 can tell you! At first, of course, 1 felt kind of like a fool. But as I watched them ride off up the trail, 1 wasn't so much thinking about being took in as 1 was noticing the sure, easy way that Lyn Clayton rode, and the way she turned to look up at Tom Beckwith with a new look in her face, and all the old chin-down, what-do-l-care look gone out of it altogether.
Sheriff Lon Stevens swung down from his saddle before the neat, vine-covered back porch of the Tinplate ranch house. With a sigh he looked down over Peaceful Valley that stretched below him like a flower-strewn green lawn in the faint haze of afternoon. Then he cat-footed toward the door. A very unsheriff-like grin creased his boyish face.
He inched the door open, and the grin was wiped from his lips as he gazed in consternation at the girl who looked up from the floor.
"'Lo, Lenny," she greeted with a smile. "You would come just when I'm in such a terrible mess."
"Joan," he protested, "I jest can't stand seein' you scrubbin' floors that way."
"Scrubbing doesn't hurt people," she retorted. "I don't mind it, and how else can a body keep a house clean when two lazy cowpunchers come right in with muddy boots? I'm getting everything spick and span for the new boss. He's coming today."
"The ...the new boss?" Lon's heart sank. He had held a vague hope of getting together the money to make a first payment on the Tinplate ever since old Hank Tucker decided to sell. Hank had gone to a sanitarium in Denver. He didn't need much cash paid down, and he would trust Lon.
"Yes," Joan went on happily. "1 got the letter yesterday. Old Hank sold out to a man who is going to come here and start a dude ranch. His name is John Stoneham. Isn't that thrilling, Lon?"
She sat at the edge of a river of soap suds and looked up at him. He noticed the dimple in one cheek and the mischievous twinkle in her large eyes.
"Just think, Lon. Perhaps John Stoneham is some handsome, young millionaire who will take me for long rides in the moonlight, and perhaps he will...."
"Yeah?"
The dimple in her cheek deepened at Lon's frown. Then the young sheriff grinned. It was not the first time Joan had tried to tease him.
"Yeah, that's right, Joan. An' mebbe some o' these here beautiful millionairesses that come to the dude ranch will want a big, strong sheriff to protect 'em when they ride over the range. Of course, to be protected properly they'll have to hold the sheriff's hand an'...."
"I'd just like to see them try it!" the girl flared.
They both laughed, and Joan sprang gracefully to her feet.
"But, Joan!" Lon was serious again. "I can't have you here cookin' for folks that you don't know."
"I like to cook," she reminded him. "My school won't start for almost two months, Lonny. 1 have to do something till then."
He looked at her with a deep hunger in his steel-gray eyes. "Honey, if you'd only say the word...."
"Lon, you know what I think about that. 1 will never marry you while... that is, I mean 1 will never marry a sheriff. Ever since I can remember, I have been haunted with fear for my father. Never can 1 forget the awful worry mother went through. 1...1 believe she might be alive now if it hadn't been for that. And I'll never forget the night they carried Dad home."
"Yeah, honey, I know," he soothed. "But it won't be for long. 1 got a couple o' thousand saved up, an' someday I'll corral a big reward, an' then we can get our own little spread."
"Oh, Lonny, that's what Dad was always saying, too. And it never happened."
The thud of hoofs sounded outside the house, and someone drew up with creaking saddle leather. Joan opened the door. Lon peered over her head.
Three men had ridden up on blowing horses. Lon instinctively loosened his gun as he looked at them. Tough and hard these men were. He had seen their kind before. Born with a noose around their necks, he thought. He didn't know them.
The tall one, who appeared to be the leader, swung down and confronted Joan. Lon looked closely at the craggy face, tanned to the color of old leather, the close-set eyes, and high cheekbones. The man spoke between thin, bloodless lips.
; "My name is John Stoneham." He paused and eyed them as though to let the fact sink in. "A cowboy directed us here. We are lookin' for the Tinplate. 1 bought it from a man named Tucker."
"Ye-es," Joan answered doubtfully. "He...he wrote me about it."
Stoneham turned to the others with an imperious gesture. "Get down an' put up the crowbaits. We're home."
Lon hid a grin. So this was the gentleman who was starting a dude ranch and would take Joan for long rides in the moonlight. He glanced at the girl. There was a frown on her face. She stood aside as Stoneham shoved his way into the room.
"I...1 am Joan Carter," she told him. "1 have been working here for Mister Tucker since... since my father died, but now...."
"Shore," he interrupted with a leer that disclosed his tobacco-stained teeth, "that's all right. Yuh can stay on. We need a cook."
A cook! Lon gritted his teeth and stifled a hot retort as Joan introduced him.
"Mister Stevens is sheriff of this county," she said, "and is an old friend."
Stoneham looked at the badge coldly, and then his eyes raised to Lon's face. He did not offer to shake hands.
"The two boys are out fixing fence," Joan went on. "Mister Tucker said you would keep them...."
"Changed my mind," Stoneham interrupted tersely. "I brought my own men with me."
He turned and strode into the adjoining room, leaving muddy tracks on the wet floor.
"Joan, you can't stay here," Lon breathed. "I'm taking you away with me right now."
"You are not! I can take care of myself, thank you."
Lon suddenly realized he had been too assertive. He knew Joan was very near to tears, and he knew how bitterly she had been disappointed.
"But, Joan, you can't stay here. 1 think...."
She drew herself up to her full height of five feet three. "it doesn't matter in the least what you think, Lon Stevens. This is my job, and I'm staying. At least," she added, "until 1 have some cause to leave."