by Noel Loomis
“How did you know that one of those killers was riding a mule?”
“Riding a mule?” Tanner tried to put him off. “That’s rich! A killer on a mule!”
Two or three of the cowboys snickered, but Hughes stuck to his point. “How did you know?” he insisted.
“I never said he rode no mule!”
“It came into your head, just the same! And that sure is the last thing that would come into any man’s head, on this or any other range. I’m asking you flat—how did you know there was a mule in this?”
“A child could tell the sign of a—”
“You’ve already said you didn’t know where they left their saddle stock. You tried to make us think you never cut their track after they went back onto the rock of the rim. What told you about the mule?”
Old Tanner let down his knife with a clatter, and came onto his feet to face Hughes with blazing eyes, like a lion treed. “How’d you know yourself?” he fired back.
Chapter Eleven
There was silence while Hughes and Tanner regarded each other, Hughes insistent, the old lion hunter angrily defiant. Perhaps there was no one there who was not convinced in that moment that Tanner had discovered something definite and revealing which he had not told. The tension in the old man’s weathered features suggested more: that he had held back that one last item of his knowledge because he was afraid! It seemed that they were very near to an all-important disclosure—if Hughes, who had tripped him, could force the old hunter out.
Hughes waited; and to the surprise of every one, it was the old man who was first to break. His voice was shrill as he flared up. “You ask me how I know about a mule! I put the question back to you…”
“Because, about the time I turned in, on the night Donnan died, I heard a mule singing at the moon.”
“Well, if you did,” said Tanner viciously, “I suppose there was one there, but that’s the first I’ve heard of it!”
“You as good as admitted you knew there was one there,” Hughes insisted.
“I never said no such thing,” declared Tanner. “I said I don’t aim to chase my pack oil onto the trail of no cow, horse, nor mule, and that’s all I said.” He sat down; but it was like the sitting down of a balking horse.
Major kicked Hughes under the table, and Clay, puzzled, nevertheless obeyed the signal, and pretended to back down. “All right.”
“You got anything else, Grasshopper?” Major asked.
“What the hell more do you want?” Tanner demanded irascibly. “I went up there after your whole gang trampled backwards and forwards over the whole place; and I’ve told you everything that happened up there the night Donnan was killed. What do you want now? You expect me to go on and find out who done it, and arrest him too, and try him and convict him and pass sentence? I’ve done my work, I tell you, and the dogs has done theirs!”
“If those two fellers walked stocking footed along the upper rim, it looks like you could put your dogs on it and find out where they left the rim,” suggested Major.
“You got a hell of a funny idee what dogs is for,” Tanner sneered. “I can tell ’em to take lion, or I can tell ’em to take bear; and if they cut a trail of their own, I can tell by their yelling what’s at the end of it—bear, lion, wolf, or something worthless, which it usually is. But they’ve never tracked men in their life; and even if I could put ’em to it, you fellers have put five or six fresher trails of man in there than the ones you want trailed now. If anybody thinks he knows more about hounds than I do, let him try it! Me, I’ve been made a fool of before.”
“Yeah, that’s so,” Macumber agreed heartily.
“Dry up, Bob. I tell you what,” said old Major. “I’d appreciate it, Grasshopper, if you’d take three, four of the boys up there and show ’em exactly what you found, step by step, so’s they’ll be able to stand witness to it. You do that much more, and I’ll own up you’ve done your share. But I sure would like to have you do that.”
“All right, all right,” Tanner conceded. “I’ll show ’em; but I got to get some sleep first. I was a long ways from the trail when night come on, and got a late start back. I ain’t had no sleep since night before.”
“How soon can you start?”
“I got to have anyway four hours’ sleep,” said Tanner dogmatically. “I don’t aim to budge from here before half past eight o’clock this morning.”
“Do you think four hours’ sleep will be enough?”
“Do you think I’m a sissy?”
After Tanner had turned in, Oliver Major signaled Hughes and Macumber to follow him to his office.
“I’m damned if that isn’t the most extraordinary lie I ever heard in my life,” said Oliver Major.
“It sure is,” agreed Macumber; “but is it all lie?”
“No, it ain’t,” said Major. “But the old boy’s imagination runs off with him. He sees some few things and gets ’em right; then on top of that he builds up a great long story of his own that he believes is of a piece with the rest. There was a pile of pipe smoke in that story Bob.”
“Some of it is stuff that checks up,” Macumber pointed out. “He explained pretty good how come that empty shell was in Clay’s fire.”
“Yes, and he checked Hughes’ story on what he done when he rode in there that night. But, Bob, we don’t know how much the boys told that old renegade before he went up there with his dogs.”
“I don’t expect anybody told him that I laid Donnan’s rifle across his saddle,” Macumber pointed out, “and I don’t guess anybody told him there was a cleaning-rag hanging in a bush there. We never seen that ourselves. And if we want to check up his story about the cigarette butts, we only got to go look. It’s kind of uncanny, it sure is. But you got to admit his story runs almighty smooth, just like anything could have happened; and whenever there is a fact, that fact fits right in.”
“Oh, he’s smart, all right,” said Major. “Uncanny smart in some ways. But here’s what worries me.” Major leaned forward. “That old rooster hasn’t told it all. Hughes was right about that mule! I hope you understood me all right when I kicked you under the table, Hughes. He’d shut up like a trap, anyway; and if we’d pinned him down too tight, we’d have got him so worried we wouldn’t have no more chances to trip him up again.”
“I guess you’re right,” Hughes admitted dubiously.
“That’s the next thing we’ve got to do—we got to trip up Grasshopper Tanner into telling what he knows. Maybe he can’t tell who done it, and maybe he can’t put his finger on ’em right now, today, if he wants to; but I’ll bet you my bottom dollar Grasshopper thinks he can!”
“I’ll tell you something more,” said Hughes, “Grasshopper Tanner’s scared.”
“If he is, I didn’t see it,” said Macumber.
“By God, I saw it,” Major said. “We don’t know all about Tanner in this affair, not by any means. For one thing, assuming somebody did ride a mule into Crazy Mule Gulch; who in the Sweetwater mountains would be more liable to be riding a mule than anybody else?”
Macumber and Major exchanged a long stare, “Tanner,” said Macumber softly, at last.
“A mule was in Tanner’s mind this morning,” said Major; “and a mule was heard by Hughes that night.”
There was a silence. “It gives a man the creeps,” said Macumber. “A man don’t know who to count on around here no more.”
“And here’s another thing,” said Major. “When we left for Adobe Wells yesterday morning, I left instructions with Walk Ross as to what Grasshopper Tanner was to do if he got here. Tanner got here while I was gone and Walk Ross gave him his orders. One of ’em was that he was to start back as soon as night come on. He promised to do that. According to his own story, he did do it. But if he did, where was he that he had to ride from dark last night to four o’clock this morning to get here? Have you seen his horse?”
“Yes,” said Macumber.
“A tuckered out horse if ever I saw one in my life,”
said Major.
“Of course,” said Macumber, uncertainly, “that horse has been working ever since yesterday morning.”
“Tanner does most of his work on foot,” said Major scornfully. “That horse wasn’t worn out by standing around Crazy Mule all day, Macumber. It was rid, and that good and plenty.” Once more there was a silence.
“What do you think?” said Macumber at last.
“I think that what that old ridge-runner told us he saw, he saw, all right. But also he saw something else—something that he almighty wishes he hadn’t never seen.”
Macumber and Major held each other’s eyes. “I guess you’re right,” Macumber agreed at last.
“I’m sending you and Hughes and Walk Ross and Art French up to Crazy Mule canyon with Grasshopper Tanner today,” said Major, “as soon as he rolls out of his blankets. You look at what he shows you, fair enough, but mostly, you’ll look for what he isn’t showing you: something that’s in his mind and he doesn’t want to come out. Do you understand?”
“Mr. Major,” said Macumber, “I got the feeling we’re awfully close to something here.”
“See that it doesn’t give you the slip,” said Major.
Hughes walked out into the cool quiet of the sunrise. Behind the dry hills the sky was a vast welter of incredible oranges and reds. The air was cool and very clear, but perfectly still, as if in abeyance to the blaze of heat that the direct sunlight would presently bring. Someone was milking in one of the barns, and the rich warm fragrance of fresh milk came down the breeze, mingling with the faint clean smell of the dew upon sun-curing alfalfa. Hughes realized suddenly that this was the prettiest spread he had ever seen; it had everything that a man could want. If only hate and anger and war could leave this valley alone, it would be the sort of place that a man could work in always, and be content. It had water and grass, and vast open range; it had immense herds and plenty of saddle stock. The home ranch even had shade. And it was the place where Sally Major lived, and had lived all her life.
It occurred to him suddenly that it would be a dark day for him when he took the trail again and left this place behind. Of course, he supposed that he would presently—if nothing worse occurred first—be saddling up to ride on. He had always done so before; it was not easy for him to picture himself as a steady fixture in any one place now. Yet, he knew that he had never been in a place which suited him so well, and which he would leave so reluctantly.
Looking about him in the cool clear light of the fresh morning he found it very hard to believe that this spread was in a real and definite danger; that an imminent disaster could destroy it past all recognition, leaving only crumbling walls, the gaunt skeletons of dead trees, and dust. That was unthinkable; yet, if Oliver Major knew his valley, that was what they were fighting now. The difficulty from a rider’s point of view, thought Hughes, was that the opening stages of the fight were so vague and complicated that a man hardly knew what he was up against at all. The old free-range, no-law, gun-fighting days, when a man had simply saddled and gone out to shoot it out, certainly had had their points of advantage. Altogether too much of a sense of creeping hidden things, shadowy suspicion, and threatening mystery was upon the outfit—much too much to suit Hughes.
He went and sat on the top bar of a corral and rolled a cigarette; and when Sally Major came toward him from the house he had the feeling that the course of his thoughts had turned to substance before his eyes. He hardly ever saw her without first having had her in his mind; it showed him how much of the time she found her way into his thoughts.
He dropped to the ground as she came up with her quick, nervous stride. He saw that she looked worried, and her eyes were shadowed as if she had not slept very much.
“It sure is a lovely morning,” he suggested.
“You’re going up to the Crazy Mule with Grasshopper Tanner?” she asked at once.
“I’m one of ’em,” he admitted.
“Who are the others?”
“Bob Macumber, and Art French, and Walk Ross.”
He thought for a moment that there was a flash of panic in her eyes. “For heaven’s sake be careful what you do. You look as if you’re going on a picnic or something.”
“Well, I guess it’s nothing more nor less than a look-see,” he said.
“How do you know it is? How do you know who you’re with or what you’re trying to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Right over there is the window of the room we were in when somebody shot at you. That was hardly forty-eight hours ago, yet you seem to have forgotten all about it. The man who tried to kill you then has just as much reason to try to kill you now. Dad must be crazy to send you up there at all.”
“Why, there’s no reason I should stay one place more than another, child.”
“Well, watch what you’re doing in the Crazy Mule. I never in my life had as black a hunch about anything as I have about that canyon right now. That’s all I wanted to say.” Abruptly she turned on her heel and started back toward the house; she caught herself in her first stride, however, and turned back to regard him curiously. “You still don’t mean to take my advice about going over the hill?”
“I just don’t seem to be able to see my way clear,” he told her.
She regarded him with a quirky smile; for a moment it seemed to him that something in her eyes made her seem very intimate and near. Then abruptly her face changed, and turning away sharply she went toward the house. He was not certain that he had seen in her eyes a glint of sudden tears. A sudden angry eagerness for battle filled him, so that he hoped that the seemingly inevitable outbreak of war would come soon.
One of Sally Major’s sentences was ringing through his head as he lit his cigarette: ‘You don’t know who you are with.’ Grasshopper Tanner…Walk Ross…Art French… Hardly knowing why, he found himself wondering which of those three, if any of them, could beat him to the gun, if ever he faced them with powder smoke between, and in his ears the roar of the forty-fives…
It still lacked an hour of eight o’clock—the hour at which Grasshopper Tanner had agreed to rouse himself and take the trail to Crazy Mule Canyon again—when Jim Crawford’s car, red hot and steaming badly from the pace of its approach, came careening up the road from Adobe Wells, and slithered to a stop before the ranch house of the Lazy M. With him were Bart Holt and Dick Major—the three of the Lazy M posse who had been left to hold the fort at Adobe Wells.
Clay Hughes had been sitting with Bob Macumber on the top rail of a corral; as the car pulled up Bob Macumber dropped to the ground and headed for the house on the run, Hughes at his heels.
“What’s bust?” demanded Macumber as they joined the arrivals.
“Everything,” said Bart Holt curtly. The big door slammed back upon its hinges heavily as Holt thrust has way into the house.
Old Oliver Major met them in the hall. The questioning look of his stern old face might have been either anger or alarm, but he faced them silently, waiting for the others to speak.
“Mr. Major,” Jim Crawford began; then he hesitated. It was as if he had been dreading this moment all the way from Adobe Wells, and now that he faced it, could hardly bring himself to convey the news he brought. “Mr. Major, they’ve took the jump!”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Major, I ain’t sheriff any more.”
There was a short silence while Oliver Major glared his incomprehension. “If you mean you resigned—” his voice rose angrily at last.
“No. I’d never quit under you, Mr. Major; I’m removed from office, that’s all.”
Once more the short silence of incomprehension, of disbelief. The loss of the sheriff’s office meant abrupt disaster. Sooner or later, they had known, this blow was bound to come. But Oliver Major had thrown his every resource into postponing it long enough so that he might strengthen his hand. That it should have come so swiftly was incredible. He did not see how it could have been accomplished.
“It can
’t be so,” Major said flatly. “Why, those county supervisors—when I left them yesterday, they were whipped to a frazzle! With Earl Shaw in the jug they’re scared their whole machine will go to pieces, and leave ’em stranded. Until Shaw is free they’re out of guts—and there hasn’t even been time for Shaw’s people to get a writ of habeas corpus!”
“It ain’t the supervisors,” said Crawford.
“Then you’re still sheriff,” declared old Major. “The supervisors are the only ones with authority to put you out.”
“They done it by telegram from the Capitol,” Crawford told him. “The order is signed by the governor himself!”
“The governor? Old Theron Replogle?”
“Governor Replogle,” repeated Crawford.
The wind seemed to be knocked out of Oliver Major.
“Yes, he could do it,” he said at last, “but I thought—I thought—” His voice trailed off. He turned away, and his hands seemed to fumble at the latch of the door as he led them into his office. An old wolf might have moved so, slowly drawing off into a recess in the rock, to recover from a shot that had stunned him.
At his ancient desk he turned and faced them. “I can’t believe it,” he said again. “How did this thing come through?”
“A whole batch of telegrams come in, relayed by long distance phone from Walkerton. Billy Walters took them down like he always does. The first one was to me, ordering me to turn over the sheriff’s office immediately to Alex Shaw.”
“To Alex Shaw,” old Major repeated.
“Yes; you said all along that if I was out, it would be him that they would put in. It come in the form of an emergency order. I got it with me.” He handed Major a telegraph blank heavily scribbled in pencil.
Oliver Major studied it for what seemed the space of many minutes. “Yes,” he said slowly, at last, as if still hardly able to believe, “I guess it’s so.”
“There was another one to Alex Shaw,” said Crawford, “telling him to assume office at once; another to Earl Shaw.”
“You saw that last one?” said Major sharply.