“And we all think he did just right in using his common sense, Mr. Norris,” the girl flashed.
“Oh, certainly.”
And with that he was gone after her father to help him water the sheep.
“I don’t see why those sheep have to be watered right now,” she frowned to Alan. “Dad did water them this morning. I helped him.”
Together they went into the store, where José was telling his story for the sixth time to a listening circle of plainsmen.
“And right then he come at you and ree-quested yore whole outfit to poke a hole in the scenery with yore front feet?” old Dave Ellis asked just as Melissy entered.
“Si, Señor.”
“One of MacQueen’s Roaring Fork gang did it, I’ll bet,” Alan contributed sourly.
“What kind of a lookin’ guy was he?” spoke up a dark young man known as Bob Farnum.
“A big man, señor, and looked a ruffian.”
“They’re always that way until you run ’em down,” grinned Ellis. “Never knew a hold-up wasn’t eight foot high and then some—to the fellow at the wrong end of the gun.”
“If you mean to say, Dave Ellis, that I lay down to a bluff——” Alan was beginning hotly when the old frontiersman interrupted.
“Keep your shirt on, McKinstra. I don’t mean to say it. Nobody but a darn fool makes a gun-play when the cards are stacked that-a-way. Yore bad play was in reaching for the gun at all.”
“Well, Jack Flatray will git him. I’ll bet a stack of blues on that,” contributed a fat ranchman wheezily.
“Unless you mussed up the trail coming back,” said Ellis to the stage-driver.
“We didn’t. I thought of that, and I had José drive clear round the place. Jack will find it all right unless there’s too much travel before he gets here,” said Alan.
Farnum laughed malevolently. “Mebbe he’ll get him and mebbe he won’t. Jack’s human, like the rest of us, if he is the best sheriff in Arizona. Here’s hoping he don’t get him. Any man that waltzes out of the cactus and appropriates twenty thousand dollars belonging to Mr. Morse is welcome to it for all of me. I don’t care if he is one of MacQueen’s bad men. I wish it had been forty thousand.”
Farnum did not need to explain the reasons for his sentiments. Everybody present knew that he was the leader of that bunch of cattlemen who had bunched themselves together to resist the encroachments of sheep upon the range. Among these the feeling against Morse was explosively dangerous. It had found expression in more than one raid upon his sheep. Many of them had been destroyed by one means or another, but Morse, with the obstinacy characteristic of him, had replaced them with others and continually increased his herds. There had been threats against his life, and one of his herders had been wounded. But the mine-owner went his way with quiet fearlessness and paid no attention to the animosity he had stirred up. The general feeling was that the trouble must soon come to a head. Nobody expected the rough and ready vaqueros, reckless and impulsive as they were, to submit to the loss of the range, which meant too the wiping out of their means of livelihood, without a bitter struggle that would be both lawless and bloody.
Wherefore there was silence after Farnum had spoken, broken at length by the amiable voice of the fat ranchman, Baker.
“Well, we’ll see what we’ll see,” he wheezed complacently. “And anyways I got to have some horseshoe plug, Melissy.”
The girl laughed nervously as she reached for what he wanted. “You’re a safe prophet, Mr. Baker,” she said.
“He’d be a safe one if he’d prophesy that Jack Flatray would have Mr. Hold-up in the calaboose inside of three days,” put in a half-grown lad in leathers.
“I ain’t so sure about that. You’ll have to show me, and so will Mr. Deputy Sheriff Flatray,” retorted Farnum.
A shadow darkened the doorway.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen all—and Miss Lee,” a pleasant voice drawled.
The circle of eyes focused on the new-comer and saw a lean, muscular, young fellow of medium height, cool and alert, with the dust of the desert on every sunbaked inch of him.
“I’m damned if it ain’t Jack here already!” gasped Baker.
* * *
CHAPTER VII
WATERING SHEEP
The deputy glanced quietly round, nodded here and there at sight of the familiar face of an acquaintance, and spoke to the driver.
“Let’s hear you say your little piece again, José.”
The Mexican now had it by heart, and he pattered off the thing from beginning to end without a pause. Melissy, behind the counter, leaned her elbows on it and fastened her eyes on the boyish face of the officer. In her heart she was troubled. How much did he know? What could he discover from the evidence she had left? He had the reputation of being the best trailer and the most fearless officer in Arizona. But surely she had covered her tracks safely.
From José the ranger turned to Alan. “We’ll hear your account of it now, seh,” he said gently.
While Alan talked, Jack’s gaze drifted through the window to the flock of sheep that were being driven up from the ditch by Lee and Norris. That little pastoral scene had its significance for him. He had arrived at the locality of the hold-up a few minutes after they had left, and his keen intelligence had taken in some of the points they had observed. A rapid circuit of the spot at the distance of thirty yards had shown him no tracks leading from the place except those which ran up the lateral on either side of it. It was possible that these belonged to the horses of the robbers, but if so the fellows were singularly careless of detection. Moreover, the booty must be accounted for. They had not carried it with them, since no empty box remained to show that they had poured the gold into sacks, and it would have been impossible to take the box as it was on a horse. Nor had they buried it, unless at the bottom of the irrigating ditch, for some signs of their work must have remained.
Balancing probabilities, it had seemed to Flatray that these might be the tracks of ranchmen who had arrived after the hold-up and were following the escaping bandits up the lateral. For unless these were the robber’s, there was no way of escape except either up or down the bottom of the ditch. His search had eliminated the possibility of any other but the road, and this was travelled too frequently to admit of even a chance of escape by it without detection. Jack filed away one or two questions in his brain for future reference. The most important of these was to discover whether there had been any water in the ditch at the time of the hold-up.
He had decided to follow the tracks leading up the ditch and found no difficulty in doing so at a fast walk. Without any hesitation they paralleled the edge of the lateral. Nor had the deputy travelled a quarter of a mile before he made a discovery. The rider on the right hand side of the stream had been chewing tobacco, and he had a habit of splashing his mark on boulders he passed in the form of tobacco juice. Half a dozen times before he reached the Lee ranch the ranger saw this signature of identity writ large on smooth rocks shining in the sun. The last place he saw it was at the point where the two riders deflected from the lateral toward the ranch house, following tracks which led up from the bottom of the ditch.
An instant later Flatray had dodged back into the chaparral, for somebody was driving a flock of sheep down to the ditch. He made out that there were two riders behind them, and that they had no dog. For the present his curiosity was satisfied. He thought he knew why they were watering sheep in this odd fashion. Swiftly he had made a circuit, drawn rein in front of the store, and dropped in just in time to hear his name. Now, as with one ear he listened to Alan’s account of the hold-up, with his subconscious mind he was with the sheep-herders who were driving the flock back into the pasture.
“Looks like our friend the bad man was onto his job all right,” was the deputy’s only comment when Alan had finished.
“I’ll bet he’s making his getaway into the hills mighty immediate,” chuckled Baker. “He can’t find a bank in the mountainside to deposit that g
old any too soon to suit him.”
“Sho! I’ll bet he ain’t worried a mite. He’s got his arrangements all made, and likely they’ll dovetail to suit him. He’s put his brand on that gold to stay,” answered Farnum confidently.
Jack’s mild blue eyes rested on him amiably. “Think so, Bob?”
“I ain’t knockin’ you any, Jack. You’re all right. But that’s how I figure it out, and, by Gad! I’m hopin’ it too,” Farnum made answer recklessly.
Flatray laughed and strolled from the crowded room to the big piazza. A man had just cantered up and flung himself from his saddle. The ranger, looking at him, thought he had never seen another so strikingly handsome an Apollo. Black eyes looked into his from a sun-tanned face perfectly modelled. The pose of the head and figure would have delighted a sculptor.
There was a vigor, an unspoken hostility, in the gaze of both men.
“Mo’nin”, Mr. Deputy Sheriff, one said; and the other, “Same to you, Mr. Norris.”
“You’re on the job quick,” sneered the cattle detective.
“The quicker the sooner, I expect.”
“And by night you’ll have Mr. Hold-up roped and hog-tied?”
“Not so you could notice it. Are you a sheep-herder these days, Mr. Norris?”
The gentle irony of this was not lost on its object, for in the West a herder of sheep is the next remove from a dumb animal.
“No, I’m riding for the Quarter Circle K Bar outfit. This is the first time I ever took the dust of a sheep in my life. I did it to oblige Mr. Lee.”
“Oh! To oblige Mr. Lee?”
“He wanted to water them, and his herder wasn’t here.”
“Must ’a’ been wanting water mighty bad, I reckon,” commented Jack amiably.
“You bet! Lee feels better satisfied now he’s watered them.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Norris changed the subject. “You must have burnt the wind getting here. I didn’t expect to see you for some hours.”
“I happened to be down at Yeager’s ranch, and one of the boys got me on the line from Mesa.”
“Picked up any clues yet?” asked the other carelessly, yet always with that hint of a sneer; and innocently Flatray answered, “They seem to be right seldom.”
“Didn’t know but you’d happened on the fellow’s trail.”
“I guess I’m as much at sea as you are,” was the equivocal answer.
Lee came over from the stable, still wearing spurs and gauntlets.
“Howdy, Jack!” he nodded, not quite so much at his ease as usual. “Got hyer on the jump, didn’t you?”
“I kept movin’.”
“This shorely beats hell, don’t it?” Lee glanced around, selected a smooth boulder, and fired his discharge of tobacco juice at it true to the inch. “Reminds me of the old days. You boys ain’t old enough to recall them, but stage hold-ups were right numerous then.”
Blandly the deputy looked from one to the other. “I don’t suppose either of you gentlemen happen to have been down and looked over the ground where the hold-up was? The tracks were right cut up before I got there.”
This center shot silenced Lee for an instant, but Norris was on the spot with smiling ease.
“No, Mr. Lee and I have been hunting strays on the mesa. We didn’t hear about it till a few minutes ago. We’re at your service, though, Mr. Sheriff, to join any posses you want to send out.”
“Much obliged. I’m going to send one out toward the Galiuros in a few minutes now. I’ll be right glad to have you take charge of it, Mr. Norris.”
The derisive humor in the newly appointed deputy’s eyes did not quite reach the surface.
“Sure. Whenever you want me.”
“I’m going to send Alan McKinstra along to guide you. He knows that country like a book. You want to head for the lower pass, swing up Diable Cañon, and work up in the headquarters of the Three Forks.”
Within a quarter of an hour the posse was in motion. Flatray watched it disappear in the dust of the road without a smile. He had sent them out merely to distract the attention of the public and to get rid of as many as possible of the crowd. For he was quite as well aware as the leader of the posse that this search in the Galiuros was a wild-goose chase. Somewhere within three hundred yards of the place he stood both the robber and his booty were in all probability to be found.
Flatray was quite right in his surmise, since Melissy Lee, who had come out to see the posse off, was standing at the end of the porch with her dusky eyes fastened on him, the while he stood beside the house with one foot resting negligently on the oilcloth cover of the wash-stand.
She had cast him out of her friendship because of his unworthiness, but there was a tumult in her heart at sight of him. No matter how her judgment condemned him as a villain, some instinct in her denied the possibility of it. She was torn in conflict between her liking for him and her conviction that he deserved only contempt. Somehow it hurt her too that he accepted without protest her verdict, appeared so willing to be a stranger to her.
Now that the actual physical danger of her adventure was past, Melissy was aware too of a chill dread lurking at her heart. She was no longer buoyed up by the swiftness of action which had called for her utmost nerve. There was nothing she could do now but wait, and waiting was of all things the one most foreign to her impulsive temperament. She acknowledged too some fear of this quiet, soft-spoken frontiersman. All Arizona knew not only the daredevil spirit that fired his gentleness, but the competence with which he set about any task he assigned himself. She did not see how he could unravel this mystery. She had left no clues behind her, she felt sure of that, and yet was troubled lest he guessed at her secret behind that mask of innocence he wore. He did not even remotely guess it as yet, but he was far closer to the truth than he pretended. The girl knew she should leave him and go about her work. Her rôle was to appear as inconspicuous as possible, but she could not resist the fascination of trying to probe his thoughts.
“I suppose your posse will come back with the hold-ups in a few hours. Will it be worth while to wait for them?” she asked with amiable derision.
The ranger had been absorbed in thought, his chin in his hand, but he brought his gaze back from the distance to meet hers. What emotion lay behind those cold eyes she could not guess.
“You’re more hopeful than I am, Miss Lee.”
“What are you sending them out for, then?”
“Oh, well, the boys need to work off some of their energy, and there’s always a show they might happen onto the robbers.”
“Do you think some of the Roaring Fork gang did it?”
“Can’t say.”
“I suppose you are staying here in the hope that they will drop in and deliver themselves to you.”
He looked at her out of an expressionless face. “That’s about it, I reckon. But what I tell the public is that I’m staying so as to be within telephone connection. You see, Sheriff Burke is moving up to cut them off from the Catalinas, Jackson is riding out from Mammoth to haid them off that way, these anxious lads that have just pulled out from here are taking care of the Galiuros. I’m supposed to be sitting with my fingers on the keys as a sort of posse dispatcher.”
“Well, I hope you won’t catch them,” she told him bluntly.
“That seems to be a prevailing sentiment round here. You say it right hearty too; couldn’t be more certain of your feelings if it had been your own father.”
He said it carelessly, yet with his keen blue eyes fixed on her. Nevertheless, he was totally unprepared for the effect of his words. The color washed from her bronzed cheeks, and she stood staring at him with big, fear-filled eyes.
“What—what do you mean?” she gasped. “How dare you say that?”
“I ain’t said anything so terrible. You don’t need to take it to heart like that.” He gave her a faint smile for an instant. “I’m not really expecting to arrest Mr. Lee for holding up that stage.”
Th
e color beat back slowly into her face. She knew she had made a false move in taking so seriously his remark.
“I don’t think you ought to joke about a thing like that,” she said stiffly.
“All right. I’ll not say it next time till I’m in earnest,” he promised as he walked away.
“I wonder if he really meant anything,” the girl was thinking in terror, and he, “she knows something; now, I would like to know what.”
Melissy attended to her duties in the postoffice after the arrival of the stage, and looked after the dining-room as usual, but she was all the time uneasily aware that Jack Flatray had quietly disappeared. Where had he gone? And why? She found no answer to that question, but the ranger dropped in on his bronco in time for supper, imperturbable and self-contained as ever.
“Think I’ll stay all night if you have a room for me,” he told her after he had eaten.
“We have a room,” she said. “What more have you heard about the stage robbery?”
“Nothing, Miss Lee.”
“Oh, I thought maybe you had,” she murmured tremulously, for his blue eyes were unwaveringly upon her and she could not know how much or how little he might mean.
Later she saw him sitting on the fence, holding genial converse with Jim Budd. The waiter was flashing a double row of white teeth in deep laughter at something the deputy had told him. Evidently they were already friends. When she looked again, a few minutes later, she knew Jack had reached the point where he was pumping Jim and the latter was disseminating misinformation. That the negro was stanch enough, she knew, but she was on the anxious seat lest his sharp-witted inquisitor get what he wanted in spite of him. After he had finished with Budd the ranger drifted around to the kitchen in time to intercept Hop Ling casually as he came out after finishing his evening’s work. The girl was satisfied Flatray could not have any suspicion of the truth. Nevertheless, she wished he would let the help alone. He might accidentally stumble on something that would set him on the right track.
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