by Alan Lemay
The sheriff was interrupted by the opening of the outer door. The strong golden lamplight wavered slightly with the pressure of the cool draft; and to their nostrils came the peculiarly exhilarating smell of the clear cold air from the snow. In the doorway appeared Joe St Marie, For a moment he hesitated, hand on the latch, obviously startled by the presence of the sheriff.
"Shut that door," said Campo; and Joe St. Marie came in and closed the door slowly behind him.
HAT are you doing here?"
Joe St. Marie swung off his hat and stood staring bleakly from Ragland to Hopper and back again. "I lamed my horse," he said. "I had to leave the other boys to take the beef on to Waterman. It would have spoiled the cayuse to go on."
Now Campo Ragland seemed to notice what Kentucky Jones had perceived at once; that Joe St. Marie's face was the color of half-cured hay; and the bronc rider's explanation of his presence, if not altogether satisfactory in itself, had served to draw attention to the quickness of his breath. Campo said sharply, "You hurt, Joe?"
"No sir; no sir, Mr. Ragland."
"What's the matter with you? Are you sick?"
"No sir. I'm all right Well-I don't feel so good, at that."
"You never feel so good," Lee Bishop grunted.
Campo Ragland hesitated, puzzled. "You want to speak to me, Joe?" he asked at last.
"Who? Me? No, sir."
"Well, see what you can find yourself to eat. Wait a minute what have you given your horse?"
"Nothing yet, Mr. Ragland, sir. 1---2'
"How many times do I have to tell you fellers-" Ragland began. "Well, let it pass. Go feed your horse."
"Now?"
"Now!"
Joe St. Marie had already thrown aside his sheepskin coat and hung his gun belt on a wooden peg beside the door. He moved reluctantly at Ragland's command, and at the door he stopped, hesitating. Though he seemed unable to speak, it was as plain as if he had spoken that there was in his mind a protest which he could not-or did not dare put into words. He swayed indeterminately upon his long horse-bowed legs, making the polished steel studs on his five-inch belt glint in the slant of the light.
In spite of the grey-green pallor of St. Marie's face, Kentucky Jones thought he had never seen the Indian blood of the man stand out so strongly. The breadth of face at the cheek-bones and the surface lights in St. Marie's eyes suggested the Indian always; but the blunt strength of his features ordinarily offset this impression. Just now, though, a great part of that strength seemed to be gone, as if the appearance of strength had been no better than a mask.
"Well?" said Campo softly.
St. Marie glanced quickly from Campo to the sheriff, wavering a moment in indecision; then hurriedly took his gun belt from its peg. So, at last, he opened the door and went out, shoulders hunched as if against the great unseen pressure of a non-existent wind.
When St. Marie had left the room there was a moment or two of silence. "It's funny we didn't hear his horse come up," the sheriff said.
"You often don't," said Ragland, "when you've got loose stock in the corrals."
Without raising his voice the sheriff asked, "What's he afraid of, Campo?"
Campo met his eye grimly. "I was about to ask you."
"You mean you don't know?"
"Floyd, I haven't got the slightest idee. It might be the man is sick."
"That man ain't sick," said Hopper. "The blood was already coming back to his face. Campo, something has happened to that man, just a few minutes before he come into this room."
"Do you suppose-" Campo began.
Somewhere outside the house a gun crashed; and though they could not judge either its exact direction or distance, they knew that it had been fired within the hundred yards. For a moment they listened. Then Lee Bishop jumped for the door, and they all seemed to move at once.
"Wait, Lee," Campo Ragland snapped. "Blow out those lights, Floyd, Kentuck! Jean, you stay in here, you hear me?"
As the lights went out the small frost-paned windows became faintly visible, blue in the darkness, where a moment before they had been squares of silver-dusted black. Then the door swung open upon the trampled starlit snow and they went out, quick but unhurried, an irregular file of shadows against the pale glimmer of the earth.
Campo Ragland, unarmed, led the way to the corral where Joe St. Marie was most likely to have left his horse. The horse was there, head to the bars, waiting for the feed that had not yet come; but Joe St. Marie was not in sight.
Campo's voice raised in a hoarse shout, an abrupt strange sound in all that silence of snow and rock and stars. "You, Joe! St. Marie! Where you at? Sing out, man!"
The silence held for a moment more, and Campo had whirled upon the sheriff, when Joe St. Marie spoke in an odd muffled voice, unexpectedly nearby. "Yes, sir-here I am."
He came toward them now, slowly, from around the corner of the stable, and Lee Bishop let droop the rifle he had snatched up.
"Who fired?"
"Why-I did." The accent of Joe St. Marie's speech was no different from that of any other cow boy, except for a certain deep thickness of the tone itself Now his voice was still deep, but it had taken on a flat quality; and though the voice itself did not shake, it somehow conveyed the impression that the man behind it was more than shaken. "I - I thought I seen a wolf"
"Wolf! A wolf up here by the house?"
"Well-I guess it was a coyote then."
"Go on in," Lee Bishop said disgustedly. "I'll see your horse gets fed." This offer St. Marie did not accept; but Lee Bishop stayed behind while the others went in.
"I thought I told you to stay in here," Campo said to his daughter, lighting a lamp.
The sheriff's temper seemed to have come to the end of its string, and there busted itself like a roped steer. "I'm sick and tired of this," he told them. "There's something almighty funny going on here, and I mean to know what it is!"
Campo Ragland planted himself on wide-spread legs, back to the stove. "When you find out," he said sourly, "let me know."
"I've warned you about holding out on me," the sheriff said to Ragland. "But now I warn you again. I mean to get the man that killed Mason. I mean to get him, you hear me?"
Campo Ragland said with sudden passion, "God knows I'll help you every way I can. I tell you, if I knew anything 11
"If you knew anything!" said Hopper bitterly, "There isn't a man on your place tonight who doesn't know more about this business than he means to tell!"
"That's all foolishness," said Campo Ragland. "You've gone up in the air because a quarter-blood cowboy looks like he might be coming down with a fever. As for holding stuff back from you take us one by one if you want. Start with me. Or start with Kentucky Jones, who didn't even work for the Bar Hook at the time this happened. Or take"
"You want me to start with Kentucky Jones?" said the sheriff. "Maybe you'd like to hear me ask a question or two of this Kentucky Jones?"
"Ask who and what you like," said Ragland.
Hopper swung his red-eyed stare to Kentucky. "Be careful how you answer me, Jones; try to remember what your boss sometimes forgets-that maybe I know the answer before you speak. Where were you at one o'clock last Saturday-the day that Mason and Zack Sanders died?"
Kentucky Jones took his time about answering. He took the makings from his pocket and started a cigarette. "One, last Saturday," he repeated "that was just about an hour before the snow began to fell, wasn't it?"
"Some less than an hour, I'd say," the sheriff said.
They waited while Kentucky Jones twirled shut his cigarette, and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. "At noon last Saturday," he said at last, "I was here at the Bar Hook."
Sheriff Hopper grinned, but not pleasantly, at Campo Ragland. "There you are," he said.
There was quiet again; and this time the eyes of everyone were upon Kentucky Jones. He was meeting Floyd Hopper's stare, and he did not glance at the others; but he could feel them watching him the beset and irritably wary Cam
po Ragland, and the girl, whose cross-purpose here he could not yet read.
Campo said slowly, "You never told me that, Kentuck."
"No? I drove out to say Adios; I was going away."
Hopper spoke to Ragland. "There's your man that couldn't possibly know anything about this," he said ironically. "But if you think that's all I know about Kentucky Jones, you're a fool. I can go to court with my case against him tomorrow, if need be." His tone was that of contemptuous statement rather than threat. "And I can put him where he'll have to fight hell for leather, as he never fought in his life, before he ever gets clear."
Ragland said, "If you think being here around that time is a case, you don't know much about"
"Opportunity," said the sheriff. "Opportunity and motive. Just those two things can make it tough for any man. Yet I'm not right sure that that's all I can bring against him, from what I know right now."
"Motive?" echoed Ragland, startled.
Here Lee Bishop and Joe St. Marie returned to the room.
HEY saw now that the normal dark color of St. Marie's face had returned, and with it had come back his look of solid strength. Sheriff Floyd Hopper looked at Ragland and indicated St. Marie with a jerk of his head. "Chills and fever seem to have passed off," he said.
Campo Ragland grunted.
"Campo," said the sheriff, "there's a head going to fall maybe more than one head. Don't ever think that this is going to blow over, and be lost sight of in a general dust. There's a man going to be hooked hard and permanent before I'm through."
"Floyd, what are you going to do? You mean you're taking Kentucky Jones?"
"No. I'll know how to get him when I want him, I think. Now make your choice, Campo! If you don't want to string with me, I can go on without you. But you may not like your choice before this thing is through."
"I don't know what you mean," said Ragland.
"Suit yourself," said Hopper; "only, don't be too sure that this case is shaping up against KentuckyJones."
Ragland angered again. "Look here, Floyd-I'm plenty tired of this. You can't come in here and talk that way to me! I'm not going to stand for it, you hear me?"
"Have it your own way, Campo." The sheriff picked up his coat and gloves.
"You're not going back to Waterman tonight, are you?" Jean exclaimed.
"Sure I'm going back. There's nothing I can do out here."
Nobody urged him to stay. Campo Ragland asked what Hopper wanted them to do about Zack Sanders, and received instructions for reporting in Waterman for an inquest. No great warmth of understanding marked Hopper's departure.
"If you change your mind, Campo," the sheriff said, "let me know."
"I tell you I don't know what you're talking about!" Campo said stubbornly; and the sheriff took the long trail back to town.
Stamping back into the house, Campo Ragland turned immediately upon Joe St. Marie. The swarthy bronc rider was filling himself up on bread and cold meat; and he met Campo's questions with a stolid gaze.
"What's got into you, St. Marie?"
"I don't feel so good."
"Look here, St. Marie if something funny has happened around here I want to know what it is."
"I don't feel so good."
"Who did you throw down on when you went out to feed your horse?"
"Who? Me?"
Campo Ragland exploded at him. "Yes, you! Who did you fire at? Come out with it, now!"
"I thought I saw a coyote," said St. Marie.
"Don't you lie to me! You can't get away with that stuff here!"
"I don't feel so good."
Campo Ragland gave it up in disgust, and St. Marie hurriedly took himself out of range, retiring to the bunk house.
Campo seemed bewildered. To Kentucky Jones it seemed that the cross purposes which held the boss of the Bar Hook in a state of paralysis were now almost physically visible, as wind is visible in prairie hay by its effect. Here was an owner whose range was being swamped, overwhelmed by the herds of his enemy; he faced a ruin which could only be averted by an immediate and determined contest for the ground. Yet something had thrown and hogtied this man some obscure and hidden circumstance which he seemed at a loss to combat. Kentucky no longer could doubt that the circumstance which hogtied Ragland had to do with Jean.
"I'll hire a cook when we go in for the inquest" Ragland spoke tonelessly, like a man seeking escape from other things. "Jean wants to do the cooking, and I'll let her, I guess; but you fellers will have to get the fires started in the morning. I'm not going to have her slamming firewood around at any 4:00 A. M."
"I'll take first crack at it," said Lee Bishop.
Kentucky Jones saw his chance and jumped it The ultimate answer might be deep in twisted trails, but his next step was obvious and immediate: he had to force the truth out of St. Marie. Lee Bishop's removal would make opportunity for this, since the other hands would not be back from Waterman until the cars had been loaded in the morning. "Then take the bunk off the kitchen, Lee," he said. "I'll run down and get you your bed."
Down in the bunk house, to which Joe St. Marie had retired, no light showed; but from within came the complicated rhythms of a mouth organ played by a master, telling Kentucky that his man was still there, and awake. Joe St Marie could make a mouth organ sob and whimper, or imitate a herd of steers or a railway train. The mouth organ fell silent, however, as he approached; and, Kentucky stepping into the full light of no less than three lamps, saw that blankets screened the windows; and a six-gun had replaced the mouth organ in Joe St. Marie's hands.
"Oh, it's you," said St. Marie sheepishly, and dropped the six-gun on the bunk beside him.
"I was hoping you got that guy, Joe," said Kentucky. "Didn't you even wing him?"
The queer mouthing complaint of the harmonica stopped for a moment as St. Marie looked sharply at Kentucky over his cupped hands. He did not, however, take the mouth organ from his mouth.
Kentucky cast a glance at the blankets which screened the windows. "Look here. If I'm going to sleep in this bunk house I want to know who you thought was going to fire through the window."
"I hung those up to keep the cold wind out," said St. Marie.
"You don't figure to tell me, huh?"
"Nothing to tell."
"You look here, Joe! If ever a man was scared, you were when you came into that kitchen tonight. Now I want to know what lifted you out of your boots."
St. Marie considered briefly, then shrugged. "It wasn't anything; you'd laugh."
"Try it out, anyway."
Joe St. Marie grunted, planted his elbows on his bowed knees and humped over his harmonica again. The instrument let out a low quavering blat, like the distant bawl of a calf.
"And what was it drew your fire, out there by the corral?"
St. Marie did not answer; he had retreated into the stolidity possible to his darker forbears.
Kentucky, stepping to the edge of the bunk, smoothly lifted the six-gun from St. Marie's side and tossed it into another bunk. The music stopped short.
Kentucky said, "Now-you----talk!"
Joe St. Marie slid his high heels under him, bunched himself as if he were going to start his music again; then the harmonica dropped to the floor as he uncoiled and sprang.
Kentucky dropped into a crouch and laced out with a long uppercutting wallop. Two seconds later St. Marie was on his back between the stove and the wall, while Kentucky held him down with a knee on the bronc rider's chest. "Now you be good," he said. "By God, you fool with me, I'll snap you like a whip!"
St. Marie made a desperate effort to rise. "In God's name, Jones, there's somebody coming!"
"I don't care if there's a regiment coming. You're going to sit quiet and pretty until we talk this over."
"Then take my gun! Take my gun yourself," Joe St. Marie urged him. "You want to die?"
The honest fear in Joe St. Marie was not for Kentucky, he now recognized; undoubtedly it was for the approach beyond the door. "All right," said Kentuc
ky disgustedly. He left the bronc rider, re covered St. Marie's gun, and stuck it negligently in his waistband. There was a low tapping at the door.
"Come in!"
The door opened quickly, but not wide, and Jean Ragland slid in. She shut the door and leaned against it, her hands behind her upon the latch. She wore no coat. "What's the matter here?" she demanded.
"Joe and I were wrestling," said Kentucky. "What's broke loose, Miss Ragland?"
"Nothing's broke loose." Her blue eyes looked almost black, but the yellow lamp light turned her hair into a glowing smoulder, as if there were fire in it. "All right, Joe-I can't stay here forever; what happened tonight?"
Jean Ragland spoke without sharpness; but her question was an order which she obviously did not suspect would be disobeyed. Joe St. Marie dropped his eyes and swayed from side to side like a steer baffled by a fence. "Aw, Miss Ragland"
"Come out with it now!"
Joe St. Marie squirmed. "You wouldn't be lieve"
"Never mind that."
The bronc rider could not escape Jean Ragland's waiting eyes. Suddenly he blurted out his answer.
"I seen a ghost! Miss Ragland, I swear to heaven, I seen the ghost of John Mason, as plain as I see you stand there now!"
The girl was silent a moment, astounded by St. Marie's idiotic answer. "For heaven's sake, Joe, pull yourself together! If some rider has been into this layout I want to know"
"Miss Ragland," St Marie insisted, "I've got good eyes. I don't forget I know most of the cattle on this range by sight at a half mile. You think I don't remember how Old Ironsides used to set, half crooked in the saddle with his shoulders hunched you think I wouldn't know him out of a thousand men"
It was Jean Ragland that Kentucky Jones was watching; and now he saw that comprehension had come to her. She seemed to stiffen, and her eyes looked even darker than before.
"I saw it twice," Joe St Marie was rushing on now. "The first time sitting out there on the hump; and again when I went out to feed my horse, farther out, going down the trail. I fired at it-and it disappeared."