by Alan Lemay
"Jean, girl," Kentucky said, "what's happened here?"
"Take this horse, and the mule, and such of the stuff as you need. I don't need to tell you where to go or how to get there, nor how to get along; but do as I say! Go a long way, and go fast, and lose yourself, and never come back until some day this ghastly thing is over with and forgotten!"
Kentucky Jones stared at her a long time, study ing her face; but her eyes did not flinch from his. At last a crooked one-sided smile changed his mouth.
"I know that this is a terrible sacrifice for you," Jean said. Desperation came into her voice, bred of the hopelessness of making him see the necessity she urged. "I wouldn't ask you this, Kentucky, I swear I wouldn't, if I wasn't positive that there's no other way. Believe this I'll be your friend, always; it may be later that I can help you, and send your money to you, or something like that. That will work out later. All I can say now is that I'd rather be dead than sitting here telling you this; but there isn't any other way."
"Why do you ask this?" Kentucky said curiously.
"Kentucky-God forgive me! - l can't answer that! But I tell you that there isn't any time to lose! Not an hour, not even - I can't tell you any more! I can only"
"You'll have to tell me, I think," Kentucky said. His face was hard, and the fatigue that she had been unable to detect before now had carved lines about his mouth, emphasizing the crooked line of his broken nose.
"You've got to do what I say," she told him passionately, "without any question of why about it."
"You hardly expected me to do that, I think," he told her.
Jean cried out sharply, "Don't! Take the horse and go. Kentucky, as you love me-but you don't love me; I know that."
"I think," he said, "just now it doesn't matter a whole lot who loves who, or who doesn't."
There was a touch of hysteria in her voice as she answered him. "No, not to you - I think you don't care anything about anybody in the world!"
"God help the man who does," he said. "As for taking that horse and making a run of it, I'm sorry not to do something that you ask. But I can't imagine anything on the face of the earth that would make me do that now."
"Then," she said quickly, "I'll tell you why you must. My father-my father "It seemed for a moment as if she were unable to go on. But she pulled herself together and spoke evenly, her words distinct and quick. "You know by this time why Bob Elliot is swamping the Bar Hook range. You have eyes that see things -I don't think anyone can hide from you what a thing means. You can't make me think that you don't know why Elliot has no fear of Campo, nor the Bar Hook."
"No," he said slowly, "I wouldn't pretend that I can't see that."
Her words tumbled out of her incoherently. "It's because Bob Elliot was close to the Bar Hook when Mason was killed. Poor Lee Bishop knew that though I don't think he knew that he knew it I"
Kentucky Jones said, "Bishop told me that he knew."
"And now," said Jean, "now I've got to tell you that I've known this all along almost from the first. And I"
"You're sure you want to tell me this, Jean?"
"I have to tell you you make me tell
That was a strange meeting, there on the trail in all that dazzle of sun-whipped snow, while all the sharp, sad, hidden things that this girl had never meant to tell a living soul came trembling out of her in a panicky disorder. Perhaps he should have wept or gathered her in his arms; but he could not.
"All right," he said. "What, exactly, is Bob Elliot holding over your father?"
"Somehow he's guessed the truth: that-whoever killed Mason killed him with my father's rifle. I knew that when I put the bullet into your hand at the inquest; I've known for days that you must know that too, though you said nothing to me."
"Yes," he admitted, "I figured out that."
"And Bob Elliot knows it I'm certain he knows it. Though I swear I don't know how he is so sure."
"But you yourself are sure that it is true that the murderer used your father's rifle?"
"The-the-yes; I'm virtually certain of that. And my father knows it. He"
"Have you talked this over with him?"
"No-how could I? It's changed him so I hardly know him. He used to have a terrible fighting temper-but where is it now? He doesn't dare come to a showdown with Elliot; he's afraid of the effect the shock would have on my mother."
"And on you."
"On my mother," she repeated. "He doesn't dare face it out because of her. But just as he won't fight Elliot because of that-something in his makeup keeps him from protecting himself, too. Nothing would bring him to hide evidence though that evidence might turn against him, as well as against the true murderer. He must have known"
"Then," said Kentucky, "his alibi about being somewhere else at the time Mason was killed-is not so good as some people have been led to suppose?"
"He hasn't any testimony in support of it but mine. They'll discount that, because I'm his daughter; even-even if they don't break my testimony in some other way."
He did not stop to tell her that he knew by this that her support of Campo's alibi had been perjury. Instead he asked her, "How many people know that Campo-your father set out to kill Bob Elliot the day Mason was killed?"
She cried out with a shudder in her voice, "You even know that?"
"Bob Elliot told me that," he said shortly.
Jean Ragland looked dizzy, and sick. "Then who can tell how many people Bob Elliot has told?"
Kentucky Jones stripped off his gloves and made himself a cigarette. "And how many people," he said slowly, "do you think can tell a living man from a ghost?"
Her voice quavered irregularly, no longer fully under her control. "What do you mean?"
"There used to be a picture hanging in the Bar Hook ranch house," Kentucky said. "A picture in a dark wood frame that had acorns at the corners. That picture was stolen because somebody thought it had something to do with the Mason case. When you saw that that picture was stolen, you were panicstricken, and hid the empty frame from your father. Now I'm going to tell you what that picture was."
"You can't you never saw"
"It was a picture of a man on a horse. When you first looked at that picture it seemed to be an enlarged snapshot of Bob Elliot. Only when you looked close, it was not Elliot, but John Mason. Do you deny that, Jean?"
"No," said Jean miserably. "You see? It's just as I said. Nothing escapes you, nothing's able to hide itself away from you. That that's the rest of the case against my father. Lee Bishop didn't know who it was he saw near the Bar Hook when he thought he saw Mason, and Joe St. Marie only thought he saw Mason's ghost. But when they rested sideways in their saddles with their faces hidden, a long way off or in the dark anybody could could mistake Bob Elliot for Mason."
"Or," he said, "an angry man might just possibly-mistake Mason for Elliot."
She drew a deep breath and pressed her gloved fingers against her eyes, but did not reply.
"It's my belief," Kentucky said, "that it was the sheriff who searched the house-or had it searched; in which case, he must have that picture."
"I think you're right about the sheriff, he must have been looking for the gun to match the Mason bullet. But he didn't take the picture of Masonbecause I took it myself"
"You did? But you looked so scared"
"I didn't hide frame and all, at first, because it left a pale spot on the wall, that Dad would have noticed. I meant to slide some other picture into the frame. But I forgot it. And then, with Dad hunting all through the house, to see what had been taken, I thought he'd notice the empty frame and 1 was terrified."
"And that rifle "He paused, watching her, and licked shut his cigarette.
"The rifle!" she burst out, jerking her hand away from her eyes. "Who knows where that is now? How do we know that Bob Elliot doesn't have it himself? Sheriff Hopper has the other bullet. If ever the bullet is fitted to my father's gun"
"No," he said, "Bob Elliot doesn't have the rifle."
Her v
oice rose hysterically. "How do you know he hasn't?"
"Because," he told her, "that rifle is dismounted and hidden in the mattress of your bed."
She stared at him blankly for a long moment. "Oh, dear Lord," she said at last in a broken voice. "Why did I ever try to hide anything from you?" She did not avert her face from him, but she turned her eyes to the Maricopas, sitting very straight in the saddle. "Yes, I hid it. Campo must have known at once that Mason was killed with his rifle; but do you think anything in the world could have persuaded him to do away with that rifle, to pitch it into the bottom of some canyon?"
Watching her face in half profile he saw her begin to cry, silently, and without tears. "Is that all?" he said.
"That's one side of it." She steadied herself.
"And what's the other side?"
"The other side is that he he thinks that that you might have killed Mason, Kentucky."
He said slowly, "Jean, are you lying to me again?"
She rushed ahead, a little of her color returning. "With everything against my father, what could I do but keep silent?"
"And hide what evidence you could," said Kentucky.
She looked at him squarely as she repeated after him, "And hide what evidence I could."
"And now you want me to jump the country."
"For your own sake," she said quickly. "I swear to God, Kentuck, it's for your own sake I want you to do that. All the time he's spent in Waterman, when we didn't know what he was doing, he's been trying to build a case against you. Everybody knows you were at the house at about the time Mason was killed. The house was open, and anyone could have got to the guns. Campo's figured all along that only one thing was lacking to to implicate you so deeply in the death of Mason that you could never"
"And that one thing lacking was my reason for killing Mason."
"Yes, of course and now he thinks he has it. Maybe he would have held off still, but Lee Bishop's killing has driven him wild. He's phoned Waterman. Sheriff Hopper is coming out. I don't know what he has or how he dug it up and put it together but this I know: that he believes that he can show that you had a motive for killing John Mason stronger than anyone else could possibly have had. I"
"Jean, do you think he believes I killed Mason?"
This time she averted her face; when she spoke her voice was hardly audible. "I only know that he would be glad to believe it if he could."
"If he could," repeated Kentucky. He turned his horse toward the Bar Hook with a savage twist of the bit.
Jean cried out, "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to hang me the man that killed Old Ironsides."
"Kentucky, wait!" She booted her horse against his and caught his arm in both hands. "Kentucky, if it weren't for me you'd never have been in this. This isn't your fight-it's never been your fight. It's mine and my father's. You're not tied into it as we are. You"
"I'm tied into it now."
"No, no! Take your horse and ride out. Take
"I'll go," he told her, "when I've done this job of work."
She stared at him, her mouth twisted and quivering. "Kentucky, if there's anything in the world that I can do or say"
He said, "I'm going to clear this thing if it splits the rimrock wide open."
"Then-then, Kentucky, can't we work it out together? If anybody in the world can make my father see reason, I can. I'll help you in every way I can, if only"
"Ask yourself," he said, "if you've ever helped me yet? Ask yourself if you've ever told me anything, or allowed me to find out anything for my self if you could prevent it? Not two minutes ago you lied to me about the rifle!"
She said, "Just the same, you're the only one I've looked to for"
His face was like the grey rock. "I'm just what you said I was a few minutes ago: an outsider here - an outsider to your father, and an outsider to you. I don't blame you for protecting your father. But I can tell you that if you had trusted me even so far as"
Her head went up, and her face was white as doeskin. "Why should I trust you?"
"Why should you?" he repeated. He yanked his horse into the trail; and this time she did not stop him.
ENTUCKY JONES came into the Bar Hook layout on the dead run, dropped off his horse at the door and went pushing into the house. He made his way straight to the little crank-sided wall telephone, and belled Waterman.
It was one of the deputies who, after a prolonged delay, finally answered from Sheriff Hopper's office.
"Talking from the Bar Hook," Kentucky said. "Has Sheriff Hopper left yet?"
"Yeah, he left about three minutes ago," came the voice from Waterman, indistinct behind a fluttering and crackling in the line. "Wait, now! Yeah, there goes his car by, in the street."
"Run out and catch him," Kentucky yelled into the phone. "Shout your lungs out but stop him!"
Over the line came the rattle of a dropped receiver. Kentucky Jones could make out the slam of a door, and a vague shouting sound that died after a moment behind the sputter of the line.
There followed a protracted wait. It seemed to Kentucky Jones that an hour passed while he stood at the telephone waiting for the deputy to return. This was the sort of small chance, he was thinking, which made or broke the run of the cards. A difference of three minutes in time was promising to rob him of all opportunity. But the wire opened again at last, and it was not the deputy who came back to the phone.
"This is Floyd Hopper speaking," said the small voice from Waterman. "Who's that?"
"This is Kentucky Jones at the Bar Hook."
"Oh, yeah? What the hell do you want?"
"I've found out something. Do as I say and you'll have your man in six hours."
"Why the devil should I do like you say?" came Hopper's voice, sourly.
"I'll give you proof," said Kentucky. "If I'm wrong you can tell me to go to hell. All I ask is that you test it for yourself."
"And when is all this going to be?" said the sheriff.
"Right now," said Kentucky. "You can shake down the proof of what I know in less than five minutes from right where you sit."
There was a long pause at the other end of the wire. Kentucky was almost ready to jiggle the hook, to see if the connection had been broken. "What is it you want, Jones?" came Hopper's voice at last.
"Have you got the bullets that killed Zack Sanders?" Kentucky said.
"Of course I've got 'em!"
"And you've got the gun that was found in Sanders' hand."
"Well?"
"Take the bullets that killed Sanders and compare them with the gun that was in Zack Sanders' hand when he was found dead. You'll find that Zack Sanders was killed with the gun that was found in his own hand."
An instant's pause was followed by an oath that scorched the wires. "Jones, you fool with me by God, I'll learn you to fool with me!"
"All I say is look at 'em! It won't cost you the time it took me to get you on the phone. I'm giving you your chance to get the man that killed Mason. You can do what you want to about it."
"I suppose," came Hopper's voice, "you figure Zack Sanders committed suicide!"
"Take a look," Kentucky repeated. "Fire a bullet from Zack's gun, and match it against those he was killed with. If I'm right call me back, and I'll give you the lay. Otherwise, you can go lamming around here blind until it's too late it's all one to me." Kentucky Jones smashed the receiver onto the hook.
He turned to find Campo Ragland standing in the doorway.
Kentucky Jones leaned against the wall. He crossed his legs, and rolled a cigarette; and the two looked at each other. Campo seemed almost literally to have increased in stature since Kentucky Jones had seen him last. His long bowed legs set him high up in the world; it was the lean breadth of his shoulders and a stooping carriage which prevented him from appearing to be as big a man as he was. And his big head, made to appear more massive by the broad receding sweep of forehead which his thinning hair had left, helped to detract from his appearance of height. But the indet
erminate stoop of Campo's carriage was now gone; and as he stood with his big freckle-blotched hands holding the side of the doorway he made the doorway look small. Kentucky saw that he was armed.
Campo said slowly, "Think you can head it off, do you?"
"Maybe I do," Kentucky answered.
"I heard what you said over the phone just now." Campo's voice was lowered; but he sounded as if he had accused Kentucky of misbranding a calf.
"I knew you were listening. I heard you come in.,,
"I suppose," said Campo, "you've got more guts than any man on the face of this rocky up-ended earth!"
"Maybe I have," said Kentucky. "Maybe if I didn't have I wouldn't be here now."
"And you'd be better off," Campo told him.
Nobody could have said exactly when Kentucky's face had changed; but anyone looking at him now would have seen that he had small ugly eyes, and that the broken line of his nose was made uglier by the crooked line of his mouth, from one corner of which his cigarette now trailed. He stood relaxed, motionless; he might have been carved there except for the tenuous blue thread of smoke from his cigarette, rising in a wavering, swaying line before his face.
"I've heard tell that the west is dead," he said. "And I always thought that was funny, with the land still here, and the cattle, and the riders working in the saddle like they always worked. But when the owner of a brand sets to working in the dark, and shoves one of his own riders into the noose because he's afraid to face out the music himself-I guess the west is gone, all right."
Campo faced him in silence for a little while, and the blood came up into his head, darkening his windreddened face. "Before a man can clean a range," he said, his voice low, "he must first clean his own outfit."
"So you think," said Kentucky, "you can convict me of killing John Mason?"
Campo snapped at him, "Who told you that?"
"I've been taken for a fool here," said Kentucky. "I expect maybe a fool is what I am, for I've let myself be used as a fool. But I'm not a blind man, and you should have allowed for that. So you think you can make it stick, do you?"