“I don’t know what his game is, Mannix; but he could have drawn down on you in a wink and shot you in your tracks if he’d wanted to,” said Carlisle.
“So you were taking the play in your own hands,” Mannix accused.
The deputy looked at Rathburn angrily. Then he advanced and took the prisoner’s six-shooter from him. He brought handcuffs out of his pockets.
Rathburn’s face went white. “If what Carlisle says is true, it doesn’t look as if I was trying to get away, does it, sheriff?” he asked coldly.
Mannix was thoughtful for a moment. “Well, come along,” he ordered, thrusting the steel bracelets back into his pocket.
“I’ll go with you,” Carlisle volunteered.
“That’s up to you,” snapped out the deputy. “I ain’t asking you to.”
The trio left the place as the spectators gazed after them in wonder. There was a hum of excited conversation as the deputy and his prisoner and Carlisle passed through the door.
No word was spoken on the way to the small, two-room, one-story structure which served as a detention place for persons under arrest until they could be transferred to the county jail in the town where the railroad touched. Petty offenders served their sentences there, however.
In the little front office of the jail, Rathburn looked with interest at some posters on the walls. One in particular claimed his attention, and he read it twice while the deputy was getting some keys and calling to the jailer, who evidently was on the other side of the barred door where the few cells and the “tank” were.
This is what Rathburn read:
REWARD
Two thousand dollars will be paid for the capture of the bandits who are responsible for the robberies of Dixie Mine messengers in the last few months.
Dixie Milling & Mining Co.,
George Sautee, Manager.
Rathburn now knew exactly what Carlisle had meant when he had referred to the Dixie pay-roll taking wings. He had, however, suspected it. The holdup of the truck driver also was explained. Rathburn smiled. It was a peculiar ruse for the mines manager to resort to. Could not the pay-roll be sent to the mines under armed guard? Rathburn’s eyes were dreamy when he looked at the deputy.
“All right, in you go,” said Mannix, as the jailer unlocked the heavy, barred door from the inside.
He led Rathburn to one of the single cells, of which there were six on one side of the jail room proper.
“Maybe you’ll be ready to talk in the morning,” he said, as he locked his prisoner in.
“Morning might be too late,” Rathburn observed, taking tobacco and papers from his shirt pocket.
“What do you mean by that?” Mannix asked sharply.
“I might change my mind.”
“About talking, eh? Well, we’ll find a way to make you change it back again.”
“You’re a grateful cuss,” said Rathburn, grinning.
Mannix scowled. It was plain he was not sure of his man, although he was trying to convince himself that he was.
“I don’t get you,” he said growlingly.
“No? Didn’t you hear that fellow Carlisle say I saved your life by not drawing?”
“He’d have got you if you’d tried to draw. That’s what he thought you was going to do. You saved your skin by grabbing the floor.”
Rathburn wet the paper of his cigarette and sealed the end. “I’m wondering,” he mused, as he snapped a match into flame, with a thumb nail and lit the weed.
“It’s about time,” said the deputy grimly.
“I’m wondering,” said Rathburn, in a soft voice, exhaling a thin streamer of smoke, “if he’d have got me.”
Mannix grunted, looked at him curiously, and then turned abruptly on his heel and left. Rathburn could not see the door, but he heard the big key grate in the lock, and then the jail room echoed to the clang of hard metal and the door swung shut again.
Rathburn sat down on the bunk which was to serve as his bed. He smoked his brown-paper cigarette slowly and with great relish while he stared, not through the bars to where the dim light of a lamp showed, but straight at the opposite steel wall of his cell. His eyes were thoughtful, dreamy, his brow was puckered.
“An’ there’s that,” he muttered as he threw away the stub of his smoke and began to roll another. “Somebody’s been playing the Dixie Queen for a meal ticket. That sign said ‘robberies.’ That means more’n one. The truck driver was the last. Two thousand reward. An’ me headed for the desert where I belong. What stopped me? I reckon I know.”
He smiled grimly as he remembered the insolent challenge in Carlisle’s eyes and the reference to the bath.
After a time Rathburn stretched out on the bunk, pulled his hat over his face, and dozed.
He sat up with a catlike movement as a persistent tapping on the bars of his cell reached his ears. Blinking in the half light he saw Carlisle’s dark features.
“Well, now’s your chance to smoke me up good an’ plenty an’ get away with it,” said Rathburn cheerfully. “I’m shy my gun which the sheriff has borrowed.”
“You figure he’s just borrowed it?” sneeringly inquired Carlisle.
Rathburn rose and surveyed his visitor. “I reckon I’ve got to tolerate you,” he drawled. “I can’t pick my company in here.”
“I’ve got your number,” snarlingly replied Carlisle in a low voice.
Rathburn sauntered close to the bars, rolling a cigarette.
“If you have, Carlisle, you’ve got a winning number,” he said evenly.
“Whatever your play is here, I dunno,” said Carlisle; “but you won’t get away with it as easy as you did over the range in Dry Lake.”
Rathburn’s eyes never flickered as he coolly lit his cigarette with a steady hand. “You’re plumb full of information, eh, Carlisle?”
“I was over there an’ heard about how you stuck up that joint an’ tried to blame it on some kid by the name of Lamy,” said Carlisle, watching Rathburn closely.
“You sure that was the way of it?” asked Rathburn casually.
“No,” replied the other. “I know the kid stuck up the joint an’ you took the blame to keep him under cover. I don’t know your reasons, but I guess you don’t want the facts known. You broke jail. They ain’t forgot that over in Dry Lake. There’s a reward out for you over there, an I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some money on your head in Arizona, Coyote!”
Rathburn’s eyes were points of red between narrowed lids.
“The Coyote!” said Carlisle in a hoarse voice of triumph. “An’ the way it looks I’m the only one hereabouts that knows it.”
“I told you you was plumb full of information,” said Rathburn.
“The Coyote has a bit of a record, they tell me,” Carlisle leered. “There’s more’n one sheriff would pay a pretty price to get him safe, eh?”
“Just what’s your idea in telling me all this, Carlisle; why don’t you tell what you know to Mannix, say?”
“Maybe I’m just teasing you along.”
“Not a chance, Carlisle. I know your breed.”
The other’s face darkened, and his eyes glittered as he peered in through the bars.
“What’s your breed?” he asked sneeringly.
“I don’t have to tell you that, Carlisle. You know!” said Rathburn with a taunting laugh.
Carlisle struggled with his anger for a brief spell. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
“I ain’t going to poke at you in a cage,” he said in a more civil tone; “an’ I ain’t going to tell anybody what I know. Remember that.”
“I ain’t the forgetting kind,” Rathburn flung after him as he walked swiftly away.
Again Rathburn sat on the edge of the bunk and smoked and thought. After a time he went to sleep. The opening of his cell door woke him. It was Mannix.
“Come to let me out, sheriff?” inquired Rathburn sleepily.
The deputy looked at him keenly, opened the cage, and motioned to him to follow
. Rathburn went with him out into the little office. It was broad day. Mannix picked up a pistol from his desk and extended it to Rathburn.
“Here’s your gun, Rathburn. You can go,” he said, pressing his lips close together.
“Well, now, sheriff, that’s right kind of you,” Rathburn drawled, concealing his astonishment.
“Don’t thank me,” snapped out Mannix. “This gentleman asked me to set you loose.”
For the first time Rathburn looked squarely at the other man in the office––a thin man, with a cropped mustache, beady eyes, and a narrow face.
The man was regarding him intently, and there seemed to be an amused expression in his eyes. He turned away from Rathburn’s gaze.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman,” said Rathburn agreeably.
“That’s George Sautee, manager of the Dixie Queen,” said the deputy with a shrug.
* * *
CHAPTER XVII
A COMMISSION
Sautee rose and extended his hand with an affable smile. “Will you come to breakfast with me, Mr. Rathburn?”
Rathburn took the hand with a curious side glance at Mannix. “I’m powerful hungry,” he confessed; “an’ I don’t reckon I’d be showing the best of manners if I balked at havin’ breakfast with the man that got me out of jail.”
“Quite right,” admitted Sautee, winking at the deputy. “Well, perhaps I have my reasons. All right, Rathburn, let’s be going.”
They walked out of the jail, and as they progressed up the street they were the cynosure of many wondering pairs of eyes; for the report had spread that the stranger who had been jailed was the bandit who had made away with the Dixie Queen pay-roll on several occasions, and that he was a gun fighter and a killer.
They entered a restaurant just below the hotel, and Sautee led the way to a booth where they were assured comparative privacy.
“Ham an’ eggs,” said Rathburn shortly when the waiter entered.
Sautee smiled again. He was covertly inspecting the man across the table from him and evidently what he saw caused him to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.
He gave his order with a nod and a mild flourish of the hand, indicating that he would take the same.
“Oh––waiter,” called Rathburn. “Four eggs with mine.”
Sautee laughed. It was a peculiar laugh in that it seemed to convey little mirth. It was perfunctory.
He gazed at Rathburn quizzically. “They tell me you’re a gunman,” he said in a low voice.
Rathburn’s brows shot up. “They? Who’s they?”
Sautee waved a hand impatiently. “I am the manager of the Dixie Queen. I have been around a bit, and I have eyes. I can see. I know the signals. I witnessed the play in the Red Feather last night.”
“That ain’t a bad name for the place,” Rathburn mused.
“Just what do you suppose was my object in getting you out of jail?” Sautee asked seriously, leaning over the table and looking at Rathburn searchingly. “You said last night you were a good guesser.”
“But I didn’t say I was good at riddles,” drawled Rathburn.
Sautee leaned back. For a moment there was a gleam of admiration in his eyes. Then they narrowed slightly.
“The Dixie Queen has been robbed four times within the last year,” he said soberly. “That represents considerable money. Yesterday I resorted to a ruse and sent the money up with a truck driver, but whoever is doing this thing must have got wise somehow, for the truck driver was held up, as you know, and the money taken.”
“Why not put an armed guard on that truck?” asked Rathburn with a yawn.
“I had full confidence in that ruse, and I knew the man who drove the truck could be trusted. Besides, he didn’t know what was inside the package.”
“How much did they get?” asked Rathburn sharply.
“Twenty-two thousand eight hundred and seventy dollars in cash.”
Rathburn stared at the mine manager and whistled softly. “What’s the sense in sending it up there at all?” he asked suddenly. “Why not pay off down here in town?”
Sautee sighed with an air of resignation. “That’s been argued several times,” he complained. “The men demand their pay in cash. They want it at the mine, for more than half of them have refused to come down here for it. It is twenty-nine miles up there to the mine, and it would take all the trucks we’ve got and two days to bring them down here and take them back. Besides, if we got them down here it would be a week before we could get half of them back up there and at work again.”
“But why won’t they take checks?” Rathburn demanded.
“It would be the same proposition,” Sautee explained. “There is a little village up there––pool room, soft-drink parlor, lunch room, store, and all that––and the men, or a large number of them, would want their checks cashed to make purchases and for spending money, and the cash would have to be transported so the business places could cash the checks. Then, there’s another reason. All the mines over on this side of the mountains, clear down into the desert, have always paid in cash. This is an old district, and the matter of getting paid in cash has become a tradition. That’s what the company is up against. We can refuse to do it, but all the other mines do it, and the Dixie Queen would soon have the reputation of being the only mine in the district that didn’t pay in cash. The tradition is handed down from the old days when men were paid in gold. There was a time when a miner wouldn’t take paper money in this country!”
The waiter entered with the breakfast dishes and they began to eat.
“Your mine owned by a stock company?” Rathburn inquired.
“Certainly,” replied Sautee. “All the mines here are. What mine isn’t?”
Rathburn ignored the question. “Stockholders live aroun’ here?” he asked, between mouthfuls.
“Oh––no, that is, not many,” replied Sautee with a quick glance at his questioner. “This district is pretty well worked out. Most of our stockholders live in the Middle West and the East.” He winked at Rathburn.
“Any other mines been robbed?” Rathburn persisted.
“No, that’s the funny part of it. Still––no, it isn’t funny. We’re working on the largest scale, and our pay-roll is, naturally, the largest. It furnishes the biggest incentive. In addition, the Dixie Queen is the farthest out from town, and there are many excellent spots for a holdup between town and the mine. Oh, don’t look skeptical. I’ve tried trusted messengers by roundabout trails, and guards and all that. They even held up a convoy on one occasion. I’ve set traps. I’ve done everything. But now I’ve a new idea, and I believe it’ll work.”
He finished his breakfast and stared steadily at Rathburn who didn’t look up, but leisurely drank a second cup of coffee. Sautee noted the slim, tapered right hand of the man across the table from him, the clear, gray eyes, the unmistakable poise of a man who is absolutely and utterly confident and sure of himself. The mine manager’s eyes glowed eagerly.
“Yes?” asked Rathburn calmly.
“I’m going to hire, or, rather, I’m going to try to hire a man I believe is just as tough, just as clever, just as quick with his gun as the men who’ve been robbing the Dixie Queen. I’m going to hire him to carry the money to the mine!”
“So that’s why you got me out of jail,” said Rathburn, drawing the inevitable tobacco and papers from his shirt pocket.
“Yes!” whispered Sautee eagerly. “I want you for the job!”
“You ain’t forgetting that I was suspected of that last job, are you? That’s why I went to jail, I reckon.”
“You didn’t have to go to jail unless you wanted to. You didn’t have to stop in this town and invite arrest. Mannix let you go up there yesterday because he felt sure he could get you when he wanted you again, and he figured you’d make some break that would give him a clew to your pals, if you had any. You went to jail because you knew he didn’t have anything on you.”
Saut
ee grinned in triumph.
“How do you know I won’t beat it with the money?” asked Rathburn.
“I don’t,” said Sautee quickly. “But I’m taking a chance on it that you won’t. I don’t care who you are, what you are now, or what you’ve been; I don’t care if you’re an outlaw! I figure, Rathburn, that if I come out square and trust you with this mission and depend upon you to carry it out, that you’ll play square with me. That’s what I’m banking on––your own sense of squareness. You’ve got it, for I can see it in your eyes.”
“Who’s Carlisle?” Rathburn asked dryly.
Sautee frowned. “He’s a––well, I guess you’d call him a sort of adventurer. I knew him down in Arizona. He follows the camps when they’re good, and this one happens to be good right now, for we’re improving the property. That’s how he happened to come up here about a year ago. Then, when the first robbery occurred, I engaged him as a sort of special agent. He didn’t make any progress, so I let him go. Since then he’s been out and in, gambling, prospecting, anything––he’s a fast man with his gun, and he has some claims here which he is developing on a small scale and trying to sell.”
Rathburn nodded but made no comment.
“Will you take the job?” Sautee asked anxiously.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to carry a sum of money to the mine. I’m not going to tell you how much, but it will be considerable. The money which was stolen yesterday was for the pay-off to-day. I’ve got to get the cash for the men up there quick. They all know about the holdup, so there’s no grumbling––yet. But there will be if they don’t have their money pretty quick. We want to pay off to-morrow. I could go with a guard, but to tell you the truth, Rathburn, it’s got to a point where I can’t trust a soul.”
“Why not Mannix?” asked Rathburn sharply.
Sautee shook his head; his beady, black eyes glowed, and he stroked his chin.
“There’s another sorrowful point,” he explained. “I tell you we’re up against it here, Rathburn. The Dixie Queen people and most of the other mines are fighting the present county administration as a matter of policy. They want certain changes, and––well, keep this to yourself––privileges. Mannix has been instructed by the sheriff of this county that he is not here to act as a guard for the Dixie Queen. See?”
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