by Unknown
Dave told his tale, while the ranchman listened in grim silence. When Sanders had finished, the owner of the stock brought a heavy hand down on his shoulder approvingly.
"You can ship cattle for me long as you've a mind to, boy. You fought for that stock like as if it had been yore own. You'll do to take along."
Dave flushed with boyish pleasure. He had not known whether the cattleman would approve what he had done, and after the long strain of the trip this endorsement of his actions was more to him than food or drink.
"They say I'm kinda stubborn. I didn't aim to lie down and let those guys run one over me," he said.
"Yore stubbornness is money in my pocket. Do you want to go back and ride for the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle?"
"Maybe, after a while, Mr. West. I got business in Denver for a few days."
The cattleman smiled. "Most of my boys have when they hit town, I notice."
"Mine ain't that kind. I reckon it's some more stubbornness," explained Dave.
"All right. When you've finished that business I can use you."
If Dave could have looked into the future he would have known that the days would stretch into months and the months to years before his face would turn toward ranch life again.
CHAPTER XII
THE LAW PUZZLES DAVE
Dave knew he was stubborn. Not many men would have come on such a wild-goose chase to Denver in the hope of getting back a favorite horse worth so little in actual cash. But he meant to move to his end intelligently.
If Miller and Doble were in the city they would be hanging out at some saloon or gambling-house. Once or twice Dave dropped in to Chuck Weaver's place, where the sporting men from all over the continent inevitably drifted when in Denver. But he had little expectation of finding the men he wanted there. These two rats of the underworld would not attempt to fleece keen-eyed professionals. They would prey on the unsophisticated.
His knowledge of their habits took him to that part of town below Lawrence Street. While he chatted with his foot on the rail, a glass of beer in front of him, he made inconspicuous inquiries of bartenders. It did not take him long to strike the trail.
"Two fellows I knew in the cattle country said they were comin' to Denver. Wonder if they did. One of 'em's a big fat guy name o' Miller--kinda rolls when he walks. Other's small and has a glass eye. Called himself George Doble when I knew him."
"Come in here 'most every day--both of 'em. Waitin' for the Festival of Mountain and Plain to open up. Got some kinda concession. They look to yours truly like--"
The bartender pulled himself up short and began polishing the top of the bar vigorously. He was a gossipy soul, and more than once his tongue had got him into trouble.
"You was sayin'--" suggested the cowboy.
"--that they're good spenders, as the fellow says," amended the bartender, to be on the safe side.
"When I usta know 'em they had a mighty cute little trick pony--name was Chiquito, seems to me. Ever hear 'em mention it?"
"They was fussin' about that horse to-day. Seems they got an offer for him and Doble wants to sell. Miller he says no."
"Yes?"
"I'll tell 'em a friend asked for 'em. What name?"
"Yes, do. Jim Smith."
"The fat old gobbler's liable to drop in any time now."
This seemed a good reason to Mr. Jim Smith, alias David Sanders, for dropping out. He did not care to have Miller know just yet who the kind friend was that had inquired for him.
But just as he was turning away a word held him for a moment. The discretion of the man in the apron was not quite proof against his habit of talk.
"They been quarrelin' a good deal together. I expect the combination is about ready to bust up," he whispered confidentially.
"Quarrelin'? What about?"
"Oh, I dunno. They act like they're sore as a boil at each other. Honest, I thought they was goin' to mix it yesterday. I breezed up wit' a bottle an' they kinda cooled off."
"Doble drunk?"
"Nope. Fact is, they'd trimmed a Greeley boob and was rowin' about the split. Miller he claimed Doble held out on him. I'll bet he did too."
Dave did not care how much they quarreled or how soon they parted after he had got back his horse. Until that time he preferred that they would give him only one trail to follow instead of two.
The cowpuncher made it his business to loaf on Larimer Street for the rest of the day. His beat was between Fifteenth and Sixteenth Streets, usually on the other side of the road from the Klondike Saloon.
About four o'clock his patience was rewarded. Miller came rolling along in a sort of sailor fashion characteristic of him. Dave had just time to dive into a pawnbroker's shop unnoticed.
A black-haired, black-eyed salesman came forward to wait on him. The puncher cast an eye helplessly about him. It fell on a suitcase.
"How much?" he asked.
"Seven dollars. Dirt sheap, my frient."
"Got any telescope grips?"
The salesman produced one. Dave bought it because he did not know how to escape without.
He carried it with him while he lounged up and down the sidewalk waiting for Miller to come out of the Klondike. When the fat gambler reappeared, the range-rider fell in behind him unobserved and followed uptown past the Tabor Opera House as far as California Street. Here they swung to the left to Fourteenth, where Miller disappeared into a rooming-house.
The amateur detective turned back toward the business section. On the way he dropped guiltily the telescope grip into a delivery wagon standing in front of a grocery. He had no use for it, and he had already come to feel it a white elephant on his hands.
With the aid of a city directory Dave located the livery stables within walking distance of the house where Miller was staying. Inspired perhaps by the nickel detective stories he had read, the cowboy bought a pair of blue goggles and a "store" collar. In this last, substituted for the handkerchief he usually wore loosely round his throat, the sleuth nearly strangled himself for lack of air. His inquiries at such stables as he found brought no satisfaction. Neither Miller nor the pinto had been seen at any of them.
Later in the evening he met Henry B. West at the St. James Hotel.
"How's that business of yore's gettin' along, boy?" asked the cattleman with a smile.
"Don' know yet. Say, Mr. West, if I find a hawss that's been stole from me, how can I get it back?"
"Some one steal a hawss from you?"
Dave told his story. West listened to a finish.
"I know a lawyer here. We'll ask him what to do," the ranchman said.
They found the lawyer at the Athletic Club. West stated the case.
"Your remedy is to replevin. If they fight, you'll have to bring witnesses to prove ownership."
"Bring witnesses from Malapi! Why, I can't do that," said Dave, staggered. "I ain't got the money. Why can't I just take the hawss? It's mine."
"The law doesn't know it's yours."
Dave left much depressed. Of course the thieves would go to a lawyer, and of course he would tell them to fight. The law was a darned queer thing. It made the recovery of his property so costly that the crooks who stole it could laugh at him.
"Looks like the law's made to protect scalawags instead of honest folks," Dave told West.
"I don't reckon it is, but it acts that way sometimes," admitted the cattleman. "You can see yoreself it wouldn't do for the law to say a fellow could get property from another man by just sayin' it was his. Sorry, Sanders. After all, a bronc's only a bronc. I'll give you yore pick of two hundred if you come back with me to the ranch."
"Much obliged, seh. Maybe I will later."
The cowpuncher walked the streets while he thought it over. He had no intention whatever of giving up Chiquito if he could find the horse. So far as the law went he was in a blind alley. He was tied hand and foot. That possession was nine points before the courts he had heard before.
The way to recover flashed to his brain l
ike a wave of light. He must get possession. All he had to do was to steal his own horse and make for the hills. If the thieves found him later--and the chances were that they would not even attempt pursuit if he let them know who he was--he would force them to the expense of going to law for Chiquito. What was sauce for the goose must be for the gander too.
Dave's tramp had carried him across the Platte into North Denver. On his way back he passed a corral close to the railroad tracks. He turned in to look over the horses.
The first one his eyes fell on was Chiquito.
CHAPTER XIII
FOR MURDER
Dave whistled. The pony pricked up its ears, looked round, and came straight to him. The young man laid his face against the soft, silky nose, fondled it, whispered endearments to his pet. He put the bronco through its tricks for the benefit of the corral attendant.
"Well, I'll be doggoned," that youth commented. "The little pinto sure is a wonder. Acts like he knows you mighty well."
"Ought to. I trained him. Had him before Miller got him."
"Bet you hated to sell him."
"You know it." Dave moved forward to his end, the intention to get possession of the horse. He spoke in a voice easy and casual. "Saw Miller a while ago. They're talkin' about sellin' the paint hawss, him and his pardner Doble. I'm to saddle up and show what Chiquito can do."
"Say, that's a good notion. If I was a buyer I'd pay ten bucks more after you'd put him through that circus stuff."
"Which is Miller's saddle?" When it was pointed out to him, Dave examined it and pretended to disapprove. "Too heavy. Lend me a lighter one, can't you?"
"Sure. Here's three or four. Help yourself."
The wrangler moved into the stable to attend to his work.
Dave cinched, swung to the saddle, and rode to the gate of the corral. Two men were coming in, and by the sound of their voices were quarreling. They stepped aside to let him pass, one on each side of the gate, so that it was necessary to ride between them.
They recognized the pinto at the same moment Dave did them. On the heels of that recognition came another.
Doble ripped out an oath and a shout of warning. "It's Sanders!"
A gun flashed as the pony jumped to a gallop. The silent night grew noisy with shots, voices, the clatter of hoofs. Twice Dave fired answers to the challenges which leaped out of the darkness at him. He raced across the bridge spanning the Platte and for a moment drew up on the other side to listen for sounds which might tell him whether he would be pursued. One last solitary revolver shot disturbed the stillness.
The rider grinned. "Think he'd know better than to shoot at me this far."
He broke his revolver, extracted the empty shells, and dropped them to the street. Then he rode up the long hill toward Highlands, passed through that suburb of the city, and went along the dark and dusty road to the shadows of the Rockies silhouetted in the night sky.
His flight had no definite objective except to put as much distance between himself and Denver as possible. He knew nothing about the geography of Colorado, except that a large part of the Rocky Mountains and a delectable city called Denver lived there. His train trip to it had told him that one of its neighbors was New Mexico, which was in turn adjacent to Arizona. Therefore he meant to get to New Mexico as quickly as Chiquito could quite comfortably travel.
Unfortunately Dave was going west instead of south. Every step of the pony was carrying him nearer the roof of the continent, nearer the passes of the front range which lead, by divers valleys and higher mountains beyond, to the snowclad regions of eternal white.
Up in this altitude it was too cold to camp out without a fire and blankets.
"I reckon we'll keep goin', old pal," the young man told his horse. "I've noticed roads mostly lead somewheres."
Day broke over valleys of swirling mist far below the rider. The sun rose and dried the moisture. Dave looked down on a town scattered up and down a gulch.
He met an ore team and asked the driver what town it was. The man looked curiously at him.
"Why, it's Idaho Springs," he said. "Where you come from?"
Dave eased himself in the saddle. "From the Southwest."
"You're quite a ways from home. I reckon your hills ain't so uncurried down there, are they?"
The cowpuncher looked over the mountains. He was among the summits, aglow in the amber light of day with the many blended colors of wild flowers. "We got some down there, too, that don't fit a lady's boodwar. Say, if I keep movin' where'll this road take me?"
The man with the ore team gave information. It struck Dave that he had run into a blind alley.
"If you're after a job, I reckon you can find one at some of the mines. They're needin' hands," the teamster added.
Perhaps this was the best immediate solution of the problem. The puncher nodded farewell and rode down into the town.
He left Chiquito at a livery barn, after having personally fed and watered the pinto, and went himself to a hotel. Here he registered, not under his own name, ate breakfast, and lay down for a few hours' sleep. When he awakened he wrote a note with the stub of a pencil to Bob Hart. It read:
Well, Bob, I done got Chiquito back though it sure looked like I wasn't going to but you never can tell and as old Buck Byington says its a hell of a long road without no bend in it and which you can bet your boots the old alkali is right at that. Well I found the little pie-eater in Denver O K but so gaunt he wont hardly throw a shadow and what can you expect of scalawags like Miller and Doble who don't know how to treat a horse. Well I run Chiquito off right under their noses and we had a little gun play and made my getaway and I reckon I will stay a spell and work here. Well good luck to all the boys till I see them again in the sweet by and by.
Dave
P.S. Get this money order cashed old-timer and pay the boys what I borrowed when we hit the trail after Miller and Doble. I lit out to sudden to settle. Five to Steve and five to Buck. Well so long.
Dave
The puncher went to the post-office, got a money order, and mailed the letter, after which he returned to the hotel. He intended to eat dinner and then look for work.
Three or four men were standing on the steps of the hotel talking with the proprietor. Dave was quite close before the Boniface saw him.
"That's him," the hotel-keeper said in an excited whisper.
A brown-faced man without a coat turned quickly and looked at Sanders. He wore a belt with cartridges and a revolver.
"What's your name?" he demanded.
Dave knew at once this man was an officer of the law. He knew, too, the futility of trying to escape under the pseudonym he had written on the register.
"Sanders--Dave Sanders."
"I want you."
"So? Who are you?"
"Sheriff of the county."
"Whadjawant me for?"
"Murder."
Dave gasped. His heart beat fast with a prescience of impending disaster. "Murder," he repeated dully.
"You're charged with the murder of George Doble last night in Denver."
The boy stared at him with horror-stricken eyes. "Doble? My God, did I kill him?" He clutched at a porch post to steady himself. The hills were sliding queerly up into the sky.
CHAPTER XIV
TEN YEARS
All the way back to Denver, while the train ran down through the narrow, crooked cañon, Dave's mind dwelt in a penumbra of horror. It was impossible he could have killed Doble, he kept telling himself. He had fired back into the night without aim. He had not even tried to hit the men who were shooting at him. It must be some ghastly joke.
None the less he knew by the dull ache in his heart that this awful thing had fastened on him and that he would have to pay the penalty. He had killed a man, snuffed out his life wantonly as a result of taking the law into his own hands. The knowledge of what he had done shook him to the soul.
It remained with him, in the background of his mind, up to and through his trial. What sho
ok his nerve was the fact that he had taken a life, not the certainty of the punishment that must follow.
West called to see him at the jail, and to the cattleman Dave told the story exactly as it had happened. The owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle walked up and down the cell rumpling his hair.
"Boy, why didn't you let on to me what you was figurin' on pullin' off? I knew you was some bull-haided, but I thought you had a lick o' sense left."
"Wisht I had," said Dave miserably.