“You don’t know it; but I know that you’re armed, and that you’re in a mighty bad hole. I don’t know what you might do, and I ain’t taking no chances. So stick ’em up, and do it quick. If anybody’s going to get bored around here it’ll be you, and not none of my men!”
“You’re a damned fool,” said Pennington succinctly; but he held his hands before his shoulders, as he had been directed. Five men rode from the shadows and surrounded him. One of them dismounted and disarmed him. He lowered his hands and looked about at them.
“Would you mind,” he said, “showing me your authority for this, and telling me what in hell it’s all about?”
One of the men threw back his coat, revealing a silver shield. “That’s my authority,” he said; “that, and the goods we got on you.”
“What goods?”
“Well, we expect to get ’em when we examine those packs.”
“Look here!” said Custer. “You’re all wrong. I have nothing to do with that pack train or what it’s packing. I came up here to catch the fellows who have been bringing it down through Ganado every Friday night, and who cut our fence last week. I don’t know any more about what’s in those packs than you do — evidently not as much.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Pennington. You’ll probably get a chance to tell all that to a jury. We been laying for you since last spring. We didn’t know it was you until one of your gang squealed; but we knew that stuff was somewhere in the hills above L. A., and we aimed to get it and you sooner or later.”
“Me?”
“Well, not you particularly, but whoever was bootlegging it. To tell you the truth, I’m plumb surprised to find who it is. I thought all along it was some gang of cheap greasers; but it don’t make no difference who it is to your Uncle Sam.”
“You say some one told you it was I?” asked Custer.
“Sure! How else would we know it? It don’t pay to double-cross your pals, Mr. Pennington.”
“What are you going to do with me?” he asked.
“We’re going to take you back to L. A. and get you held to the Federal grand jury.”
“To-night?”
“We’re going to take you back to-night.”
“Can I stop at the house first?”
“No, We got a warrant to search the place, and we’re going to leave a couple of my men here to do it the first thing in the morning. I got an idea you ain’t the only one around there that knows something about this business.”
CHAPTER 22
They took Custer down to the village of Ganado, where they had left their cars and obtained horses. Here they left the animals, including the Apache, with instructions that he should be returned to the Rancho del Ganado in the morning.
The inhabitants of the village, almost to a man, had grown up in neighborly friendship with the Penningtons. When he from whom the officers had obtained their mounts discovered the identity of the prisoner, his surprise was exceeded only by his anger.
“If I’d known who you was after,” he said, “you’d never have got no horses from me. I’d a’ hamstrung ’em first! I’ve known Cus Pennington since he was knee high to a grasshopper, and whatever you took him for he never done it. Wait till the colonel hears of this. You won’t have no more job than a jack rabbit!”
The marshal turned threateningly toward the speaker.
“Shut up!” he advised. “If Colonel Pennington hears of this before morning, you’ll wish to God you was a jack rabbit, and could get out of the country in two jumps! Now you get what I’m telling you — you’re to keep your trap closed until morning. Hear me?”
The officers and their prisoner were in the car ready to start. The marshal pointed a finger at Jim.
“Don’t forget what I told you about keeping your mouth shut until morning,” he admonished.
They drove off toward Los Angeles. Jim watched them for a moment, as the red tail light diminished in the distance. Then he turned into the office of his feed barn and took the telephone receiver from its hook. “Gimme Ganado No. 1,” he said to the sleepy night operator.
It was five minutes before continuous ringing brought the colonel to the extension telephone in his bedroom. He seemed unable to comprehend the meaning of what Jim was trying to tell him, so sure was he that Custer was in bed and asleep in a near-by room; but at last he was half convinced, for he had known Jim for many years, and well knew his stability and his friendship.
He hung up the receiver. While he dressed hastily, he explained to his wife the purport of the message he had just received.
“What are you going to do, Custer? she asked.
“I’m going to Los Angeles, Julia. Unless that marshal’s driving a racing car, I’ll be waiting for him when he gets there!”
Shortly before breakfast the following morning two officers, armed with a warrant, searched the castle on the hill. In Custer Pennington’s closet they found something which seemed to fill them with elation — two full bottles of whiskey and an empty bottle, each bearing a label identical with those on the bottles they had found in the cases borne by the burros. With this evidence and the laden pack train, they started off toward the village.
Shannon Burke had put in an almost sleepless night. For hours she had lain watching the black silhouette of the cupola against the clear sky, waiting for the light which would announce that Custer had returned home in safety: but no light shone to relieve her anxiety.
She was up early in the morning, and in the saddle at the first streak of dawn, riding directly to the stables of the Rancho del Ganado. The stableman was there, saddling the horses while they fed.
“No one has come down yet?” she asked.
“The Apache’s gone,” he replied. “I don’t understand it. He hasn’t been in his box all night. I was just thinkin’ of goin’ up to the house to see if Custer was there. Don’t seem likely he’d be ridin’ all night, does it.”
“No,” she said. Her heart was in her mouth. She could scarcely speak. “I’ll ride up for you.” she managed to say.
Wheeling Baldy, she put him up the steep hill to the house. The iron gate that closed the patio arch at night was still down, so she rode around to the north side of the house and coo-hooed to attract the attention of some one within. Mrs. Pennington followed by Eva, came to the door. Both were fully dressed. When they saw who it was, they came out and told Shannon what had happened.
He was not injured, then. The sudden sense of relief left her weak, and for a moment she did not consider the other danger that confronted him. He was safe! That was all she cared about just then. Later she commenced to realize the gravity of his situation, and the innocent part that she had taken in involving him in the toils of the scheme which her interference must have suggested to those actually responsible for the traffic in stolen liquor, the guilt of which they had now cleverly shifted to the shoulders of an innocent man.
But there was something that she could do. When she turned Baldy down the hill from the Pennington’s, she took the road home that led past the Evan’s ranch, and, turning in, dismounted and tied Baldy at the fence. Her knock was answered by Mrs. Evans.
“Is Guy here?” asked Shannon. Hearing her voice, Guy came from his room, drawing on his coat. “You’re getting as bad as the Pennington’s, “ he said, laughing. “They have no respect for Christian hours!”
“Something has happened,” she said, “that I thought you should know about. Custer was arrested last night by government officers and taken to Los Angeles. He was out on the Apache at the time. No one seems to know where he was arrested, or why; but the supposition is that they found him in the hills, for the man who runs the feed barn in the village — Jim — told the colonel that the officers got horses from him and rode up toward the ranch, and that it was a couple of hours later that they brought Custer back on the Apache. The stablemen just told me that the Apache had not been in his stall all night, and I know — Custer told me not to tell, but it will make no difference now — that he was
going up into the hills last night to try to catch the men who have been bringing down loads on burros every Friday night for a long time, and who cut his fence last Friday.”
She looked straight into Guy’s eyes as she spoke; but he dropped his as a flush mounted his cheek.
“I thought,” — she continued, “that Guy might want to go to Los Angeles and see if he could help Custer in any way. The Colonel went last night.”
“I’ll go now,” said Guy. “I guess I can help him.”
His voice was suddenly weary, and he turned away with an air of dejection which assured Shannon that he intended to do the only honorable thing that he could do — assume the guilt that had been thrown upon Custer’s shoulders, no matter what the consequences to himself. She had little doubt that Guy would do this, for she realized his affection for Custer as well as the impulsive generosity of his nature, which, however marred by weakness, was still fine by instinct.
Half an hour later, after a hasty breakfast, young Evans started for Los Angeles, while his mother and Shannon, standing in the porch of the bungalow, waved their good-byes as his roadster swung through the gate into the county road. Mrs. Evans had only a vague idea as to what her son could do to assist Custer Pennington out of his difficulty; but Shannon Burke knew that Pennington’s fate lay in the hands of Guy Evans, unless she chose to tell what she knew.
Colonel Pennington had overtaken the marshal’s car before the latter reached Los Angeles, but after a brief parley on the road he had discovered that he could do nothing to alter the officer’s determination to place Custer in the county jail pending his preliminary hearing before a United States commissioner. Neither the colonel’s plea that his son should be allowed to accompany him to an hotel for the night, nor his assurance that he would be personally responsible for the young man’s appearance before the commissioner on the following morning, availed to move the obdurate marshal from his stand; nor would he permit the colonel to talk with the prisoner.
This was the last straw. Colonel Pennington had managed to dissemble outward indications of his rising ire, but now an amused smile lighted his son’s face as he realized that his father was upon the verge of an explosion. He caught the older man’s eyes and shook his head.
“It’ll only make it worse,” he cautioned.
The colonel directed a parting glare at the marshal, muttered something about homeopathic intellects, and turned back to his roadster.
CHAPTER 23
During the long ride to Los Angeles, and later in his cell in the county jail, Custer Pennington had devoted many hours to seeking an explanation of the motives underlying the plan to involve him in a crime of which he had no knowledge, nor even a suspicion of the identity of its instigators. To his knowledge, he had no enemies whose hostility was sufficiently active to lead them to do him so great a wrong. He had had no trouble with any one recently, other than his altercation with Slick Allen several months before; yet it was obvious that he had been deliberately sacrificed for some ulterior purpose. What that purpose was he could only surmise.
The most logical explanation, he finally decided, was that those actually responsible, realizing that discovery was imminent, had sought to divert suspicion from themselves by fastening it upon another. That they — had selected him as the victim might easily be explained on the ground that his embarrassing interest in their movements had already centered their attention upon him, while it also offered the opportunity for luring him into the trap without arousing his suspicions.
It was, then, just a combination of circumstances that had led him into his present predicament; but there still remained unanswered one question that affected his peace of mind more considerably than all the others combined. Who had divulged to the thieves his plans for the previous night?
Concurrently with that question there arose before his mind’s eye a picture of Shannon Burke and Baldy as they topped the summit above Jackknife from the trail that led across the basin meadow back into the hills, he knew not where.
“I can’t believe that it was she,” he told himself for the hundredth time. “She could not have done it. I won’t believe it! She could explain it all if I could ask her; but I can’t ask her. There is a great deal that I cannot understand, and the most inexplicable thing is that she could possibly have had any connection whatever with the affair.”
When his father came with an attorney, in the morning, the son made no mention of Shannon Burke’s ride into the hills, or of her anxiety, when they parted in the afternoon, to learn if he was going to carry out his plan for Friday night.
“Did any one know of your intention to watch for these men?” asked the attorney.
“No one,” he replied; “but they might have become suspicious from the fact that the week before I had all the gates padlocked on Friday. They had to cut the fence that night to get through. They probably figured that it was getting too hot for them, and that on the following Friday I would take some other steps to discover them. Then they made sure of it by sending me that message from Los Angeles. Gee, but I bit like a sucker!”
“It is unfortunate,” remarked the attorney, “that you had not discussed your plans with some one before you undertook to carry them out on Friday night. If we could thus definitely establish your motive for going alone into the hills, and to the very spot where you were discovered with the pack train, I think it would go much further toward convincing the court that you were there without any criminal intent than your own unsupported testimony to that effect!”
Colonel Pennington snorted.
“The best thing to do now,” said the attorney, “is to see if we can get an immediate hearing, and arrange for bail in case he is held to the grand jury.”
“I’ll go with you,” said the colonel.
They had been gone but a short time when Guy Evans was admitted to Custer’s cell. The latter looked up and smiled when he saw who his visitor was.
“It was bully of you to come,” he said. “Bringing condolences, or looking for material, old thing.”
“Don’t joke, Cus,” exclaimed Evans, “It’s too rotten to joke about, and it’s all my fault.”
“Your fault?”
“I am the guilty one. I’ve come down to give myself up.”
“Just what the devil are you talking about?” inquired Pennington.” Do you mean to tell me that you have been mixed up in — well, what do you know about that?” A sudden light had dawned upon Custer’s understanding. “That hooch that you’ve been getting me — that I joked you about — it was really the stuff that was stolen from a bonded warehouse in New York? It wasn’t any joke at all?”
“You can see for yourself now how much of a joke it was,” replied Evans.
“I’ll admit,” returned Custer ruefully, “that it does require considerable of a sense of humor to see it in this joint!”
“What do you suppose they’ll do to me?” asked Guy. “Do you suppose they’ll send me to the penitentiary?”
“Tell me the whole thing from the beginning — who got you into it, and just what you’ve done. Don’t omit a thing, no matter how much it incriminates you. I don’t need to tell you, old man, that I’m for you, no matter, what you’ve done.”
“I know that, Cus; but I’m afraid no one can help me. I’m in for it. I knew it was stolen from the start. I have been selling it since last May - seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-six quarts of it — and I made a dollar on every quart. It was what I was going to start housekeeping on. Poor little Eva!” Again a sob half choked him. “It was Slick Allen that started me. First he sold me some; then he got me to sell you a bottle, and bring him the money. Then he had me, or at least he made me think so; and he insisted on my handling it for them out in the valley. It wasn’t hard to persuade me, for it looked safe, and it didn’t seem like such a rotten thing to do, and I wanted the money the worst way. I know they’re all bum excuses. I shan’t make any excuses — I’ll take my medicine; but it’s when I think of Eva that it hu
rts. It’s only Eva that counts!”
“Yes,” said Pennington, laying his hand affectionately on the other’s shoulder. “It is only Eva who counts; and because of Eva, and because you and I love her so much, you cannot go to the penitentiary.”
“What do you mean — cannot go?”
“Have you told any one else what you have just told me?”
No.
“Don’t. Go back home, and keep your mouth shut,” said Custer.
“You mean that you will take a chance of going up for what I did? Nothing doing! Do you suppose I’d let you, Cus, the best friend I’ve got in the world, go to the pen for me — for something I did?”
“It’s not for you, Guy. I wouldn’t go to the pen for you or any other man; but I’d go to the pen for Eva, and so would you.”
“I know it, but I can’t let you do it. I’m not rotten, Cus!”
“You’ve got to — it’s the easiest way. We’ve all got to be punished for what you did — those who love us are always punished for our sins; but let me tell you that I don’t think you are going to escape punishment if I go up for this. You’re going to suffer more than I. You’re going to suffer more than you would if you went up yourself; but it can’t be helped. The question is, are you man enough to do this for Eva? It is your sacrifice more than mine.”
“My God, Cus, I’d rather go myself!”
“I know you would.”
Evans walked slowly from the jail, entered his car, and drove away. Of the two hearts his was the heavier; of the two burdens his the more difficult to bear.
Custer Pennington appearing before a United States commissioner that afternoon for his preliminary hearing, was held to the Federal grand jury, and admitted to bail. The evidence brought by the deputies who had searched the Pennington home, taken in connection with the circumstances surrounding his arrest, seemed to leave the commissioner no alternative. Even the colonel had to admit that to himself, though he would never had admitted it to another. The case would probably come up before the grand jury on the following Wednesday.
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 758