That night, at dinner, Custer made light of the charge against him, yet at the same time he prepared them for what might happen, for the proceedings before the commissioner had impressed him with the gravity of his case, as had also the talk he had had with his attorney afterward.
“My boy’s word is all I need,” replied his mother.
Eva came and put her arms about him.
“They wouldn’t send you to jail, would they?” she demanded. “It would break my heart.”
“Not if you knew I was innocent.”
“N-no, not then, I suppose; but it would be awful. If you were guilty, it would kill me. I’d never want to live if my brother was convicted of a crime, and was guilty of it. I’d kill myself first!”
Her brother drew her face down and kissed her tenderly.
“That would be foolish, dear,” he said. “No matter what one of us does, such an act would make it all the worse — for those who were left.”
“I can’t help it,” she said. “It isn’t just because I have had the honor of the Penningtons preached to me all my life. It’s because it’s in me — the Pennington honor. It’s a part of me, just as it’s a part of you, and mother, and father. It’s a part of the price we have to pay for being Penningtons. I have always been proud of it, Custer, even if I am only a silly girl.”
“I’m proud of it, too, and I haven’t jeopardized it; but even if I had, you mustn’t think about killing yourself on my account, or any one’s else.”
“Well, I know you’re not guilty, so I don’t have to.”
“Good! Let’s talk about something pleasant.”
“Why didn’t you see Grace while you were in Los Angeles?”
“I tried to. I called up her boarding place from the lawyer’s office. I understood the woman who answered the phone to say that she would call her, but she came back in a couple of minutes and said that Grace was out on location.”
“Did you leave your name?”
“I told the woman who I was when she answered the phone.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t see her,” said Mrs. Pennington. “I often think that Mrs. Evans, or Guy, should run down to Los Angeles occasionally and see Grace.”
“That’s what Shannon says,” said Custer. “I’ll try to see her next week, before I come home.”
“Shannon was up nearly all afternoon waiting to hear if we received any word from you. When you telephoned that you had been held to the Federal grand jury, she would scarcely believe it. She said there must be some mistake.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“She asked whether Guy got there before you were held and I told her that you said Guy visited you in the jail. She seems so worried about the affair - just as if she were one of the family. She is such a dear girl! I think I grow to love her more and more every day.”
“Yes,” said Custer, non-committally.
“She asked me one rather peculiar question,” Eva went on.
“What was that?”
“She asked if I was sure that it was you who had been held to the grand jury.”
“That was odd, wasn’t it?”
“She’s so sure of your innocence just as sure as we are,” said Eva.
“Well, that’s very nice of her,” remarked Custer.
CHAPTER 24
The next morning he saw Shannon, who came to ride with them, the Penningtons, as had been her custom. She looked tired, as if she had spent a sleepless night. She had — she had spent two sleepless nights, and she had had to fight the old fight all over again. It had been very hard, even though she had won, for it had shown her that the battle was not over. She had thought that she had conquered the craving; but that had been when she had had no troubles or unhappiness to worry her mind and nerves. The last two days had been days of suffering for her, and the two sleepless nights had induced a nervous condition that begged for the quieting influence of the little white powder.
Custer noticed immediately that something was amiss. The roses were gone from her cheeks, leaving a suggestion of the old pallor; and though she smiled and greeted him happily, he thought that he detected an expression of wistfulness and pain in her face when she was not conscious that others were observing her.
Presently he turned toward her.
“I am going to ride over to the east pasture after breakfast,” he said, and waited.
“Is that an invitation?”
He smiled and nodded.
“But not if it isn’t perfectly convenient,” he added.
“I’d love to come with you. You know I always do.”
“Fine! And you’ll breakfast with us?”
“Not to-day. I have a couple of letters to write that I want to get off right away; but I’ll be up between eight thirty and nine. Is that too late?”
“I’ll ride down after breakfast and wait for you — if I won’t be in the way.”
“I’ve been thinking.” said Eva. “I’ve been thinking how lonely it will be when you have to go away to jail.”
“Why, they can’t send me to jail — I haven’t done anything,” he tried to reassure her.
“Come, dear, don’t worry about it. The chances are that they’ll free me. Even if they don’t, you mustn’t feel quite so bitterly against the men who are responsible. There may be reasons that you know nothing of that would keep them silent. Let’s not talk about it. All we can do now is to wait and see what the grand jury is going to do. In the meantime I don’t intend to worry.”
Their ride that morning was over a loved and familiar trail that led across El Camino Corto over low hills into Horse Camp Canyon, and up Horse Camp to Coyote Springs; then over El Camino Largo to Sycamore Canyon and down beneath the old, old sycamores to the ranch. She felt that she knew each bush and tree and boulder, and they held for her the quiet restfulness of the familiar faces of old friends. She should miss them, but she would carry them in her memory forever.
When they came to the fork in the road, she would not let Custer ride home with her.
“At eight thirty, then,” he called her, as she urged Baldy into a canter and left them with a gay wave of the hand that gave no token of the heavy sorrow in her heart.
After breakfast, as she was returning to her bungalow to write her letters, she saw a Mexican boy on a bicycle turn in at her gate. They met in front of the bungalow.
“Are you Miss Burke?” he asked. “Bartolo says for you to come to his camp in the mountains this morning, sure,” he went on, having received an affirmative reply.
The girl thought for a moment. Possibly here was a way out of her dilemma. If she could force Bartolo by threats of exposure, he might discover a way to clear Custer Pennington without incriminating himself. She turned to the boy.
“Tell him I will come.”
“I do not see him again. He is up in his camp now. He told me this yesterday. He also told me to tell you that he would be watching for you, and if you did not come alone you would not find him.”
“Very well,” she said, and turned into the bungalow.
She wrote her letters, but she was not thinking about them. Then she took them over to Powers to take to the city for her. After that she went to the telephone and called the Rancho del Ganado, asking for Custer when she got the connection.
“I’m terribly disappointed,” she said, when he came to the telephone. “I find I simply can’t ride this morning; but if you’ll put it off until afternoon—”
“Why, certainly! Come up to lunch and we’ll ride afterward,” he told her.
“You won’t go, then, until afternoon?” she asked.
“I’ll ride over to the east pasture this morning, and we’ll just take a ride any old place that you want to go this afternoon.”
“All right,” she replied.
She had hoped that he would not ride that morning. There was a chance that he might see her, even though the east pasture was miles from the trail she would ride, for there were high places on both trails, where
a horseman would be visible for several miles.
“This noon at lunch, then,” he said.
CHAPTER 25
Half an hour later Custer Pennington swung into the saddle and headed the Apache up Sycamore Canyon.
The trail to the east pasture led through Jackknife. As he passed the spot where he had been arrested on the previous Friday night, the man made a wry face — more at the recollection of the ease with which he had been duped than because of the fact of his arrest.
Below and to Custer’s right the ranch buildings lay dotted about in the dust like children’s toys upon a gray rug. Beyond was the castle on the hill, shining in the sun, and farther still the soft-carpeted valley, in grays and browns and greens. Then the young man’s glance wandered to the left and out over the basin meadow, and instantly the joy died out of his heart and the happiness from his eyes. Straight along the mysterious trail loped a horse and rider toward the mountains, and even at that distance he recognized them as Baldy and Shannon.
This was the end. He was through with her forever. What did he know about her? What did any of them know about her?
She was doubtless a hireling of the gang that had stolen the whiskey and disposed of it through Guy. They had sent her here to spy on Guy and to watch the Penningtons. It was she who had set the trap in which he had been caught, not to save Guy, but to throw the suspicion of guilt upon Custer.
With the realization, the senseless fury of his anger left him. He turned the Apache away, and headed him again toward the east pasture; but deep within his heart was a cold anger that was quite as terrible, though in a different way.
Shannon Burke rode up the trail toward the camp of the smugglers, all unconscious that there looked down upon her from a high ridge behind eyes filled with hate and loathing — the eyes of the man she loved.
As she reached the foot of the trail, she saw Bartolo standing beneath a great oak, awaiting her. His pony stood with trailing reins beneath the tree. A rifle butt protruded from a boot on the right of the saddle. He came forward as she guided Baldy toward the tree.
“Buenos dias, senorita,” he greeted her, twisting his pock-marked face into the semblance of a smile.
“What do you want of me?” Shannon demanded.
“I need money,” he said. “You get money from Evans. He got all the money from the hooch we take down two weeks ago. We never get no chance to get it from him.”
“I’ll get you nothing!”
“You get money now — and whenever I want it,” said the Mexican, “or I tell about Crumb. You Crumb’s woman. I tell how you peddle dope. I know! You do what I tell you, or you go to the pen. Sabe?”
“Now listen to me,” said the girl. “I didn’t come up here to take orders from you. I came to give you orders.”
“What?” exclaimed the Mexican, and then he laughed aloud. “You give me orders? That is damn funny!”
“Yes, it is funny. You will enjoy it immensely when I tell you what you are to do.”
“Hurry, then; I have no time to waste.” He was still laughing.
“You are going to find some way to clear Mr. Pennington of the charge against him. I don’t care what the way is, so long as it does not incriminate any other innocent person. If you can do it without getting yourself in trouble, well and good. I do not care; but you must see that there is evidence before the grand jury next Wednesday that will prove Mr. Pennington’s innocence.”
“Is that all?” inquired Bartolo, grinning broadly.
“That is all.”
“And if I don’t it — eh?”
“Then I shall go before the grand jury and tell them about you, and Allen — about the opium and the morphine and the cocaine — how you smuggled the stolen booze from the ship off the coast up into the mountains.”
“You think you would do that?” he asked. “But how about me? Wouldn’t I be telling everything I know about you? Allen would testify, too, and they would make Crumb come and tell how you lived with him. Oh, no, I guess you don’t tell the grand jury nothing!”
“I shall tell them everything. Do you think I care about myself? I will tell them all that Allen and Crumb could tell; and listen, Bartolo — I can tell them something more. There used to be five men in your gang. There were three when I came up last week, and Allen is in jail; but where is the other?”
The man’s face went black with anger, and perhaps with fear, too.
“What you know about that?” he demanded sharply.
“Allen told Crumb the first time he came to the Hollywood bungalow that he was having trouble among his gang, that you were a hard lot to handle, and that already one named Bartolo had killed one named Gracial. How would you like me to tell that to the grand jury?”
“You never tell that to no one.”’ growled the Mexican. “You know too damn much for your health!”
He had stepped suddenly forward and seized her wrist. She struck at him and at the same time put the spurs to Baldy — in her fear and excitement more severely than she had intended. The high-spirited animal, unused to such treatment, leaped forward past the Mexican, who, clinging to the girl’s wrist, dragged her from the saddle. Baldy turned, and feeling himself free, ran for the trail that led toward home.
“You know too damn much!” repeated Bartolo. “You better off up here alongside Gracial!”
The girl had risen to her feet and stood facing him. There was no fear in her eyes. She was very beautiful, and her beauty was not lost upon the Mexican.
“You mean that you would kill me to keep me from telling the truth about you?” she asked.
The man stood facing her, holding her by the wrist. His eyes appraised her boldly.
“You damn good-looking,” he said, and pulled the girl toward him. “Before I kill you, I—”
He threw an arm about her roughly, and, leaning far over her as she pulled away, he sought to reach her lips with his.
CHAPTER 26
The Apache had taken but a few steps on the trail toward the east pasture when Custer reined him in suddenly and wheeled him about.
“I’ll settle this thing now,” he muttered. “I’ll catch her with them. I’ll find out who the others are. By God, I’ve got her now, and I’ve got them!”
The cold rage that gripped Pennington brooked no delay. He was glad, though, that he was unarmed; for he knew that when he came face to face with the men with whom Shannon Burke had conspired against him, he might again cease to be master of his anger.
At the summit they met Baldy, head and tail erect, snorting and riderless. The appearance of the horse and his evident fright bespoke something amiss. Custer had seen him just as he was emerging from the upper end of the dim trail leading down the opposite side of the hogback. He turned the Apache into it and headed him down toward the oaks.
Below, Shannon was waging a futile fight against the burly Bartolo. She struck at his face and attempted to push him from her, but he only laughed his crooked laugh and pushed her slowly toward the trampled dust of the abandoned camp.
“Before I kill you—” he repeated again and again, as if it were some huge joke.
He heard the sound of the Apache’s hoofs upon the trail above but he thought it was the loose horse of the girl. Custer was almost at the bottom of the trail when the Mexican glanced up and saw him. With a curse, he hurled Shannon aside and leaped toward his pony.
At the same instant the girl saw the Apache and his rider, and in the next she saw Bartolo seize his rifle and attempt to draw it from its boot. Leaping to her feet she sprang toward the Mexican, who was cursing frightfully because the rifle had stuck and he could not readily extricate it from the boot. As she reached him, he succeeded in jerking the weapon free. Swinging about, he threw it to his shoulder and fired at Pennington, just as Shannon threw herself upon him, clutching at his arms and dragging the muzzle of the weapon downward. He struck at her face, and tried to wrench the rifle from her grasp; but she clung to it with all the desperation that the danger confrontin
g the man she loved engendered.
Custer had thrown himself from the saddle and was running toward them. Bartolo saw that he could not regain the rifle in time to use it. He struck the girl a terrible blow in the face that sent her to the ground. Then he turned and vaulted into his saddle, and was away across the bottom and up the trail on the opposite side before Pennington could reach and drag him from his pony.
Custer turned to the girl lying motionless upon the ground. He knelt and raised her in his arms. She had fainted, and her face was very white. He looked down into it — the face of the girl he hated. He felt his arms about her, he felt her body against his, and suddenly a look of horror filled his eyes.
He laid her back upon the ground, and stood up. He was trembling violently. As he had held her in his arms, there had swept over him a almost irresistible desire to crush her to him, to cover her eyes and cheeks with kisses, to smother her lips with them — the girl he hated!
A great light had broken upon his mental horizon — a light of understanding that left all his world in the dark shadow of despair. He loved Shannon Burke.
Again he knelt beside her, and very gently he lifted her in his arms until he could support her across one shoulder. Then he whistled to the Apache, who was nibbling the bitter leaves of the live oak. When the horse came to him, he looped the bridle reins about his arm and started on foot up the trail down which he had just ridden, carrying Shannon across his shoulder. At the summit of the ridge he found Baldy grazing upon the sparse, burned grasses of later September.
It was then that Shannon Burke opened her eyes. At first, confused by the rush of returning recollections she thought that it was the Mexican who was carrying her; but an instant later she recognized the whipcord riding breeches and the familiar boots and spurs of the son of Ganado. Then she stirred upon his shoulder.
“I am all right now,” she said. “You may put me down. I can walk.”
He lowered her to the ground, but he still supported her as they stood facing each other.
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 759