The stableman was still there, and helped him.
“That was a new shoe,” Custer said. “Look about the corral and the box, and see if you can find it. You can tack it back on.” Then he swung to Baldy’s back and cantered off after the others.
A deputy sheriff came from the village of Ganado before they returned from their ride, and went up the canyon to take charge of Crumb’s body and investigate the scene of the crime.
Eva was still in bed when they called to breakfast. They insisted upon Shannon remaining, and the four were passing along the arcade past Eva’s room.
“I think I’ll go in and waken her,” said Mrs. Pennington. “She doesn’t like to sleep so late.”
The others passed into the living room, and were walking toward the dining room when they were startled by a scream.
“Custer! Custer!” Mrs. Pennington called to her husband.
All three turned and hastened back to Eva’s room, where they found Mrs. Pennington half lying across the bed her body convulsed with sobs. The colonel was the first to reach her, followed by Custer and Shannon. The bedclothes lay half thrown back, where Mrs. Pennington had turned them. The white sheet was stained with blood, and in Eva’s hand was clutched a revolver that Custer had given her the previous Christmas.
“My little girl, my little girl!” cried the weeping mother. “Why did you do it?”
The colonel knelt and put his arms about his wife. He could not speak. Custer Pennington stood like a man turned to stone. The shock seemed to have bereft him of the power to understand what had happened. Finally he turned dumbly toward Shannon. The tears were running down her cheeks. Gently she touched his sleeve.
“My poor boy!” she said.
The words broke the spell that had held him. He walked to the opposite side of the bed and bent close to the still, white face of the sister he had worshiped.
“Dear little sister, how could you, when we love you so?” he said.
Gently the colonel drew his wife away, and, kneeling, placed his ear close above Eva’s heart. There was no outward indications of life, but presently he lifted his head, and expression of hope relieving that of grim despair which had settled upon his countenance at the first realization of the tragedy.
“She is not dead,” he said. “Get Baldwin! Get him at once!” He was addressing Custer. “Then telephone Carruthers, in Los Angeles, to get down here as soon as God will let him.”
Custer hurried from the room to carry out his father’s instructions.
It was later, while they were waiting for the arrival of the doctor, that the colonel told Custer of Eva’s experience with Crumb the previous night.
“She wanted to kill herself because of what he told her about Guy,” he said. “There was no other reason.”
Then the doctor came, and they all stood in tense expectancy and mingled dread and hope while he made his examination. Carefully and deliberately the old doctor worked, outwardly as calm and unaffected as if he were treating a minor injury to a stranger; yet his heart was as heavy as theirs, for he had brought Eva into the world, and had known and loved her all her brief life.
At last he straightened up, to find their questioning eyes upon him.
“She still lives,” he said, but there was no hope in his voice.
“I have sent for Carruthers,” said the colonel. “He is on his way now. He told Custer that he’ll be here in less than three hours.”
“I have arranged to have a couple of nurses sent out, too,” said Custer. Dr. Baldwin made no reply.
“There is no hope?” asked the colonel.
“There is always hope while there is life,” replied the doctor: “but you must not raise yours too high.”
They understood him, and realized that there was very little hope.
“Can you keep her alive until Carruthers arrives?” asked the colonel.
“I need not tell you that I shall do my best,” was the reply.
Guy had come, with his mother. He seemed absolutely stunned by the catastrophe that had overwhelmed him. There was a wildness in his demeanor that frightened them all. It was necessary to watch him carefully, for fear that he might attempt to destroy himself when he realized at last that Eva was likely to die.
He insisted that they should tell him all the circumstances that had led up to the pitiful tragedy. For a time they sought to conceal a part of the truth from him; but at last, so great was his insistence, they were compelled to reveal all that they knew.
Of a nervous and excitable temperament, and endowed by nature with a character of extreme sensitiveness and comparatively little strength, the shock of the knowledge that it was his own acts that had led Eva to self-destruction proved too much for Guy’s overwrought nerves and brain. So violent did he become that Colonel Pennington and Custer together could scarce restrain him, and it became necessary to send for two of the ranch employees.
When the deputy sheriff came to question them about the murder of Crumb, it was evident that Guy’s mind was so greatly affected that he did not understand what was taking place around him. He had sunk into a morose silence broken at intervals by fits of raving. Later in the day, at Dr. Baldwin’s suggestion he was removed to a sanatorium outside of Los Angeles.
Guy’s mental collapse, and the necessity for constantly restraining him, had resulted in taking Custer’s mind from his own grief, at least for the moment; but when he was not thus occupied he sat staring straight ahead of him in dumb despair.
It was eleven o’clock when the best surgeon that Los Angeles could furnish arrived, bringing a nurse with him, and Eva was still breathing when he came. Dr. Baldwin was there, and together the three worked for an hour while the Penningtons and Shannon waited almost hopelessly in the living room, Mrs. Evans having accompanied Guy to Los Angeles.
Finally, after what seemed years, the door of the living room opened, and Dr. Carruthers entered. They scanned his face as he entered, but saw nothing there to lighten the burden of their apprehension. The colonel and Custer rose.
“Well?” asked the former, his voice scarcely audible.
“The operation was successful. I found the bullet and removed it.”
“She will live, then!” cried Mrs. Pennington, coming quickly toward him.
He took her hands very gently in his.
“My dear madam,” he said, “it would be cruel of me to hold out useless hope. She hasn’t more than one chance in a hundred. It is a miracle that she was alive when you found her. Only a splendid constitution, resulting from the life she has led, could possibly account for it.”
The mother turned away with a low moan.
“There is nothing more that you can do?” asked the colonel.
“I have done all that I can,” replied Carruthers.
“She will not last long?”
“It may be a matter of hours, or only minutes,” he replied. “She is in excellent hands, however. No one could do more for her than Dr. Baldwin.”
The two nurses whom Custer had arranged for had arrived, and when Dr. Carruthers departed he took his own nurse with him.
It was afternoon when deputies from the sheriff’s and coroner’s offices arrived from Los Angeles, together with detectives from the district attorney’s office. Crumb’s body still lay where it had fallen, guarded by a constable from the village of Ganado. It was surrounded by members of his company, villagers, and near-by ranchers, for word of the murder had spread rapidly in the district in that seemingly mysterious way in which news travels in rural communities. Among the crowd was Slick Allen, who had returned to the valley after his release from the county jail.
When the body was finally lifted from its resting place, and placed in the ambulance that had been brought from Los Angeles, one of the detectives picked up a horseshoe that had lain underneath the body. From its appearance it was evident that it had been upon a horse’s hoof very recently, and had been torn off by force.
As the detective examined the shoe, several of t
he crowd pressed forward to look at it. Among them was Allen.
“That’s off young Pennington’s horse,” he said.
“How do you know that?” inquired the detective.
“I used to work for them — took care of their saddle horses. This young Pennington’s horse forges. They had to shoe him special, to keep him from pulling off the fore shoe. I could tell one of his shoes in a million. If they haven’t walked all over his tracks I can tell whether that horse had been up here or not.”
He stooped and examined the ground close to where the body had lain.
“There!” he said, pointing. “There’s an imprint of one of his hind feet. See how the toe of that shoe is squared off? That was made by the Apache, all right!”
The detective was interested. He studied the hoofprint carefully, and searched for others, but this was the only one he could find.
“Looks like some one had been sweeping this place with a broom,” he remarked. “There ain’t much of anything shows.”
A pimply-faced young man spoke up.
“There was some one sweeping the ground this morning,” he said. “About five o’clock this morning I seen a girl dragging the branch of a tree after her, and sweeping along the road below here.”
“Did you know her?” asked the detective.
“No — I never seen her before.”
“Would you know her if you saw her again?”
“Sure I’d know her! She was a pippin. I’d know her horse, too.”
CHAPTER 35
Eva was still breathing faintly as the sun dropped behind the western hills. Shannon had not left the house all day. She felt that Custer needed her, that they all needed her, however little she could do to mitigate their grief. There was at least a sense of sharing their burden, and her fine sensibilities told her that this service of love was quite as essential as the more practical help that she would have been glad to offer had it been within her power.
She was standing in the patio with Custer, at sunset, within call of Eva’s room, as they all had been during the entire day, when a car drove up along the south drive and stopped at the patio entrance. Three of the four men in it alighted and advanced toward them.
“You are Custer Pennington?” one of them asked.
Pennington nodded.
“And you are Miss Burke — Miss Shannon Burke?”
“I am.”
“I am a deputy-sheriff. I have a warrant here for your arrest.”
“Arrest!” exclaimed Custer. “For what?”
He read the warrant to them. It charged them with the murder of Wilson Crumb.
“I am sorry, Mr. Pennington,” said the deputy sheriff; “but I have been given these warrants, and there is nothing for me to do but serve them.”
“You have to take us away now? Can’t you wait — until — my sister is dying in there. Couldn’t it be arranged so that I could stay here under arrest as long as she lives?”
The deputy shook his head.
“It would be all right with me,” he said; “but I have no authority to let you stay. I’ll telephone in, though, and see what I can do. Where is the telephone?”
Pennington told him.
“You two stay here with my men,” said the deputy sheriff, “while I telephone.”
He was gone about fifteen minutes. When he returned, he shook his head.
“Nothing doing,” he said. “I have to bring you both in right away.”
“May I go to her room and see her again before I leave?” asked Custer.
“Yes,” said the deputy; but when Custer turned toward his sister’s room, the officer accompanied him.
Dr. Baldwin and one of the nurses were in the room. Young Pennington came and stood beside the bed, looking down on the white face and the tumbled curls upon the pillow. He could not perceive the slightest indication of life, yet they told him that Eva still lived. He knelt and kissed her, and then turned away. He tried to say good-bye to her, but his voice broke, and he turned and left the room hurriedly.
Colonel and Mrs. Pennington were in the patio, with Shannon and the officers. The colonel and his wife had just learned of this new blow, and both were stunned. The colonel seemed to have aged a generation in that single day. He was a tired, hopeless old man. The heart of his boy and that of Shannon Burke went out to him and to the suffering mother from whom their son to be taken at this moment in their lives when they needed him most. In their compassion for the older Penningtons they almost forgot the seriousness of their own situation.
At their arraignment next morning, the preliminary hearing was set for the following Friday. Early in the morning Custer had received word from Ganado that Eva still lived, and that Dr. Baldwin now believed they might hold some slight hope for her recovery.
At Ganado, despair and anxiety had told heavily upon the Penningtons. The colonel felt that he should be in Los Angeles, to assist in the defense of his son; and yet he knew that his place was with his wife, whose need of him was even greater. Nor would his heart permit him to leave the daughter whom he worshiped, so long as even a faint spark of life remained in that beloved frame.
Mrs. Evans returned from Los Angeles the following day. She was almost prostrated by this last of a series of tragedies ordered, as it seemed, by some malignant fate for the wrecking of her happiness. She told them that Guy appeared to be hopelessly insane. He did not know his mother, nor did he give the slightest indication of any recollection of his past life, or of the events that had overthrown his reason.
At ten o’clock on Wednesday night Dr. Baldwin came into the living room, where the colonel and his wife were sitting with Mrs. Evans. For two days none of them had been in bed. They were tired and haggard, but not more so than the old doctor, who had remained constantly on duty from the moment when he was summoned. Never had man worked with more indefatigable zeal than he to wrest a young life from the path of the grim reaper. There were deep lines beneath his eyes, and his face was pale and drawn, as he entered the room and stood before them; but for the first time in many hours there was a smile upon his lips.
“I believe,” he said, “that we are going to save her.”
The others were too much affected to speak. So long had hope been denied that now they dared not even think of hope.
“She regained consciousness a few moments ago. She looked up at me and smiled, and then she fell asleep. She is breathing quite naturally now. She must not be disturbed, though. I think it would be well if you all retired. Mrs. Pennington, you certainly must get some sleep — and you too, Mrs. Evans, or I cannot be responsible for the results. I have left word with the night nurse to call me immediately, if necessary, and if you will all go to your rooms I will lie on the sofa here in the living room. I feel at last that it will be safe for me to leave her in the hands of the nurse, and a little sleep won’t hurt me.”
The colonel took his old friend by the hand.
“Baldwin,” he said, “it is useless to try to thank you. I couldn’t, even if there were words to do it with.”
“You don’t have to, Pennington. I think I love her as much as you do. There isn’t any one who knows her who doesn’t love her, and who wouldn’t have done as much as I. Now, get off to bed all of you, and I think we’ll find something to be very happy about in the morning. If there is any change for the worst, I will let you know immediately.”
In the county jail in Los Angeles, Custer Pennington and Shannon Burke, awaiting trial on charges of a capital crime, were filled with increasing happiness, as the daily reports from Ganado brought word of Eva’s steady improvement, until at last that she was entirely out of danger.
The tedious preliminaries of selecting a jury were finally concluded. As witness after witness was called, Pennington came to realize for the first time what a web of circumstantial evidence the State had fabricated about him. Even from servants whom he knew to be loyal and friendly the most damaging evidence was elicited. His mother’s second maid testified that she had seen h
im fully dressed in his room late in the evening before the murder, when she had come in, as was her custom, with a pitcher of iced water, not knowing that the young man was there. She had seen him lying upon the bed, with his gun in its holster hanging from the belt about his waist. She also testified that the following morning, when she had come in to make up his bed, she had discovered that it had not been slept in.
The stableman testified that the Apache had been out on the night of the murder. He had rubbed the animal down earlier in the evening, when the defendant had come in from riding. At that time the two had examined the horse’s shoes, the animal having just been reshod. He said that on the morning after the murder there were saddle sweat marks on the Apache’s back, and that the off fore shoe was missing.
One of the K.K.S. employees testified that a young man, whom he partially identified as Custer, had ridden into their camp about nine o’clock on the night of the murder, and had inquired concerning the whereabouts of Crumb. He said that the young man seemed excited, and upon being told that Crumb was away he had ridden off rapidly toward Sycamore Canyon.
Added to all this were the damaging evidence of the detective who had found the Apache’s off fore shoe under Crumb’s body, and the positive identification of the shoe by Allen. The one thing that was lacking — a motive for the crime — was supplied by Allen and the Penningtons’ house man.
The latter testified that among his other duties was the care of the hot water heater in the basement of the Pennington home. Upon the evening of Saturday, August 5, he had forgotten to shut off the burner, as was his custom. He had returned about nine o’clock, to do so. When he had left the house by the passageway leading from the basement beneath the south drive and opening on the hillside just above the water gardens, he had seen a man standing by the upper pool, with his arms about a woman, whom he was kissing. It was a bright moonlight night, and the house man had recognized the two as Custer Pennington and Miss Burke. Being embarrassed by having thus accidentally come upon them, he had moved away quietly in the opposite direction, among the shadows of the trees, and had returned to the bunk house.
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 764