by B. M. Bower
“What do you know?” Art’s eyes never left her face, now. They seemed to be boring into her brain. Jean began to feel a certain confusion. To be sure, she had never had any experience whatever with fugitive murderers; but no one would ever expect one to act like this. A little more, she thought resentfully, and he would be making her feel as if she were the guilty person. She straightened herself and stared back at him.
“I know you left because you—you didn’t want to stay and face-things. I—I have felt as if I could kill you, almost, for what you have done. I—I don’t see how you can SIT there and—and look at me that way.” She stopped and braced herself. “I don’t want to argue about it. I came here to make you go back and face things. It’s—horrible—” She was thinking of her father then, and she could not go on.
“Jean, you’re all wrong. I don’t know what idea you’ve got, but you may as well get one or two things straight. Maybe you do feel like killing me; but I don’t know what for. I haven’t the slightest notion of going back; there’s nothing I could clear up, if I did go.”
Jean looked at him dumbly. She supposed she should have to force him to go, after all. Of course, you couldn’t expect that a man who had committed a crime will admit it to the first questioner; you couldn’t expect him to go back willingly and face the penalty. She would have to use her gun; perhaps even call on Lite, since Lite had followed her. She might have felt easier in her mind had she seen how Lite was standing just within the glass-paneled door behind the dimity curtain, listening to every word, and watching every expression on Art Osgood’s face. Lite’s hand, also, was close to his gun, to be perfectly sure of Jean’s safety. But he had no intention of spoiling her feeling of independence if he could help it. He had lots of faith in Jean.
“What has cropped up, anyway?” Art asked her curiously, as if he had been puzzling over her reasons for being there. “I thought that affair was settled long ago, when it happened. I thought it was all straight sailing—”
“To send an innocent man to prison for it? Do you call that straight sailing?” Jean’s eyes had in them now a flash of anger that steadied her.
“What innocent man?” Art threw away the stub of the splinter and sat up straight. “I never knew any innocent man—”
“Oh! You didn’t know?”
“All I know,” said Art, with a certain swiftness of speech that was a new element in his manner, “I’m dead willing to tell you. I knew Johnny had been around knocking the outfit, and making some threats, and saying things he had no business to say. I never did have any use for him, just because he was so mouthy. I wasn’t surprised to hear—how it ended up.”
“To hear! You weren’t there, when it happened?” Jean was watching him for some betraying emotion, some sign that she had struck home. She got a quick, sharp glance from him, as if he were trying to guess just how much she knew.
“Why should I have been there? The last time I was ever at the Lazy A,” he stated distinctly, “was the day before I left. I didn’t go any farther than the gate then. I had a letter for your father, and I met him at the gate and gave it to him.”
“A letter for dad?” It was not much, but it was better than nothing. Jean thought she might lead him on to something more.
“Yes! A note, or a letter. Carl sent me over with it.”
“Carl? What was it about? I never heard—”
“I never read it. Ask your dad what it was about, why don’t you? I don’t reckon it was anything particular.”
“Maybe it was, though.” Jean was turning crafty. She would pretend to be interested in the letter, and trip Art somehow when he was off his guard. “Are you sure that it was the day before—you left?”
“Yes.” Some high talk in the street caught his attention, and Art turned and looked down. Jean caught at the chance to study his averted face, but she could not read innocence or guilt there. Art, she decided, was not as transparent as she had always believed him to be. He turned back and met her look. “I know it was the day before. Why?”
“Oh, I wondered. Dad didn’t say— What did he do with it—the letter?”
“He opened it and read it.” A smile of amused understanding of her finesse curled Art’s lips. “And he stuck it in the pocket of his chaps and went on to wherever he was going.” His eyes challenged her impishly.
“And it was from Uncle Carl, you say?”
Art hesitated, and the smile left his lips. “It—it was from Carl, yes. Why?”
“Oh, I just wondered.” Jean was wondering why he had stopped smiling, all at once, and why he hesitated. Was he afraid he was going to contradict himself about the day or the errand? Or was he afraid she would ask her Uncle Carl, and find that there was no letter?
“Why don’t you ask your dad, if you are so anxious to know all about it?” Art demanded abruptly. “Anyway, that’s the last time I was ever over there.”
“Ask dad!” Jean’s anger flamed out suddenly. “Art Osgood, when I think of dad, I wonder why I don’t shoot you! I wonder how you dare sit there and look me in the face. Ask dad! Dad, who is paying with his life and all that’s worth while in life, for that murder that you deny—”
“What’s that? Paying how?” Art leaned toward her; and now his face was hard and hostile, and so were his eyes.
“Paying! You know how he is paying! Paying in Deer Lodge penitentiary—”
“Who? YOUR FATHER?” Had Art been ready to spring at her and catch her by the throat, he would not have looked much different.
“My father!” Jean’s voice broke upon the word. “And you—” She did not attempt to finish the charge.
Art sat looking at her with a queer intensity. “Your father!” he repeated. “Aleck! I never knew that, Jean. Take my word, I never knew that!” He seemed to be thinking pretty fast. “Where’s Carl at?” he asked irrelevantly.
“Uncle Carl? He’s home, running both ranches. I—I never could make Uncle Carl see that you must have been the one.”
“Been the one that shot Crofty, you mean?” Art gave a short laugh. He got up and stood in front of her. “Thanks, awfully. Good reason why he couldn’t see it! He knows well enough I didn’t do it. He knows—who did.” He bit his lips then, as if he feared that he had said too much.
“Uncle Carl knows? Then why doesn’t he tell? It wasn’t dad!” Jean took a defiant step toward him. “Art Osgood, if you dare say it was dad, I—I’ll kill you!”
Art smiled at her with a brief lightening of his eyes. “I believe you would, at that,” he said soberly. “But it wasn’t your dad, Jean.”
“Who was it?”
“I—don’t—know.”
“You do! You do know, Art Osgood! And you ran off; and they gave dad eight years—”
Art spoke one word under his breath, and that word was profane. “I don’t see how that could be,” he said after a minute.
Jean did not answer. She was biting her lips to keep back the tears. She felt that somehow she had failed; that Art Osgood was slipping through her fingers, in spite of the fact that he did not seem to fear her or to oppose her except in the final accusation. It was the lack of opposition, that lack of fear, that baffled her so. Art, she felt dimly, must be very sure of his own position; was it because he was so close to the Mexican line? Jean glanced desperately that way. It was very close. She could see the features of the Mexican soldiers lounging before the cantina over there; through the lighted window of the customhouse she could see a dark-faced officer bending over a littered desk. The guard over there spoke to a friend, and she could hear the words he said.
Jean thought swiftly. She must not let Art Osgood go back across that street. She could cover him with her gun—Art knew how well she could use it!—and she would call for an American officer and have him arrested. Or, Lite was somewhere below; she would call for Lite, and he could go and get an officer and a warrant.
“How soon you going back?” Art asked abruptly, as though he had been pondering a problem and had reached t
he solution. “I’ll have to get a leave of absence, or go down on the books as a deserter; and I wouldn’t want that. I can get it, all right. I’ll go back with you and straighten this thing out, if it’s the way you say it is. I sure didn’t know they’d pulled your dad for it, Jean.”
This, coming so close upon the heels of her own decision, set Jean all at sea again. She looked at him doubtfully.
“I thought you said you didn’t know, and you wouldn’t go back.”
Art grinned sardonically. “I’ll lie any time to help a friend,” he admitted frankly. “What I do draw the line at is lying to help some cowardly cuss double-cross a man. Your father got the double-cross; I don’t stand for anything like that. Not a-tall!” He heaved a sigh of nervous relaxation, for the last half hour had been keyed rather high for them both, and pulled his hat down on his head.
“Say, Jean! Want to go across with me and meet the general? You can make my talk a whole lot stronger by telling what you came for. I’ll get leave, all right, then. And you’ll know for sure that I’m playing straight. You see that two-story ’dobe about half-way down the block,—the one with the Mexican flag over it?” He pointed. “There’s where he is. Want to go over?”
“Any objections to taking me along with you?” This was Lite, coming nonchalantly toward them from the doorway. Lite was still perfectly willing to let Jean manage this affair in her own way, but that did not mean that he would not continue to watch over her. Lite was much like a man who lets a small boy believe he is driving a skittish team all alone. Jean believed that she was acting alone in this, as in everything else. She had yet to learn that Lite had for three years been always at hand, ready to take the lines if the team proved too fractious for her.
Art turned and put out his hand. “Why, hello, Lite! Sure, you can come along; glad to have you.” He eyed Lite questioningly. “I’ll gamble you’ve heard all we’ve been talking about,” he said. “That would be you, all right! So you don’t need any wising up. Come on; I want to catch the chief before he goes off somewhere.”
To see the three of them go down the stairs and out upon the street and across it into Mexico,—which to Jean seemed very queer,—you would never dream of the quest that had brought them together down here on the border. Even Jean was smiling, in a tired, anxious way. She walked close to Lite and never once asked him how he came to be there, or why. She was glad that he was there. She was glad to shift the whole matter to his broad shoulders now, and let him take the lead.
They had a real Mexican dinner in a queer little adobe place where Art advised them quite seriously never to come alone. They had thick soup with a strange flavor, and Art talked with the waiter in Mexican dialect that made Jean glad indeed to feel Lite’s elbow touching hers, and to know that although Lite’s hand rested idly on his knee, it was only one second from his weapon. She had no definite suspicion of Art Osgood, but all the same she was thankful that she was not there alone with him among all these dark, sharp-eyed Mexicans with their atmosphere of latent treachery.
Lite ate mostly with his left hand. Jean noticed that. It was the only sign of watchfulness that he betrayed, unless one added the fact that he had chosen a seat which brought his back against an adobe wall and his face toward Art and the room, with Jean beside him. That might have been pure chance, and it might not. But Art was evidently playing fair.
A little later they came back to the Casa del Sonora, and Jean went up to her room feeling that a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Lite and Art Osgood were out on the veranda, gossiping of the range, and in Art’s pocket was a month’s leave of absence from his duties. Once she heard Lite laugh, and she stood with one hand full of hairpins and the other holding the brush and listened, and smiled a little. It all sounded very companionable, very care-free,—not in the least as though they were about to clear up an old wrong.
She got into bed and thumped the hard pillow into a little nest for her tired head, and listened languidly to the familiar voices that came to her mingled with confused noises of the street. Lite was on guard; he would not lose his caution just because Art seemed friendly and helpfully inclined, and had meant no treachery over in that queer restaurant. Lite would not be easily tricked. So she presently fell asleep.
CHAPTER XXIII
A LITTLE ENLIGHTENMENT
Sometime in the night Jean awoke to hear footsteps in the corridor outside her room. She sat up with a start, and her right hand went groping for her gun. Just for the moment she thought that she was in her room at the Lazy A, and that the night-prowler had come and was beginning his stealthy search of the house.
Then she heard some one down in the street call out a swift sentence in Spanish, and get a laugh for an answer. She remembered that she was in Nogales, within talking distance of Mexico, and that she had found Art Osgood, and that he did not behave like a fugitive murderer, but like a friend who was anxious to help free her father.
The footsteps went on down the hall,—the footsteps of Lite, who had come and stood for a minute outside her door to make sure that all was quiet and that she slept. But Jean, now that she knew where she was, lay wide awake and thinking. Suddenly she sat up again, staring straight before her.
That letter,—the letter Art had taken to her father, the letter he had read and put in the pocket of his chaps! Was that what the man had been hunting for, those nights when he had come searching in that secret, stealthy way? She did not remember ever having looked into the pocket of her father’s chaps, though they had hung in her room all those three years since the tragedy. Pockets in chaps were not, as a general thing, much used. Men carried matches in them sometimes, or money. The flap over her dad’s chap-pocket was buttoned down, and the leather was stiff; perhaps the letter was there yet.
She got up and turned on the light, and looked at her watch. She wanted to start then, that instant, for Los Angeles. She wanted to take her dad’s chaps out of her trunk where she had packed them just for the comfort of having them with her, and she wanted to look and see if the letter was there still. There was no particular reason for believing that this was of any particular importance, or had any bearing whatever upon the crime. But the idea was there, and it nagged at her.
Her watch said that it was twenty-five minutes after two o’clock. The train, Lite had told her, would leave for Tucson at seven-forty-five in the morning. She told herself that, since it was too far to walk, and since she could not start any sooner by staying up and freezing, she might just as well get back into bed and try to sleep.
But she could not sleep. She kept thinking of the letter, and trying to imagine what clue it could possibly give if she found it still in the pocket. Carl had sent it, Art said. A thought came to Jean which she tried to ignore; and because she tried to ignore it, it returned with a dogged insistence, and took clearer shape in her mind, and formed itself into questions which she was compelled at last to face and try to answer.
Was it her Uncle Carl who had come and searched the house at night, trying to find that letter? If it were her uncle, why was he so anxious to find it, after three years had passed? What was in the letter? If it had any bearing whatever upon the death of Johnny Croft, why hadn’t her dad mentioned it? Why hadn’t her Uncle Carl said something about it? Was the letter just a note about some ranch business? Then why else should any one come at night and prowl all through the house, and never take anything? Why had he come that first night?
Jean drew in her breath sharply. All at once, like a flashlight turned upon a dark corner of her mind, she remembered something about that night. She remembered how she had told her Uncle Carl that she meant to prove that her dad was innocent; that she meant to investigate the devious process by which the Lazy A ranch and all the stock had ceased to belong to her or her father; that she meant to adopt sly, sleuth-like methods; she remembered the very words which she had used. She remembered how bitter her uncle had become. Had she frightened him, somehow, with her bold declaration that she would not “let
sleeping dogs lie” any longer? Had he remembered the letter, and been uneasy because of what was in it? But what COULD be in it, if it were written at least a day before the terrible thing had happened?
She remembered her uncle’s uncontrolled fury that evening when she had ridden over to see Lite. What had she said to cause it? She tried to recall her words, and finally she did remember saying something about proving that her own money had been paying for her “keep” for three years. Then he had gone into that rage, and she had not at the time seen any connection between her words and his raving anger. But perhaps there was a connection. Perhaps—
“Oh, my goodness!” she exclaimed aloud. She was remembering the telegram which she had sent him just before she left Los Angeles for Nogales. “He’ll just simply go WILD when he gets that wire!” She recalled now how he had insisted all along that Art Osgood knew absolutely nothing about the murder; she recalled also, with an uncanny sort of vividness, Art’s manner when he had admitted for the second time that the letter had been from Carl. She remembered how he had changed when he found that her father was being punished for the crime.
She did not know, just yet, how all these tangled facts were going to work out. She had not yet come to the final question that she would presently be asking herself. She felt sure that her uncle knew more,—a great deal more,—about Johnny Croft’s death than he had appeared to know; but she had not yet reached the point to which her reasonings inevitably would bring her; perhaps her mind was subconsciously delaying the ultimate conclusion.
She got up and dressed; unfastening her window, she stepped out on the veranda. The street was quiet at that time in the morning. A sentry stood on guard at the corner, and here and there a light flared in some window where others were wakeful. But for the most part the town lay asleep. Over in what was really the Mexican quarter, three or four roosters were crowing as if they would never leave off. The sound of them depressed Jean, and made her feel how heavy was the weight of her great undertaking,—heavier now, when the end was almost in sight, than it had seemed on that moonlight night when she had ridden over to the Lazy A and had not the faintest idea of how she was going to accomplish any part of her task which she had set herself. She shivered, and turned back to get the gay serape which she had bought from an old Mexican woman when they were coming out of that queer restaurant last evening.