The two men with the big man were noncommittal. The pale, undersized man was a mere onlooker whose sympathies were with the accused. Miss Bransford would have been quite willing to have this young man escape punishment, but she could not deny that the cattle in question belonged to her.
Sanderson was in doubt about the other young woman, though obviously she was closely related to him—a wife, or sister—perhaps a sweetheart.
Sanderson studied the young man’s face, comparing it with the big man’s, and his lips stiffened. He backed Streak slightly and swung crosswise in the saddle, intense interest seizing him.
The big man grinned, first at Miss Bransford, and then at the other girl.
“I reckon that settles it,” he said. “There don’t seem to be nothin’ more to it. Miss Bransford says the cattle is hers, an’ we found them in Ben Nyland’s corral. There ain’t—”
“Alva Dale, you are a sneak and a liar!”
This was the girl. She had stepped forward until she was within a short pace from the big man. She stood erect, rigid, her hands clenched at her sides; her chin lifted, her eyes flashing with defiant passion.
Dale smirked at her.
“Peggy Nyland,” he said, “you’re handin’ it to me pretty strong, ain’t you? You’d fight for your brother’s life, of course. But I represent the law here, an’ I’ve got to do my duty. You won’t deny that we found them steers in your brother’s corral?”
“No, I can’t deny that!” declared the girl passionately. “You found them there. They were there. But Ben did not put them there. Shall I tell you who did? It was you! I heard a noise in the corral during the night—last night! But I—thought it was just our own cattle. And I did not go out to see.
“Oh, how I wish I had! But Ben didn’t put the Double A cattle in the corral, for Ben was in the house all the time. He went to bed when I did, and I saw him, sleeping in his bunk, when the noise awakened me!”
The girl stepped closer to Dale, her voice vibrating with scorn and loathing.
“If you didn’t put the steers in our corral, you know who did, Alva Dale,” she went on. “And you know why they were put there! You didn’t do it because you wanted Ben’s land—as I’ve heard you have said; you did it to get Ben out of the way so that you could punish me!
“If I had told Ben how you have hounded me—how you have insulted me, Ben would have killed you long ago. Oh, I ought to have told him, but I was afraid—afraid to bring more trouble to Ben!”
Dale laughed sneeringly as he watched the young man writhe futilely in the hands of his captors.
“Sounds reasonable—an’ dramatic,” he said. “It’d do some good, mebbe, if they was any soft-headed ninnies around that would believe it. But the law ain’t soft-headed. We found them steers in Ben Nyland’s corral—some of them marked with Ben’s brand—the Star—blottin’ out the Double A. An’ Miss Bransford admits the steers are hers. They ain’t nothin’ more to be said.”
“Yes, there is, Dale,” said Miss Bransford. “It is quite evident there has been a mistake made. I am willing to believe Peggy Nyland when she says Ben was asleep in the cabin all night—with her. At any rate, I don’t want any hanging over a few cattle. I want you to let Ben Nyland go.”
Dale wheeled and faced Miss Bransford. His face reddened angrily, but he managed to smile.
“It’s too late, Miss Bransford. The evidence is all in. There’s got to be rules to govern such cases as this. Because you own the steers is no sign you’ve got a right to defeat the aims of justice. I’d like mighty well to accommodate you, but I’ve got my duty to consider, an’ I can’t let him off. Ben Nyland has got to hang, an’ that’s all there is to it!”
There came a passionate outcry from Peggy Nyland; and then she had her arms around her brother’s neck, sobbing that she would never let him be hanged.
Miss Bransford’s eyes were blazing with rage and scorn as they challenged Dale’s. She walked close to him and said something in a low tone to him, at which he answered, though less gruffly than before, that it was “no use.”
Miss Bransford looked around appealingly; first at the pale, anemic little man with big eyes, who shifted his feet and looked uncomfortable; then her gaze went to Sanderson who, resting his left elbow on the pommel of the saddle, was watching her with squinting, quizzical eyes.
There was an appeal in Miss Bransford’s glance that made the blood leap to Sanderson’s face. Her eyes were shining with an eloquent yearning that would have caused him to kill Dale—if he had thought killing the man would have been the means of saving Ben Nyland.
And then Mary Bransford was at his side, her hands grasping his, holding them tightly as her gaze sought his and held it.
“Won’t you please do something?” she pleaded. “Oh, if it only could be! That’s a mystery to you, perhaps, but when I spoke to you before I was going to ask you if—if— But then, of course you couldn’t be—or you would have spoken before.”
Sanderson’s eyes glowed with a cold fire. He worked his hands free, patted hers reassuringly, and gently pushed her away from Streak.
He swung down from the saddle and walked to Dale. The big man had his back turned to Sanderson, and when Sanderson reached him he leaned over his shoulder and said gently:
“Look here, Dale.”
The latter wheeled, recognizing Sanderson’s voice and snarling into the latter’s face.
“Well?” he demanded.
Sanderson grinned mildly. “I reckon you’ve got to let Ben Nyland off, Dale—he ain’t guilty. Mebbe I ought to have stuck in my gab before, but I was figurin’ that mebbe you wouldn’t go to crowdin’ him so close. Ben didn’t steal no steers; he run them into his corral by my orders.”
Dale guffawed loudly and stepped back to sneer at Sanderson. But he had noted the steadiness of the latter’s eyes and the sneer faded.
“Bah!” he said. “Your orders! An’ who in hell are you?”
“I’m Bill Bransford,” said Sanderson quietly, and he grinned mirthlessly at Dale over the two or three feet of space that separated them.
CHAPTER V
WATER AND KISSES
For several seconds Dale did not speak. A crimson stain appeared above the collar of his shirt and spread until it covered his face and neck, leaving his cheeks poisonously bloated and his eyes glaring.
But the steady eyes and the cold, deliberate demeanor of Sanderson did much to help Dale regain his self-control—which he did, while Mary Bransford, running forward, tried to throw her arms around Sanderson’s neck. She was prevented from accomplishing this design by Sanderson who, while facing Dale, shoved the girl away from him, almost roughly.
“There’s time for that after we’ve settled with Dale,” he told the girl gruffly.
Dale had recovered; he sneered. “It’s easy enough to make a claim like that, but it’s another thing to prove it. How in hell do we know you’re Bill Bransford?”
Sanderson’s smile was maddening. “I ain’t aimin’ to prove nothin’—to you!” he said. But he reached into a pocket, drew out the two letters he had taken from the real Bransford’s pocket, and passed them back to Mary Bransford, still facing Dale.
He grinned at Dale’s face as the latter watched Mary while she read the letters, gathering from the scowl that swept over the other’s lips that Mary had accepted them as proof of his identity.
“You’ll find the most of that thousand you sent me in my slicker,” he told the girl. And while Mary ran to Streak, unstrapped the slicker, tore it open, and secured the money, Sanderson watched Dale’s face, grinning mockingly.
“O Will—Will!” cried the girl joyously behind Sanderson.
Sanderson’s smile grew. “Seems to prove a heap, don’t it?” he said to Dale. “I know a little about law myself. I won’t be pressin’ no charge against Nyland. Take your rope off him an’ turn him free. An’ then mebbe you’ll be accommodatin’ enough to hit the breeze while the hittin’s good—for me an’ Miss—my sister�
��s sort of figurin’ on a reunion—bein’ disunited for so long.”
He looked at Dale with cold, unwavering eyes until the latter, sneering, turned and ordered his men to remove the rope from Nyland. With his hands resting idly on his hips he watched Dale and the men ride away. Then he shook hands mechanically with Nyland, permitted Peggy to kiss him—which she did fervently, and led her brother away. Then Sanderson turned, to see Mary smiling and blushing, not more than two or three feet distant.
He stood still, and she stepped slowly toward him, the blush on her face deepening.
“Oh,” she said as she came dose to him and placed her hands on his shoulders, “this seems positively brazen—for you seem like a stranger to me.”
Then she deliberately took both his cheeks in her hands, stood on the tips of her toes and kissed him three or four times, squarely on the lips.
“Why, ma’am—” began Sanderson.
“Mary!” she corrected, shaking him.
“Well, ma’am—Mary, that is—you see I ain’t just—”
“You’re the dearest and best brother that ever lived,” she declared, placing a hand over his mouth, “even though you did stay away for so many years. Not another word now!” she warned as she took him by an arm and led him toward the ranchhouse; “not a word about anything until you’ve eaten and rested. Why, you look tired to death—almost!”
Sanderson wanted to talk; he wanted to tell Mary Bransford that he was not her brother; that he had assumed the rôle merely for the purpose of defeating Dale’s aim. His sole purpose had been to help Mary Bransford out of a difficult situation; he had acted on impulse—an impulse resulting from the pleading look she had given him, together with the knowledge that she had wanted to save Nyland.
Now that the incident was closed, and Nyland saved, he wanted to make his confession, be forgiven, and received into Mary’s good graces.
He followed the girl into the house, but as he halted for an instant on the threshold, just before entering, he looked hack, to see the little, anemic man standing near the house, looking at him with an odd smile. Sanderson flushed and made a grimace at the little man, whereat the latter’s smile grew broad and eloquent.
“What’s eatin’ him, I wonder?” was Sanderson’s mental comment. “He looked mighty fussed up while Dale was doin’ the talkin’. Likely he’s just tickled—like the rest of them.”
Mary led Sanderson into the sitting-room to a big easy-chair, shoved him into it, and stood behind him, running her fingers through his hair. Meanwhile she talked rapidly, telling him of the elder Bransford’s last moments, of incidents that had occurred during his absence from the ranch; of other incidents that had to do with her life at a school on the coast; of many things of which he was in complete ignorance.
Desperate over his inability to interrupt her flow of talk, conscious of the falseness of his position, squirming under her caresses, and cursing himself heartily for yielding to the absurd impulse that had placed him in so ridiculous a predicament, Sanderson opened his month a dozen times to make his confession, but each time closed it again, unsuccessful.
At last, nerved to the ordeal by the knowledge that each succeeding moment was making his position more difficult, and his ultimate pardon less certain, he wrenched himself free and stood up, his face crimson.
“Look here, ma’am—”
“Mary!” she corrected, shaking a finger at him.
“Mary,” he repeated tonelessly, “now look here,” he went on hoarsely. “I want to tell you that I ain’t the man you take me to be. I’m—”
“Yes, you are,” she insisted, smiling and placing her hands on his shoulders. “You are a real man. I’ll wager Dale thinks so; and Peggy Nyland, and Ben. Now, wait!” she added as he tried to speak. “I want to tell you something. Do you know what would have happened if you had not got here today?
“I’ll tell you,” she went on again, giving him no opportunity to inject a word. “Dale would have taken the Double A away from me! He told me so! He was over here yesterday, gloating over me. Do you know what he claims? That I am not a Bransford; that I am merely an adopted daughter—not even a legally adopted one; that father just took me, when I was a year old, without going through any legal formalities.
“Dale claims to have proof of that. He won’t tell me where he got it. He has some sort of trumped-up evidence, I suppose, or he would not have talked so confidently. And he is all-powerful in the basin. He is friendly with all the big politicians in the territory, and is ruthless and merciless. I feel that he would have succeeded, if you had not come.
“I know what he wants; he wants the Double A on account of the water. He is prepared to go any length to get it—to commit murder, if necessary. He could take it away from me, for I wouldn’t know how to fight him. But he can’t take it away from you, Will. And he can’t say you have no claim to the Double A, for father willed it to you, and the will has been recorded in the Probate Court in Las Vegas!
“O Will; I am so glad you came,” she went on, stroking and patting his arms. “When I spoke to you the first time, out there by the stable, I was certain of you, though I dreaded to have you speak for fear you would say otherwise. And if it hadn’t been you, I believe I should have died.”
“An’ if you’d find out, now, that I ain’t Will Bransford,” said Sanderson slowly, “what then?”
“That can’t be,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes, and holding his gaze for a long time, while she searched his face for signs of that playful deceit that she expected to see reflected there.
She saw it, evidently, or what was certainly an excellent counterfeit of it—though Sanderson was in no jocular mood, for at that moment he felt himself being drawn further and further into the meshes of the trap he had laid for himself—and she smiled trustfully at him, drawing a deep sigh of satisfaction and laying her head against his shoulder.
“That can’t be,” she repeated. “No man could deceive a woman like that!”
Sanderson groaned, mentally. He couldn’t confess now and at the same time entertain any hope that she would forgive him.
Nor could he—knowing what he knew now of Dale’s plans—brutally tell her the truth and leave her to fight Dale single-handed,
And there was still another consideration to deter him from making a confession. By impersonating her brother he had raised her hopes high. How could he tell her that her brother had been killed, that he had buried him in a desolate section of a far-off desert after taking his papers and his money?
He felt, from her manner when he had tentatively asked her to consider the possibility of his not being her brother, that the truth would kill her, as she had said.
Worse, were he now to inform her of what had happened in the desert, she might not believe him; she might indeed—considering that he already had dealt doubly with her—accuse him of being her brother’s murderer!
Again Sanderson groaned in spirit. To confess to her would be to destroy her; to withhold the confession and to continue to impersonate her brother was to act the rôle of a cad.
Sanderson hesitated between a choice of the two evils, and was lost. For she gave him no time for serious and continued thought. Taking him by an arm she led him into a room off the sitting-room, shoving him through the door laughingly.
“That is to be your room,” she said. “I fixed it up for you more than a month ago. You go in there and get some sleep. Sleep until dusk. By that time I’ll have supper ready. And then, after supper, there are so many things that I want to say to you. So get a good sleep!”
She closed the door and went out, and Sanderson sank into a chair. Later, he locked the door, pulled the chair over near a window—from which he got a good view of the frowning butte at the edge of the level—and stared out, filled with a sensation of complete disgust.
“Hell,” he said, after a time, “I’m sure a triple-plated boxhead, an’ no mistake!”
CHAPTER VI
SANDERSON LIES
/> Sanderson did not sleep. He sat at the window all afternoon, dismally trying to devise way of escape from the dilemma. He did not succeed. He had gone too far now to make a confession sound reasonably convincing; and he could not desert the girl to Dale. That was not to be thought of. And he was certain that if he admitted the deception, the girl would banish him as though he were a pestilence.
He was hopelessly entangled. And yet, continuing to ponder the situation, he saw that he need not completely yield to pessimism. For though circumstances—and his own lack of foresight—had placed him in a contemptible position—he need not act the blackguard. On the contrary, he could admirably assume the rôle of protector.
The position would not be without its difficulties, and the deception meant that he could never be to Mary Bransford what he wanted to be to her; but he could at least save the Double A for her. That done, and his confession made, he could go on his way, satisfied that he had at least beaten Dale.
His decision made, Sanderson got up, opened the door a trifle, and looked into the sitting-room. It was almost dusk, and, judging from the sounds that reached his ears from the direction of the kitchen, Mary intended to keep her promise regarding “supper.”
Feeling guilty, though grimly determined to continue the deception to the end—whatever the end might be—Sanderson stole through the sitting-room, out through the door leading to the porch, and made his way to a shed lean-to back of the kitchen.
There he found a tin washbasin, some water, and a towel, and for ten minutes he worked with them. Then he discovered a comb, and a broken bit of mirror fixed to the wall of the lean-to, before which he combed his hair and studied his reflection. He noted the unusual flush on his cheeks, but grinned brazenly into the glass.
“I’m sure some flustered,” he told his reflection.
Arrayed for a second inspection by Mary Bransford, Sanderson stood for a long time at the door of the lean-to, trying to screw up his courage to the point of confronting the girl.
He succeeded finally, and walked slowly to the outside kitchen door, where he stood, looking in at Mary.
The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack Page 4