The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  “But we don’t want to play hog. If you’ll admit before a notary that you are not Will Bransford we’ll hand you back the four thousand Dale took from you, give you ten thousand in addition and safe conduct out of the county. That strike you?”

  Sanderson did not answer.

  Silverthorn’s face reddened. “You’re a damned fool!” he sneered, venomously. “We’ll keep you in jail here for a thousand years, if necessary. We’ll do worse!

  “Look here!” he suddenly said. But Sanderson did not turn. Silverthorn rattled a paper.

  “Here’s a withdrawal slip on the Okar bank, calling for three thousand two hundred dollars, signed by Will Bransford. Barney Owen drew the money last night and blew it in gambling and drinking. He says he’s been signing Bransford’s name—forging it—at your orders. The signature he put on this paper is a dead ringer for the one on the registry blank you gave Dale.

  “Dale saw Owen sign that. That’s why he knew you are not Will Bransford. Understand? Maison will swear you signed the withdrawal slip and got the money. We’ll prove that you are not Bransford, and you’ll go to the Las Vegas pen for twenty years! Now, let’s talk business!”

  Sanderson turned. There was a mirthless grin on his face. He spoke loudly, calling the jailer.

  When the latter appeared in the corridor beside Silverthorn, Sanderson addressed him without looking at the other:

  “You ain’t on your job a heap, are you? There’s a locoed coyote barkin’ at me through the door, there. Run him out, will you—he’s disturbin’ me plenty.”

  He turned from the door, stretched himself on the cot, and with his face to the wall listened while Silverthorn cursed.

  CHAPTER XV

  DALE PAYS A VISIT

  Shortly after midnight Sanderson was sound asleep on the cot in the cell when a strange, scraping noise awakened him. He lay still for a long time, listening, until he discovered that the sound came from the window. Then he sat up stealthily and looked around to see, framed in the starlit gloom of the night, the face of Barney Owen, staring in through the window at him.

  The sight of Owen enraged Sanderson, but his curiosity drove him to the window.

  The little man was hanging to the iron bars; his neck muscles were straining, his face was red and his eyes bright.

  “Don’t talk, now!” he warned. “The boss of the dump is awake and he’ll hear. He’s in his room; there’s nobody else around. I wanted to tell you that I’m going to knock him silly and get you out of this!”

  “Why?” mocked Sanderson, lowly.

  Owen’s face grew redder. “Oh, I know I’ve got something coming, but I’m going to get you out all the same. I’ve got our horses and guns. Be ready!”

  He slipped down. Sanderson could hear his feet thud faintly on the sand outside.

  Sanderson got into his clothes and stood at the cell door, waiting. For a long time he heard no sound, but presently he caught the clank of a door, followed by a swift step, and Owen stood in the corridor before the cell door, a bunch of keys in his hand.

  There was no word spoken. Owen unlocked the door, Sanderson slipped out, Owen passed him the six-shooter he had lost in the barroom of the Okar Hotel, and the two slipped noiselessly down the corridor.

  A minute later they were mounting the horses that Owen had brought, and shortly afterward they were moving like shadows away from the outskirts of Okar.

  Not until they were well out in the big basin did either of them speak. And then Sanderson said, shortly:

  “Silverthorn was tellin’ me you gassed everything. Are you feelin’ better over it?”

  Owen’s head bent over his horse’s mane; his chin was on his chest when he answered:

  “Come and kill me.”

  “Hell!” exploded Sanderson, disgustedly. “If there was anything comin’ to you killin’ would be too good for you. You ain’t done anything to me, you sufferin’ fool—not a thing! What you’ve done you’ve done to Mary Bransford. When you see Dale an’ Silverthorn grabbin’ the Double A, an’ Mary Bransford ridin’ away, homeless—you’ll have feelin’s of remorse, mebbe—if you’ve got any man in you at all!”

  Owen writhed and groaned.

  “It was the whisky—the cursed whisky!” he whispered. “I can’t let it alone—I love it! And once I get a taste of it, I’m gone— I’m a stark, staring lunatic!”

  “I’d swear to that,” grimly agreed Sanderson.

  “I didn’t mean to say a word to anybody,” wailed the little man. “Do you think I’d do anything to harm Mary Bransford—after what she did for me? But I did—I must have done it. Dale said I did, Silverthorn said I did, and you say I did. But I don’t remember. Silverthorn said I signed a receipt for some money from the Okar bank—three thousand, odd. I don’t remember. Oh, but I’m—”

  “Calling yourself names won’t get you back to where you was before you made a fool of yourself,” Sanderson told him, pityingly. “An’ me tellin’ you what I think of you won’t relieve my feelin’s a whole lot, for there ain’t words enough layin’ around loose.

  “What I want to know is this: did you go clean loco, or do you remember anything that happened to you? Do you know who got the money you drew from the bank?”

  “Dale,” answered Owen. “He had that, for I remember him counting it in the back room of the hotel. There was more, too; I heard him telling Silverthorn there was about seven thousand in all. Silverthorn wanted him to put it all back in the bank, but Dale said there was just enough for him to meet his pay-roll—that he owed his men a lot of back pay. He took it with him.”

  “My four thousand,” said Sanderson, shortly.

  “Yours?” Owen paled.

  “Dale lifted my money belt,” Sanderson returned. “I was wondering what he did with it. So that’s what.”

  He relapsed into a grim silence, and Owen did not speak again.

  They rode several miles in that fashion—Owen keeping his horse slightly behind Sanderson’s, his gaze on the other’s face, his own white with remorse and anxiety.

  At last he heard Sanderson laugh, and the sound of it made him grit his teeth in impotent agony.

  “Sanderson,” he said, gulping, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sure,” returned the other. “If I hadn’t wised up to that quite a spell ago, you’d be back on the trail, waitin’ for some coyote to come along an’ get his supper.”

  They rode in silence for a long time. They came to the gentle slope of the basin and began to climb it.

  A dozen times Owen rode close to Sanderson, his lips trembling over unuttered words, but each time he dropped back without speaking. His eyes, fixed worshipfully on the back of the big, silent man ahead of him, were glowing with anxiety and wonder.

  In the ghostly darkness of the time before the gray forerunner of the dawn appears on the horizon they came in sight of the Double A ranchhouse.

  Sanderson was still leading. The ranchhouse burst upon his vision as his horse topped a rise that had obscured his view of the ranchhouse, and he saw it, clearly outlined.

  Riding down the slope of the rise he smiled. For there was a light in one of the ranchhouse windows. Mary had left it burn on his account, he divined.

  He halted and allowed Owen to come near him.

  “Mary ain’t to hear about this deal tonight,” he told the little man. “Not a peep—understand?”

  Without waiting for an answer he rode onward.

  Thinking that, perhaps, in spite of the burning lamp Mary might be sleeping, Sanderson cautiously dismounted at the corral gates, and, leaving Owen to put his own horse away, he walked toward the house, stealthily, for he did not wish to awaken the girl.

  Halfway across the ranchhouse yard, Sanderson saw a shadow cross the light in the window. Again he grinned, thinking Mary had not gone to bed after all.

  But, going forward more unconcernedly, Sanderson’s smile faded and was succeeded by a savage frown. For in the shadow formed by the little “L” at the junction of the
house and porch, he saw a horse saddled and bridled.

  Suddenly alert, and yielding to the savage rage that gripped him, Sanderson stole softly forward and looked closely at the animal. He recognized it instantly as Dale’s, and in the instant, his face pale, his eyes blazing with passion, he was on the porch, peering through one of the darkened windows.

  Inside he saw Dale and Mary Bransford. They were in the sitting-room. Dale was sitting in a big chair, smoking a cigar, one arm carelessly thrown over the back of the chair, his legs crossed, his attitude that of the master.

  Standing perhaps a dozen feet from him was Mary Bransford.

  The girl’s eyes were wide with fright and astonishment, disbelief, incredulity—and several other emotions that Sanderson could not analyze. He did not try. One look at her sufficed to tell him that Dale was baiting her, tantalizing her, mocking her, and Sanderson’s hatred for the man grew in intensity until it threatened to overwhelm him.

  There was in his mind an impulse to burst into the house and kill Dale where he sat. It was the primitive lust to destroy an unprincipled rival that had seized Sanderson, for he saw in Dale’s eyes the bold passion of the woman hunter.

  However, Sanderson conquered the impulse. He fought it with the marvelous self-control and implacable determination that had made him feared and respected wherever men knew him, and in the end the faint, stiff grin on his face indicated that whatever he did would be done with deliberation.

  This was an instance where the eavesdropper had some justification for his work, and Sanderson listened.

  He heard Dale laugh—the sound of it made Sanderson’s lips twitch queerly. He saw Mary cringe from Dale and press her hands over her breast. Dale’s voice carried clearly to Sanderson.

  “Ha, ha!” he said. “So that hurts, eh? Well, here’s more of the same kind. We got Barney Owen drunk last sight, and he admitted that he’d signed all of Sanderson’s papers—the papers that were supposed to have been signed by your brother. Why didn’t Sanderson sign them? Why? Because Sanderson couldn’t do it.

  “Owen, who knew your brother in Arizona, signed them, because he knew how to imitate your brother’s writing. Get that! Owen signed a bank receipt for the money old Bransford had in the bank. Owen got it and gave it to me. He was so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing, but he could imitate your brother’s writing, all right.”

  “You’ve got the money?” gasped the girl.

  Again Dale laughed, mockingly. “Yep,” he said, “I’ve got it. Three thousand two hundred. And I’ve got four thousand that belongs to that four-flusher, Square Deal. Seven thousand.” He laughed again.

  “Where is Sanderson?” questioned the girl.

  “In jail, over in Okar.” Dale paused long enough to enjoy the girl’s distress. Then he continued: “Owen is in jail, too, by this time. Silverthorn and Maison are not taking any chances on letting him go around loose.”

  “Sanderson in jail!” gasped Mary. She seemed to droop; she staggered to a chair and sank into it, still looking at Dale, despair in her eyes.

  Dale got up and walked to a point directly in front of her, looking down at her, triumphantly.

  “That’s what,” he said. “In jail. Moreover, that’s where they’ll stay until this thing is settled. We mean to have the Double A. The sooner you realize that, the easier it will be for you.

  “I’m offering you a way out of it—an easy way. That guy, Sanderson, ain’t on the level. He’s been working you, making a monkey of you—fooling you. He wants the Double A for himself. He’s been hanging around here, passing himself off as your brother, aiming to get on the good side of you—getting you to love him good and hard. Then mebbe he’d tell you, thinking that you’d forgive him. But mebbe that wasn’t his game at all. Mebbe he’d figured to grab the ranch and turn you out.

  “Now, I’m offering you a whole lot. Mebbe you’ve thought I was sweet on that Nyland girl. Get that out of your mind. I was only fooling with her—like any man fools with a girl. I want her ranch—that’s all. But I don’t care a damn about the Double A, I want you. I’ve had my eye on you right along. Mebbe it won’t be marriage right away, but—”

  “Alva Dale!”

  The girl was on her feet, her eyes blazing.

  Dale did not retreat from her; he stood smiling at her, his face wreathed in a huge grin. He was enjoying the girl.

  Sanderson slipped along the wall of the house and opened the door. It creaked loudly on its hinges with the movement, causing both Dale and the girl to turn and face it.

  Mary Bransford stood rigid as she saw Sanderson standing in the doorway, a flush sweeping swiftly over her face. There was relief in her eyes.

  Astonishment and stark, naked fear were in Dale’s eyes. He shrank back a step, and looked swiftly at Sanderson’s right hand, and when he saw that it held a six-shooter he raised both his own hands, shoulder-high, the palms toward Sanderson.

  “So you know it means shootin’, eh?” said Sanderson grimly as he stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him, slamming it shut with his left hand.

  “Well, shootin’ goes.” There was the cold calm of decision in his manner; his eyes were ablaze with the accumulated hate and rage that had been aroused over what he had heard. The grin that he showed to Dale drew his lips into two straight, stiff lines.

  “I reckon you think you’ve earned your red shirt, Dale,” he said, “for tellin’ tales out of school. Well, you’ll get it. There’s just one thing will save your miserable hide. You got that seven thousand on you?”

  Dale hesitated, then nodded.

  Sanderson spoke to Mary Bransford without removing his gaze from Dale:

  “Get pen, ink, an’ paper.”

  The girl moved quickly into another room, returning almost instantly with the articles requested.

  “Sit down an’ write what I tell you to,” directed Sanderson.

  Dale dropped into a chair beside a center-table, took up the pen, poised it over the paper, and looked at Sanderson.

  “I am hereby returning to Deal Sanderson the seven thousand two hundred dollars I stole from, him,” directed Sanderson. “I am doing this of my own accord—no one is forcin’ me,” went on Sanderson. “I want to add that I hereby swear that the charge of drawin’ a gun on Silverthorn was a frame-up, me an’ Silverthorn an’ Maison bein’ the guilty parties,” finished Sanderson.

  “Now,” he added, when Dale had written as directed, “sign it.”

  Dale signed and stood up, his face aflame with rage.

  “I’ll take the money—now,” said Sanderson.

  Dale produced it from various pockets, laying it on the table. He said nothing. Mary Bransford stood a little distance away, watching silently.

  “Count it, Miss Bransford,” said Sanderson when Dale had disgorged the money.

  The two men stood silent as the girl fingered the bills. At last she looked at Sanderson and nodded.

  The latter grinned. “Everything’s regular, now,” he said. He looked at Mary. “Do you want him killed, ma’am? He’d be a lot better off dead. You’d be better off, too. This kind of a skunk is always around, botherin’ women—when there ain’t no men around.”

  Mary shook her head with a decisive negative.

  “Then he won’t die, right now,” said Sanderson. “He’ll pull his freight away from the Double A, though, ma’am. An’ he’ll never come back.”

  He was talking to Dale through the girl, and Dale watched him, scowling.

  “If he does come back, you’ll tell me, won’t you, ma’am? An’ then there’ll never be an Alva Dale to bother you again—or to go around robbin’ honest men, an’ tryin’ to get them mixed up with the law.”

  And now he turned from the girl and spoke to Dale:

  “You go right back to Okar an’ tell Maison an’ Silverthorn what has happened here tonight. Show them how the fear of God has got into your heart an’ made you yearn to practice the principles of a square deal. Tell them that they’d
better get to goin’ straight, too, for if they don’t there’s a guy which was named after a square deal that is goin’ to snuff them off this hemisphere middlin’ rapid. That’s all. You’d better hit the breeze right back to Okar an’ spread the good news.”

  He stood, a grim smile on his face, watching Dale as the latter walked to the door. When Dale stepped out on the porch Sanderson followed him, still regarding the movements of the other coldly and alertly.

  Mary heard them—their steps on the boards of the porch; she heard the saddle leather creak as Dale climbed on his horse; she heard the sound of the hoofbeats as the horse clattered out of the ranchhouse yard.

  And then for several minutes she stood near the little table in the room, listening vainly for some sound that would tell her of the presence of Sanderson on the porch. None came.

  At last, when she began to feel certain that he had gone to the bunkhouse, she heard a step on the porch and saw Sanderson standing in the doorway.

  He grinned at her, meeting her gaze fairly.

  “Dale told you a heap of truth, ma’am,” he said. “I feel more like a man tonight than I’ve felt for a good many days—an’ nights.”

  “Then it was true—as Dale said—that you are not my brother?” said the girl. She was trying to make her voice sound severe, but only succeeded in making it quaver.

  “I ain’t your brother.”

  “And you came here to try to take the ranch away from me—to steal it?”

  He flushed. “You’ve got four thousand of my money there, ma’am. You’re to keep it. Mebbe that will help to show what my intentions were. About the rest—your brother an’ all—I’ll have to tell you. It’s a thing you ought to know, an’ I don’t know what’s been keepin’ me from tellin’ you all along.

  “Mebbe it was because I was scared you’d take it hard. But since these sneaks have got to waggin’ their tongues it’ll have to be told. If you sit down by the table there, I’ll tell you why I done what I did.”

  She took a chair beside the table and faced him, and, standing before her, speaking very gently, but frankly, he related what had occurred to him in the desert. She took it calmly, though there were times when her eyes glowed with a light that told of deep emotion. But she soon became resigned to the death of her brother and was able to listen to Sanderson’s story of his motive in deceiving her.