CHAPTER V
I returned to Box Springs at a slow jog trot, thinking things over. OldMan Hooper's warning sobered, but did not act as a deterrent of myintention to continue with the adventure. But how? I could hardly stormthe fort single handed and carry off the damsel in distress. On theevidence I possessed I could not even get together a storming party. Thecowboy is chivalrous enough, but human. He would not uprisespontaneously to the point of war on the mere statement of incarceratedbeauty--especially as ill-treatment was not apparent. I would hardlylast long enough to carry out the necessary proselyting campaign. Itnever occurred to me to doubt that Hooper would fulfill his threat ofhaving me killed, or his ability to do so.
So when the men drifted in two by two at dusk, I said nothing of my realadventures, and answered their chaff in kind.
"He played the piano for me," I told them the literal truth, "and had mein to the parlour and dining room. He gave me a room to myself with abed and sheets; and he rode out to his pasture gate with me to saygood-bye," and thereby I was branded a delicious liar.
"They took me into the bunk house and fed me, all right," said WindyBill, "and fed my horse. And next morning that old Mexican Joe of hisjust nat'rally up and kicked me off the premises."
"Wonder you didn't shoot him," I exclaimed.
"Oh, he didn't use his foot. But he sort of let me know that the placewas unhealthy to visit more'n once. And somehow I seen he meant it; andI ain't never had no call to go back."
I mulled over the situation all day, and then could stand it no longer.On the dark of the evening I rode to within a couple of miles ofHooper's ranch, tied my horse, and scouted carefully forward afoot. Forone thing I wanted to find out whether the system of high transomsextended to all the rooms, including that in the left wing: for anotherI wanted to determine the "lay of the land" on that blank side of thehouse. I found my surmise correct as to the transoms. As to the blankside of the house, that looked down on a wide, green, moist patch andthe irrigating ditch with its stunted willows. Then painstakingly I wentover every inch of the terrain about the ranch; and might just as wellhave investigated the external economy of a mud turtle. Realizing thatnothing was to be gained in this manner, I withdrew to my strategic basewhere I rolled down and slept until daylight. Then I saddled andreturned toward the ranch.
I had not ridden two miles, however, before in the boulder-strewn washof Arroyo Seco I met Jim Starr, one of our men.
"Look here," he said to me. "Jed sent me up to look at the ElderSprings, but my hoss has done cast a shoe. Cain't you ride up there?"
"I cannot," said I, promptly. "I've been out all night and had nobreakfast. But you can have my horse."
So we traded horses and separated, each our own way. They sent me out byCoyote Wells with two other men, and we did not get back until thefollowing evening.
The ranch was buzzing with excitement. Jim Starr had not returned,although the ride to Elder Springs was only a two-hour affair. After anight had elapsed, and still he did not return, two men had been sent.They found him half way to Elder Springs with a bullet hole in his back.The bullet was that of a rifle. Being plainsmen they had done gooddetective work of its kind, and had determined--by the direction of thebullet's flight as evidenced by the wound--that it had been fired from apoint above. The only point above was the low "rim" that ran for milesdown the Soda Springs Valley. It was of black lava and showed no tracks.The men, with a true sense of values, had contented themselves withcovering Jim Starr with a blanket, and then had ridden the rim for somemiles in both directions looking for a trail. None could be discovered.By this they deduced that the murder was not the result of chanceencounter, but had been so carefully planned that no trace would be leftof the murderer or murderers.
No theory could be imagined save the rather vague one of personalenmity. Jim Starr was comparatively a newcomer with us. Nobody knewanything much about him or his relations. Nobody questioned the only manwho could have told anything; and that man did not volunteer to tellwhat he knew.
I refer to myself. The thing was sickeningly clear to me. Jim Starr hadnothing to do with it. I was the man for whom that bullet from the rimhad been intended. I was the unthinking, shortsighted fool who had doneJim Starr to his death. It had never occurred to me that my midnightreconnoitring would leave tracks, that Old Man Hooper's suspiciousvigilance would even look for tracks. But given that vigilance, the restfollowed plainly enough. A skillful trailer would have found his way towhere I had mounted; he would have followed my horse to Arroyo Secowhere I had met with Jim Starr. There he would have visualized a rideron a horse without one shoe coming as far as the Arroyo, meeting me, andreturning whence he had come; and me at once turning off at rightangles. His natural conclusion would be that a messenger had brought meorders and had returned. The fact that we had shifted mounts he couldnot have read, for the reason--as I only too distinctly remembered--thatwe had made the change in the boulder and rock stream bed which wouldshow no clear traces.
The thought that poor Jim Starr, whom I had well liked, had beensacrificed for me, rendered my ride home with the convoy more deeplythoughtful than even the tragic circumstances warranted. We laid hisbody in the small office, pending Buck Johnson's return from town, andate our belated meal in silence. Then we gathered around the cornerfireplace in the bunk house, lit our smokes, and talked it over. JedParker joined us. Usually he sat with our owner in the office.
Hardly had we settled ourselves to discussion when the door opened andBuck Johnson came in. We had been so absorbed that no one had heard himride up. He leaned his forearm against the doorway at the height of hishead and surveyed the silenced group rather ironically.
"Lucky I'm not nervous and jumpy by nature," he observed. "I've seendead men before. Still, next time you want to leave one in my officeafter dark, I wish you'd put a light with him, or tack up a sign, oreven leave somebody to tell me about it. I'm sorry it's Starr and notthat thoughtful old horned toad in the corner."
Jed looked foolish, but said nothing. Buck came in, closed the door, andtook a chair square in front of the fireplace. The glow of the leapingflames was full upon him. His strong face and bulky figure wererevealed, while the other men sat in half shadow. He at once took chargeof the discussion.
"How was he killed?" he inquired, "bucked off?"
"Shot," replied Jed Parker.
Buck's eyebrows came together.
"Who?" he asked.
He was told the circumstances as far as they were known, but declined tolisten to any of the various deductions and surmises.
"Deliberate murder and not a chance quarrel," he concluded. "He wasn'teven within hollering distance of that rim-rock. Anybody know anythingabout Starr?"
"He's been with us about five weeks," proffered Jed, as foreman. "Saidhe came from Texas."
"He was a Texican," corroborated one of the other men. "I rode with himconsiderable."
"What enemies did he have?" asked Buck.
But it developed that, as far as these men knew, Jim Starr had had noenemies. He was a quiet sort of a fellow. He had been to town once ortwice. Of course he might have made an enemy, but it was not likely; hehad always behaved himself. Somebody would have known of any trouble----
"Maybe somebody followed him from Texas."
"More likely the usual local work," Buck interrupted. "This man Starrever met up with Old Man Hooper or Hooper's men?"
But here was another impasse. Starr had been over on the Slick Rock eversince his arrival. I could have thrown some light on the matter,perhaps, but new thoughts were coming to me and I kept silence.
Shortly Buck Johnson went out. His departure loosened tongues, amongthem mine.
"I don't see why you stand for this old _hombre_ if he's as bad as yousay," I broke in. "Why don't some of you brave young warriors justnaturally pot him?"
And that started a new line of discussion that left me even morethoughtful than before. I knew these men intimately. There was not acoward among them. They had
been tried and hardened and tempered in thefierceness of the desert. Any one of them would have twisted the tail ofthe devil himself; but they were off Old Man Hooper. They did not makethat admission in so many words; far from it. And I valued my hideenough to refrain from pointing the fact. But that fact remained: theywere off Old Man Hooper. Furthermore, by the time they had finishedrecounting in intimate detail some scores of anecdotes dealing with whathappened when Old Man Hooper winked his wildcat eye, I began in spiteof myself to share some of their sentiments. For no matter how flagrantthe killing, nor how certain morally the origin, never had the mostbrilliant nor the most painstaking effort been able to connect with theslayers nor their instigator. He worked in the dark by hidden hands; butthe death from the hands was as certain as the rattlesnake's. Certain ofhis victims, by luck or cleverness, seemed to have escaped sometimes asmany as three or four attempts but in the end the old man's Killers gotthem.
A Jew drummer who had grossly insulted Hooper in the Lone Star Emporiumhad, on learning the enormity of his crime, fled to San Francisco. Threemonths later Soda Springs awoke to find pasted by an unknown hand on thewindow of the Emporium a newspaper account of that Jew drummer's takingoff. The newspaper could offer no theory and merely recited the factthat the man suffered from a heavy-calibred bullet. But always the talkturned back at last to that crowning atrocity, the Boomerang, with itswindrows of little calves, starved for water, lying against the fence.
"Yes," someone unexpectedly answered my first question at last, "someonecould just naturally pot him easy enough. But I got a hunch that hecouldn't get fur enough away to feel safe afterward. The fellow with ahankering for a good _useful_ kind of suicide could get it right there.Any candidates? You-all been looking kinda mournful lately, Windy;s'pose you be the human benefactor and rid the world of this yerereptile."
"Me?" said Windy with vast surprise, "me mournful? Why, I sing at mywork like a little dicky bird. I'm so plumb cheerful bull frogs ain'tin it. You ain't talking to me!"
But I wanted one more point of information before the conversationveered.
"Does his daughter ever ride out?" I asked.
"Daughter?" they echoed in surprise.
"Or niece, or whoever she is," I supplemented impatiently.
"There's no woman there; not even a Mex," said one, and "Did you see anysign of any woman?" keenly from Windy Bill.
But I was not minded to be drawn.
"Somebody told me about a daughter, or niece, or something," I said,vaguely.
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