CHAPTER XXVI
THE FRAME-UP
Thornton returned to his cabin long before the first faint streak ofdaylight, and not once during the night did he think of sleep. At hislittle table in the light of his coal-oil lamp he read over and over thehurried words which Winifred Waverly had been driven to put on paper forhim. At first his look was merely charged with perplexity; then therecame into it incredulity and finally sheer amazement.
"The pack of hounds!" he cried softly when he had done, his fiststriking hard upon his table. "The pack of low down, dirty hounds!"
For now, in a flash, he saw and understood beyond the limits to whichthe girl's vision had gone, grasping explanations denied to her. She hadtold him everything which she knew or suspected, saying somewhere in heraccount, "I know now that my first judgment of you, before I wasdeceived into thinking Ben Broderick you, was right. I know that you area man and a gentleman. I know that you are 'square.' So now, if youthink that you owe me anything for what I am doing for you, I want youto remember that Henry Pollard is my uncle, my dead mother's brother,and to make things no harder for him than he has made them forhimself."
With no other reference to her relation to the man, with no further hintof a plea for herself, she went on to tell what she knew of Pollard andBroderick, of their meetings with Dalton whom, she thought, they hadcompletely deceived, of the talk she had overheard that night at theschoolhouse. She said nothing of her own precarious position atPollard's house. When he finished reading Buck Thornton's eyes were verybright.
"A real woman," he muttered. "A real man's sort of girl! I doped her upright at the first jump, and then I went and insulted her by thinkingthat she was like 'Rattlesnake' Pollard! Lord, Lordy! What adifference!" And then, very gently, his eyes clouding a little, hemuttered over and over, under his breath: "Poor little kid!"
But ever his thoughts came back to the tangle into which day by day hehimself had been moving deeper and deeper. He saw how simple the wholematter had been, how seemingly sure of success. Broderick was closeenough to him in size and form to make the scheme eminently practicable.It was easy for Broderick to dress himself as Thornton dressed, boots,chaps old and worn, big black hat and grey neck handkerchief. It wassimple enough for Broderick, here in this land of cattle and horses, tofind a horse that would be a fair match for any horse which Thorntonrode. He would allow himself to be seen only at a distance, as upon theday Winifred Waverly had seen him, or indistinctly at night, and whenthe time came and the arrest was made there would rise up many men toswear to Buck Thornton.... Broderick himself had already said that hehad been robbed of a can of gold dust. He would be ready to swear thatThornton had robbed him. Pollard would add his word....
One by one he remembered episodes which until now had meant nothing.Cattle had been stolen from the ranges all about him; no single cow wasmissing from the Poison Hole. He had thought that this had been becauseof his own great vigilance, his night-riding over his herds. But whatwould a jury say? He remembered that the last time he had seen old manKing, just a few days ago, when King had remarked drily upon the factthat no cattle were missing from Thornton's range, there had been aswift look of suspicion in the old cattle man's shrewd eyes. Already hewas suspected. How many men besides King were ready to believe the worstof Buck Thornton, a man who had been in their midst only a year?
There were many days in the life of Buck Thornton as in the lives ofother cattle men hereabouts when he was absolutely alone with his horse,when he rode far out day and night upon some range errand, when,perhaps, he went two or three days together and saw no other man.Thornton remembered suddenly that when he had first heard of the murderof Bill Varney, the stage driver, he had just returned from such alonely ride, a three days' trip into the mountains to look for newpasture lands. If these men planned to commit these crimes and then tothrow the burden upon him, he saw how simple a matter it would be forthem to select some such occasion as this when he could not prove analibi.
"They've come mighty close to getting me," he muttered sternly. "Mightydamned uncomfortably close!"
He saw further. Winifred Waverly had said frankly that she had sworn tothe sheriff that she knew it was Buck Thornton who had robbed her. Theywere managing to hold Cole Dalton off, and they had a reason. What?Perhaps to work their game as long as they dared, to make a last bighaul, or to have their chain of evidence welded so strongly link by linkthat Thornton could not free himself from it and that no faintest breathof suspicion might reach them. Pollard would be in a position to provethat Thornton had paid him this five thousand only to take it back; itwould give him a chance to break the contract, to regain possession ofthe Poison Hole and to keep the other ten thousand dollars already paidin as forfeited....
Why had they chosen him to bear the brunt of their manifold crimes?That, too, was clear to him. With him in the penitentiary or gone to thegallows the whole episode would be closed, the men who had put throughthe monumental scheme would be in a position to enjoy their boldlyacquired profits with no fear of the law so much as searching for them.It was necessary to them that some man suffer for their wrong doing.Now: why Buck Thornton in particular? The reasons were forthcoming,logical and in order: he was a man whom Pollard hated; already Pollardregretted having sold the Poison Hole ranch for twenty thousand dollars;he wanted it back; Thornton happened to be a new man in the country andnew men are always open to suspicion; he happened to be close enough toBen Broderick in size and form and carriage to make the deception easy.And, thought Thornton, there was one other reason:
The undertaking of these men had already grown too big, the work tooextensive, for it to be handled by two men alone. They had confederates;that was inevitable. Blackie, the saloon keeper in Dry Town, was one ofthem, he felt sure. The Bedloe boys, always ready for deeds of wildnessand lawlessness, were others. The Bedloe boys hated him as keenly as didPollard, and they were not the kind to miss an opportunity like this to"break even" with him. It was noteworthy that he had had no trouble withthem since he had shot the Kid's revolvers out of his hands at JohnSmith's place last winter; they had left him entirely unmolested; thethree of them who he knew were fearless and hard and vengeful, had notsought in any way to punish him. Here was the reason.
He went back to Winifred Waverly's letter. She had ended by saying,
"I know that Henry Pollard suspects me of knowing more than I haveadmitted to him; I suppose I did not entirely deceive him about thatyellow envelope. He is watching me all the time. That is why I havewritten this to be ready to give it to you if I get the chance, if Idare not talk with you. Don't try to see me. I am in no danger now, butif you came, if he knew that we were seeing each other.... I don'tknow."
At last when Thornton got up and went to his door day was breaking. Hereturned to his table where his lamplight was growing a sickly, paleyellow in the dawn, and holding Winifred's letter over the chimneyburned it. He took her other little note from his pocket and let theyellow flame lick it up. Then, grinding the ashes under his heel, he putout the light and went again to the door.
The recent shooting at the Here's How Saloon by some man who had stoodalmost at the cowboy's elbow, he had for a little forgotten as hepondered on his own personal danger and admitted that the case was goingto look bad against him in spite of what he might do. But now, for amoment, he forgot his own predicament to become lost in frowningspeculation upon the night's crime.
He knew that men like the Bedloes, hard men living hard lives, have manyenemies. There were the men whom they had cheated at cards, and who hadcheated them, with whom they had drunk and quarrelled. It was clear tohim that any one of a dozen men, bearing a grudge against CharleyBedloe, but afraid to attack in the open any one of these three brotherswho fought like tigers and who took up one another's quarrels with nothought of the right and the wrong of it, might have chosen this method.
Yes, this was clear. But one thing was not. The night had passed andneither the Kid nor Ed Bedloe had called to square with him. He did notund
erstand this. For he did not believe that even their affiliation withBroderick and Pollard would have held the Kid and Ed back from theirvengeance now. It was patent that the Kid had leaped to the naturalconclusion that he had killed Charley Bedloe; he understood the emotionwhich he had seen depicted in the Kid's twisted face as Charleystaggered and fell at his brother's feet. It was a great, blind grief,unutterable, wrathful, terrible, like the unreasoning, tempestuous griefof a wild thing, of a mother bear whose cubs had been shot before hereyes. For the one thing which it seemed God had put into the natures ofthese men was love, the love which led them to seek no wife, no friend,no confidante outside their own close fraternity. And yet the night hadpassed and neither the Kid nor Ed had come.
"Something happened to stop them," mused Thornton. "For a few hoursonly. They'll come. And I'd give a hundred dollars to know who thejasper was that put that bullet into Charley."
He went back into his cabin, put his two guns on the table, threw outthe cartridges, and for fifteen minutes oiled and cleaned. Then, with acareful eye to every shell, he loaded them again. When he once morethrew his door open and went outside his eyes were a little regretfulbut very, very hard.
He was inclined to believe that Winifred was mistaken in judging BenBroderick's to be the brains of this thing. He thought that he sawPollard's hand directing. Until now he had fully expected to go to DryTown, to raise the four thousand five hundred dollars with which to makehis last payment upon the Poison Hole ranch. Now he more than suspectedthat this was but a play of Pollard's to get him out of the way whilethe last crime be perpetrated, to have him out upon one of his lonelyrides so that he could prove no alibi, perhaps even to rob him of thefour thousand five hundred dollars before he could come with it toHill's Corners. Now he made up his mind that he was not going to givePollard this one last chance he wanted. For, he felt convinced, if hedid succeed in getting through with the money without a bullet in theback, and if he actually brought it to Pollard the latter would tell himthat he had changed his mind, and so the rash act would have been doneuselessly. Having no way of holding Pollard to his bargain he had littlewish to make the long ride to Dry Town and back.
Thornton for several days had planned to ride out to the borders of hisrange and see his cowboys, giving them full instructions for work to bedone during the week which followed in case he should not be able togive more time to them. Now, with a great deal to think about, he wasnot averse to a solitary day in the saddle.
Of late he had noted how the cinch of his working saddle was weakening;some of the strands had parted even. He should mend it now, but he hadno time to lose, and he did have another saddle, which he did not usetwice during the year and which for months now he had not even seen. Hehad put it out of the way, high up in the loft. He went down to the barnmeaning to get it and make the exchange. If he was going to have somehard riding during the coming days it was as well if he used thissaddle, the best he had ever seen. Rather too ornate with its profusesilver chasings and carved leather for every day's use, a heavy Mexicanaffair which he had won in a bronco "busting" competition down in Texasfour years ago.
He came up into the loft, half filled with hay, and went to the far endwhere the saddle had hung upon its peg. It was gone. He stood staring atthe peg in surprise. Surely he had left it here, surely he had notremoved it. He tried to think when he had seen it last. And heremembered. It had been two or three months ago, and he knew that he hadleft it here, he even remembered the trouble he had had in drawing it upafter him through the small trap door. Now where was it?
His first suspicion was that one of his men had been using it. But heknew that that was impossible. He would have seen it, and moreover oneman does not take another man's saddle without saying by your leave.
"The thing is worth three hundred dollars, easy," he muttered. "It wouldbe funny...."
He went to the loose hay heaped at the wall and began to kick it about,half expecting to have his boot strike against the silver tipped horn orthe heavy tapaderos. And then at last did the swift, certain suspicionof the truth flash upon him. He came upon a small soap box hidden farunder the loose hay. He drew it out, whisking away the straw which halffilled it. After the first start of amazement and a swift examination ofthe contents, he understood.
"A plant!" he cried angrily. "A damned cowardly plant! Lord, Lordy, butthey're making a clean job of this!"
Upon the top of the pile, the first thing he took into his hands, was aheavy silver watch. It bore a name, scratched within the case, and thename was that of Jed MacIntosh, the man who, Blackie had told him, hadbeen "cleaned out" in Dry Town. There were two bank notes, one for tendollars, one for twenty, and both were soiled with dark smears that toldof dry blood. There was a little, much worn memorandum book, with manypencil-scribbled entries in it, and upon the fly leaf it bore the nameof Seth Powers, the man who had been robbed in Gold Run and who had beenfound beaten into unconsciousness. There was a small tin can; in thebottom of it some pine pitch, and adhering to the pitch a fine siftingof gold dust. A can, he knew, Ben Broderick would identify as the oneof which he had been robbed! There were other articles, two morewatches, a revolver, an empty purse, which he could not identify butwhich he realized keenly would be identified when the time came.
Suppose that the time came now! Suppose that he should hear thesheriff's voice calling upon him, that a posse should come upon him andfind him with this box in his possession! What chance would he have?
His face went white with the anger which surged up within him and thedesire leaped up, strong and bitter, to get in his two hands the man whohad framed him and to choke the treacherous life out of him. Then,suddenly, he was cool again, seeing the present danger and the urgentneed of prompt action.
First he made certain that there was no other damning bit of falseevidence concealed in the hay or any where in the loft. Then, taking thebox under his arm, he went down into the stable. Here again he madecareful search, spending an hour in a stubborn search. Then leaving thebox in a manger, straw-covered, he went back to the cabin on the top ofthe knoll. His eyes, running to the four points of the compass, told himthat there was no other man within sight.
Taking off his boots and socks he waded out into the middle of BigLittle River, carrying a shovel and the box. In the soft, sandy soil hemade a hole deep enough to hold the box which he put into it. Swiftly hefilled it with stones, placed a big, flat rock over it, saw that therewas no sign of his work as the sand and mud drifted in to fill thelittle hollow, and then went back for his boots. The shovel he put againagainst the bunk house wall.
When, at last, he had mended his cinch and rode Comet out towards theeast and the mountains upon the flank of the Poison Hole, he had made uphis mind what he was going to do.
"It's a gamble," he told himself coolly. "But I guess I've got to gamblenow. And I'm going to play it heavy."
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