Читать бесплатно онлайн книгу  Bransford of Rainbow Range

автор Eugene Rhodes

Eugene Manlove Rhodes
Bransford of Rainbow Range Originally Published under the title of Bransford in Arcadia or The Little Eohippus

PROLOGUE

I

The long fall round-up was over. The wagon, homeward bound, made camp for the last night out at the Sinks of Lost River. Most of the men, worn with threescore night-guards, were buried under their tarps in the deep sleep of the weary; sound as that of the just, and much more common.

By the low campfire a few yet lingered: old-timers, iron men, whose wiry and seasoned strength was toil-proof – and Leo Ballinger, for whom youth, excitement and unsated novelty served in lieu of fitness.

The “firelighters,” working the wide range again from Ancho to Hueco, from the Mal Pais to Glencoe, fell silent now, to mark an unstaled miracle.

The clustered lights of Rainbow’s End shone redly, near and low. Beyond, above, dominant, the black, unbroken bulk of Rainbow Range shut out the east. The clear-cut crest mellowed to luminous curves, feathery with far-off pines; the long skyline thrilled with frosty fire, glowed, sparkled – the cricket’s chirp was stilled; the slow, late moon rose to a hushed and waiting world.

On the sharp crest she paused, irresolute, tiptoe, quivering, rosily aflush. Above floated a web of gossamer. She leaped up, spurning the black rim; glowed, palpitant, through that filmy lace – and all the desert throbbed with vibrant light.

Cool and sweet and fresh, from maiden leagues of clean, brown earth the desert winds made whisper in grass and fragrant shrub; yucca, mesquite and greasewood swayed – so softly, you had not known save as the long shadows courtesied and danced.

Leo flung up his hand. The air was wine to him. A year had left the desert still new and strange. “Gee!” he said eloquently.

Headlight nodded. “You’re dead right on that point, son. If Christopher K. Columbus had only thought to beach his shallops on the sundown side of this here continent he might have made a name for himself. Just think how much different, hysterically, these United States – ”

“This United States,” corrected Pringle dispassionately. Their fathers had disagreed on the same grammatical point.

Headlight scowled. “By Jings! ‘That this United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States,’” he quoted. “I was goin’ to give you something new to exercise your talons on. You sit here every night, ridin’ broncs and four-footin’ steers, and never grab a horn or waste a loop, not once. Sure things ain’t amusin’. Some variety and doubtful accuracy, now, would develop our guessin’ gifts.”

Aforesaid Smith brandished the end-gate rod. “Them speculations of yours sorter opens up of themselves. If California had been settled first the salmon would now be our national bird instead of the potato. Think of Arizona, mother of Presidents! Seat of government at Milipitas; center of population about Butte; New Jersey howlin’ about Nevada trusts!” He impaled a few beef ribs and held them over the glowing embers.

“Georgia and South Carolina would be infested by cow-persons in décolleté leather panties,” said Jeff Bransford. “New York and Pennsylvania would be fondly turning a credulous ear to the twenty-fourth consecutive solemn promise of Statehood – with the Senator from Walla Walla urging admission of both as one mighty State with Maryland and Virginia thrown in for luck.”

Headlight forgot his pique. “Wouldn’t the railroads sound funny, though? Needles and Eastern, Northern Atlantic, Southern Atlantic, Union, Western, Kansas and Central Atlantic! Earnest and continuous demand for a President from east of the Mississippi. All the prize-fights pulled off at Boston.”

“Columbus done just right,” said Pringle decisively. “You fellers ain’t got no imagination a-tall. If this Western country’d been settled first, the maps would read: ‘Northeast Territory. – Uninhabitable wilderness; region of storm and snow, roaming savages and fierce wild beasts.’ When the intrepid explorer hit the big white weather he’d say, ‘Little old San Diego’s good enough for me!’ Yes, sir!”

“Oh, well, climate alone doesn’t account for the charm of this country – nor scenery,” said Leo. “You feel it, but you don’t know why it is.”

“It sure agrees with your by-laws,” observed Pringle. “You’re a sight changed from the furtive behemoth you was. You’ll make a hand yet. But, even now, your dimensions from east to west is plumb fascinatin’. I’d sure admire to have your picture to put in my cornfield.”

“Very well, Mr. Pringle: I’ll exchange photographs with you,” said Leo artlessly. A smothered laugh followed this remark; uncertainty as to what horrible and unnamed use Leo would make of Pringle’s pictured face appealed to these speculative minds.

“I’ve studied out this charm business,” said Jeff. “See if I’m not right. It’s because there’s no habitually old men here to pattern after, to steady us, to make us ashamed of just staying boys. Now and then you hit an octagonal cuss like Wes here, that on a mere count of years and hairs might be sized up as old by the superficial observer. But if I have ever met that man more addicted with vivid nonchalance as to further continuance of educational facilities than this same Also Ran, his number has now escaped me. Really aged old people stay where they was.”

“I think, myself, that what makes life so easy and congenial in these latigos and longitudes is the dearth of law and the ladies.” Thus Pringle, the cynic.

A fourfold outcry ensued; indignant repudiation of the latter heresy. Their protest rose above the customary subdued and quiet drawl of the out-of-doors man.

“But has the law no defenders?” demanded Leo. “We’ve got to have laws to make us behave.”

“Sure thing! Likewise, ’tis the waves that make the tide come in,” said Jeff. “A good law is as handy as a good pocketbook. But law, as simply such, independent of its merits, rouses no enthusiasm in my manly bosom, no more than a signboard the day after Hallowe’en. If it occurs to me in a moment of emotional sanity that the environments of the special case in hand call for a compound fracture of the statutes made and provided – for some totally different cases that happen to be called by the same name – I fall upon it with my glittering hew-gag, without no special wonder. For,” he declaimed, “I am endowed by nature with certain inalienable rights, among which are the high justice, the middle, and the low!”

“And who’s to be the judge of whether it’s a good law or not? You?”

“Me. Me, every time. Some one must. If I let some other man make up my mind I’ve got to use my judgment – picking the man I follow. By organizing myself into a Permanent Committee of One to do my own thinking I take my one chance of mistakes instead of two.”

“So you believe in doing evil that good may come, do you?”

“Well,” said Jeff judicially, “it seems to be at least as good a proposition as doing good that evil may come of it. Why, Capricorn, there isn’t one thing we call wrong, when other men do it, that hasn’t been lawful, some time or other. When to break a law is to do a wrong, it’s evil. When it’s doing right to break a law, it’s not evil. Got that? It’s not wrong to keep a just law – and if it’s wrong to break an unjust law I want a new dictionary with pictures of it in the back.”

“But laws is useful and excitin’ diversions to break up the monogamy,” said Aforesaid. “And it’s a dead easy way to build up a rep. Look at the edge I’ve got on you fellows. You’re just supposed to be honest – but I’ve been proved honest, frequent!”

“Hark!” said Pringle.

A weird sound reached them – the night wrangler, beguiling his lonely vigil with song.

 

“Oh, the cuckoo is a pretty bird; she comes in the spring – ”

 

“What do you s’pose that night-hawk thinks about the majesty of the law?” he said. There was a ringing note in his voice. Smith and Headlight nodded gravely; their lean, brown faces hardened.

“You haven’t heard of it? Old John Taylor, daddy to yonder warbler, drifted here from the East. Wife and little girl both puny. Taylor takes up a homestead on the Feliz. He wasn’t affluent none. I let him have my old paint pony, Freckles – him being knee-sprung and not up to cow-work. To make out an unparalleled team, he got Ed Poe’s Billy Bowlegs, née Gambler, him havin’ won a new name by a misunderstanding with a prairie-dog hole. Taylor paid Poe for him in work. He was a willin’ old rooster, Taylor, but futile and left-handed all over.

“John, Junior, he was only thirteen. Him and the old man moseyed around like two drunk ants, fixin’ up a little log house with rock chimbleys, a horse-pen and shelter, rail-fencin’ of the little vegas to put to crops, and so on.

“Done you good to drop in and hear ’em plan and figger. They was one happy family. How Sis Em’ly bragged about their hens layin’! In the spring we all held a bee and made their ’cequias for ’em. Baker, he loaned ’em a plow. They dragged big branches over the ground for a harrow. They could milk anybody’s cows they was a mind to tame, and the boys took to carryin’ over motherless calves for Mis’ Taylor to raise. Taylor, he done odd jobs, and they got along real well with their crops. They went into the second winter peart as squirrels.

“But, come spring, Sis wasn’t doin’ well. They had the Agency doctor. Too high up and too damp, he said. So the missus and Em’ly they went to Cruces, where Em’ly could go to school.

“That meant right smart of expense – rentin’ a house and all. So the Johns they hires out. John, Junior, made his dayboo as wrangler for the Steam Pitchfork, acquirin’ the obvious name of Felix.

“The old man he got a job muckin’ in Organ mines. Kept his hawses in Jeff Isaack’s pasture, and Saturday nights he’d get one and slip down them eighteen miles to Cruces for Sunday with the folks.

“Well, you know, a homesteader can’t be off his claim more’n six months at a time.

“I reckon if there was ever a homestead taken up in good faith ’twas the Butterbowl. They knew the land laws from A to Izzard. Even named their hound pup Boney Fido!

“But the old man waited at Organ till the last bell rang, so’s to draw down his wages, payday. Then he bundles the folks into his little old wagon and lights out. Campin’ at Casimiro’s Well, half-way ’cross, that ornery Freckles hawse has a fit of malignant nostolgy and projects off for Butterbowl, afoot, in his hobbles. Next day, Taylor don’t overtake him till the middle of the evenin’, and what with going back and what with Freckles being hobble-sore, he’s two days late in reachin’ home. For Lake, of Agua Chiquite, that prosperous person, had been keeping cases. He entered contest on the Butterbowl, allegin’ abandonment.

“Now, if it was me – but, then, if ’twas me I could stay away six years and two months without no remonstrances from Lake or his likes. I’m somewhat abandoned myself.

“But poor old Taylor, he’s been drug up where they hold biped life unaccountable high. He sits him down resignedly beneath the sky, as the poet says, meek and legal. We all don’t abnormally like to precipitate in another man’s business, but we makes it up to sorter saunter in on Lake, spontaneous, and evince our disfavor with a rope. But Taylor says, ‘No.’ He allows the Land Office won’t hold him morally responsible for the sinful idiocy of a homesick spotted hawse that’s otherwise reliable.

“He’s got one more guess comin’. There ain’t no sympathies to machinery. Your intentions may be strictly honorable, but if you get your hand caught in the cogs, off it goes, regardless of how handy it is for flankin’ calves, holdin’ nails, and such things. ‘Absent over six months. Entry canceled. Contestant is allowed thirty days’ prior right to file. Next.’

“That’s the way that decision’ll read. It ain’t come yet, but it’s due soon.

“This here Felix looks at it just like the old man, only different – though he ain’t makin’ no statements for publication. He come here young, and having acquired the fixed habit of riskin’ his neck, regular, for one dollar per each and every diem, shooin’ in the reluctant steer, or a fool hawse pirouettin’ across the pinnacles with a nosebag on – or, mebbee, just for fun – why, natural, he don’t see why life is so sweet or peace so dear as to put up with any damn foolishness, as Pat Henry used to say when the boys called on him for a few remarks. He’s a some serious-minded boy, that night-hawk, and if signs is any indications, he’s fixin’ to take an appeal under the Winchester Act. I ain’t no seventh son of a son-of-a-gun, but my prognostications are that he presently removes Lake to another and, we trust, a better world.”

“Good thing, too,” grunted Headlight. “This Lake person is sure-lee a muddy pool.”

“Shet your fool head,” said Pringle amiably. “You may be on the jury. I’m going to seek my virtuous couch. Glad we don’t have to bed no cattle, viva voce, this night.”

“Ain’t he the Latin scholar?” said Headlight admiringly. “They blow about that wire Julius Cæsar sent the Associated Press, but old man Pringle done him up for levity and precision when he wrote us the account of his visit to the Denver carnival. Ever hear about it, Sagittarius?”

“No,” said Leo. “What did he say?”

“Hic – hock – hike!”

II

Escondido, half-way of the desert, is designed on simple lines. The railroad hauls water in tank-cars from Dog Cañon. There is one depot, one section-house, and one combination post-office-hotel-store-saloon-stage-station, kept by Ma Sanders and Pappy Sanders, in about the order mentioned. Also, one glorious green cottonwood, one pampered rosebush, jointly the pride and delight of Escondido, ownerless, but cherished by loving care and “toted” tribute of waste water.

Hither came Jeff and Leo, white with the dust of twenty starlit leagues, for accumulated mail of Rainbow South. Horse-feeding, breakfast, gossip with jolly, motherly Ma Sanders, reading and answering of mail – then their beauty nap; so missing the day’s event, the passing of the Flyer. When they woke Escondido basked drowsily in the low, westering sun. The far sunset ranges had put off their workaday homespun brown and gray for chameleon hues of purple and amethyst; their deep, cool shadows, edged with trembling rose, reached out across the desert; the velvet air stirred faintly to the promise of the night.

The agent was putting up his switch-lights; from the kitchen came a cheerful clatter of tinware.

“Now we buy some dry goods and wet,” said Leo. They went into the store.

“That decision’s come!” shrilled Pappy in tremulous excitement. “It’s too durn bad! Registered letters from Land Office for Taylor and Lake, besides another for Lake, not registered.”

“That one from the Land Office, too?” said Jeff.

“Didn’t I jest tell ye? Say, it’s a shame! Why don’t some of you fellers – Gosh! If I was only young!”

“It’s a travesty on justice!” exclaimed Leo indignantly. “There’s really no doubt but that they decided for Lake, I suppose?”

“Not a bit. He’s got the law with him. Then him and the Register is old cronies. Guess this other letter is from him unofficial, likely.”

Jeff seated himself on a box. “How long has this Lake got to do his filing in, Pappy?”

“Thirty days from the time he signs the receipt for this letter – durn him!”

“Some one ought to kidnap him,” said Leo.

“Why, that’s illegal!” Jeff nursed his knee, turned his head to one side and chanted thoughtfully:

 

“Said the little Eohippus,

‘I’m going to be a horse,

And on my middle fingernails

To run my earthly course’ – ”

 

He broke off and smiled at Leo indulgently. Leo glanced at him sharply; this was Jeff’s war-song aforetime. But it was to Pappy that Jeff spoke:

“Dad, you’re a better’n any surgeon. Wish you’d go out and look at Leo’s horse. His ankle’s all swelled up. I’ll be mixin’ me up a toddy, if Ma’s got any hot water. I’m feeling kinder squeamish.”

“Hot toddy, this weather? Some folks has queer tastes,” grumbled Pappy. “Ex-cuse me! Me and Leo’ll go look at the Charley-horse. That bottle under the shelf is the best.” He bustled out. But Jeff caught Ballinger by the sleeve.

“Will you hold my garments while I stone Stephen?” he hissed.

“I will,” said Leo, meeting Jeff’s eye. “Hit him once for me.”

“Move the lever to the right, you old retrograde, and get Pappy to gyratin’ on his axis some fifteen or twenty minutes, you listenin’ reverently. Meanwhile, I’ll make the necessary incantations. Git! Don’t look so blamed intelligent, or Pappy’ll be suspicious.”

Bransford hastened to the kitchen. “Ma Sanders, a bronc fell on me yesterday and my poor body is one big stone bruise. Can I borrow some boiling water to mix a small prescription, or maybe seven? One when you first feel like it, and repeat at intervals, the doctor says.”

“Don’t you get full in my house, Jeff Bransford, or I’ll feed you to the hawgs. You take three doses, and that’ll be a-plenty for you.”

Jeff put the steaming kettle on the rusty store stove, used as a waste-paper basket through the long summer. Touching off the papers with a match, he smashed an empty box and put it in. Then he went into the post-office corner and laid impious hands on the United States Mail.

First he steamed open Lake’s unregistered letter from the Land Office. It was merely a few typewritten lines, having no reference to the Butterbowl: “Enclosing the Plat of TP. 14 E. of First Guide Meridan East Range S. of 3d Standard Parallel South, as per request.”

He paused to consider. His roving eye lit on the wall, where the Annual Report of the Governor of New Mexico hung from a nail. “The very thing,” he said. Pasted in the report was a folded map of the Territory. This he cut out, refolded it till it slipped in the violated envelope, dabbed the flap neatly with Pappy’s mucilage, and returned the letter to its proper pigeonhole.

He replenished the fire with another box, subjected Lake’s registered letter to the steaming process and opened it with delicate caution. It was the decision; it was in Lake’s favor; and it went into the fire. Substituting for it the Plat of TP. 14 and the accompanying letter he resealed it with workmanlike neatness, and then restored it with a final inspection. “The editor sits on the madhouse floor, and pla-ays with the straws in his hair!” he murmured, beaming with complacent pride and reaching for the bottle.

Pappy and Leo found him with his hands to the blaze, shivering. “I feel like I was going to have a chill,” he complained. But with a few remedial measures he recuperated sufficiently to set off for Rainbow after supper.

“Charley’s ankle seems better,” said Leo artlessly.

“Don’t you lay no stress on Charley’s ankle,” said Jeff, in a burst of confidence. “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be otherwise. Just let Charley’s ankle slip your memory.”

The following day Bransford drew rein at Wes Pringle’s shack and summoned him forth.

“Mr. John Wesley Also Ran Pringle,” he said impressively, “I have taken a horse-ride over here to put you through your cataclysm. Will you truthfully answer the rebuses I shall now propound to the best of your ability, and govern yourself accordingly till the surface of Hades congeals to glistening bergs, and that with no unseemly curiosity?”

“Is it serious?” asked Pringle anxiously.

“This is straight talk.”

Pringle took a long look and held up his hand. “I will,” he said soberly.

“John Wesley, do you or do you not believe Stephen W. Lake, of Agua Chiquite, to be a low-down, coniferous skunk by birth, inclination and training?”

“I do.”

“John Wesley, do you or do you not possess the full confidence and affection of Felix, the night-hawk, otherwise known and designated as John Taylor, Junior, of Butterbowl, Esquire?”

“I do.”

“Do you, John Wesley Pringle, esteem me, Jeff Bransford, irrespective of color, sex or previous condition of turpitude, to be such a one as may be safely tied to when all the hitching-posts is done pulled up, and will you now promise to love, honor and obey me till the cows come home, or till further orders?”

“I do – I will. And may God have mercy on my soul.”

“Here are your powders, then. Do you go and locate the above-mentioned and described Felix, and impart to him, under the strict seal of secrecy, these tidings, to wit, namely: That you have a presentiment, almost amounting to conviction, that the Butterbowl contest is decided in Lake’s favor, but that your further presentiments is that said Lake will not use his prior right. If Taylor should get such a decision from the Land Office don’t let him or Felix say a word to no one. If Mr. B. Body should ask, tell ’em ’twas a map, or land laws, or something. Moreover, said Felix he is not to stab, cut, pierce or otherwise mutilate said Lake, nor to wickedly, maliciously, feloniously and unlawfully fire at or upon the person of said Lake with any rifle, pistol, musket or gun, the same being then and there loaded with powder and with balls, shots, bullets or slugs of lead or other metal. You see to that, personal. I’d go to him myself, but he don’t know me well enough to have confidence in my divinations.

“You promulgate these prophecies as your sole personal device and construction —sabe? Then, thirty days after Lake signs a receipt for his decision – and you will take steps to inform yourself of that – you sidle casually down to Roswell with old man Taylor and see that he puts preëmption papers on the Butterbowl. Selah!”

III

The first knowledge Lake had of the state of affairs was when the Steam Pitchfork punchers informally extended to him the right hand of fellowship (hitherto withheld) under the impression that he had generously abstained from pushing home his vantage. When, in the mid-flood of his unaccountable popularity, the situation dawned upon him, he wisely held his peace. He was a victim of the accomplished fact. Taylor had already filed his preëmption. So Lake reaped volunteer harvest of good-will, bearing his honors in graceful silence.

On Lake’s next trip to Escondido, Pappy Sanders laid aside his marked official hauteur. Lake stayed several days, praised the rosebush and Ma Sanders’ cookery, and indulged in much leisurely converse with Pappy. Thereafter he had a private conference with Stratton, the Register of the Roswell Land Office. His suspicion fell quite naturally on Felix, and on Jeff as accessory during the fact.

So it was that, when Jeff and Leo took in Roswell fair (where Jeff won a near-prize at the roping match), Hobart, the United States Marshal, came to their room. After introducing himself he said:

“Mr. Stratton would like to see you, Mr. Bransford.”

“Why, that’s all right!” said Jeff genially. “Some of my very great grandfolks was Dacotahs and I’ve got my name in ‘Who’s Sioux’ – but I’m not proud! Trot him around. Exactly who is Stratton, anyhow?”

“He’s the Register of the Land Office – and he wants to see you there on very particular business. I’d go if I was you,” said the Marshal significantly.

“Oh, that way!” said Jeff. “Is this an arrest, or do you just give me this in-vite semi-officiously?”

“You accuse yourself, sir. Were you expecting arrest? That sounds like a bad conscience.”

“Don’t you worry about my conscience. ‘If I’ve ever done anything I’m sorry for I’m glad of it.’ Now this Stratton party – is he some aged and venerable? ’Cause, if he is, I waive ceremony and seek him in his lair at the witching hour of two this tarde. And if not, not.”

“He’s old enough – even if there were no other reasons.”

“Never mind any other reasons. It shall never be said that I fail to reverence gray hairs. I’ll be there.”

“I guess I’ll just wait and see that you go,” said the Marshal.

“Have you got any papers for me?” asked Jeff politely.

“No.”

“This is my room,” said Jeff. “This is my fist. This is me. That is my door. Open it, Leo. Mr. Hobart, you will now make rapid forward motions with your feet, alternately, like a man removing his company from where it is not desired – or I’ll go through you like a domesticated cyclone. See you at two, sharp!” Hobart obeyed. He was a good judge of men.

Jeff closed the door. “‘We went upon the battlefield,’” he said plaintively, “‘before us and behind us, and every which-a-way we looked, we seen a roscerhinus.’ We went into another field – behind us and before us, and every which-a-way we looked, we seen a rhinusorus. Mr. Lake has been evidently browsin’ and pe-rusing around, and poor old Pappy, not being posted, has likely been narratin’ about Charley’s ankle and how I had a chill. Wough-ough!”

“It looks that way,” confessed Leo. “Did you have a chill, Jeff?”

Jeff’s eyes crinkled. “Not so nigh as I am now. But shucks! I’ve been in worse emergencies, and I always emerged. Thanks be, I can always do my best when I have to. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we don’t keep in practice! If I’d just come out straightforward and declared myself to Pappy, he’d ’a’ tightened up his drawstrings and forgot all about my chill. But, no, well as I know from long experience that good old human nature’s only too willin’ to do the right thing and the fair thing – if somebody’ll only tip it off to ’em – I must play a lone hand and not even call for my partner’s best. Well, I’m goin’ to ramify around and scrutinize this here Stratton’s numbers, equipments and disposition. Meet me in the office at the fatal hour!”

The Marshal wore a mocking smile. Stratton, large, florid, well-fed and eminently respectable, turned in his revolving chair with a severe and majestic motion; adjusted his glasses in a prolonged and offensive examination, and frowned portentously.

“Fine large day, isn’t it?” observed Jeff affably. “Beautiful little city you have here.” He sank into a chair. Smile and attitude were of pleased and sprightly anticipation.

A faint flush showed beneath Stratton’s neatly-trimmed mutton-chops. Such jaunty bearing was exasperating to offended virtue. “Ah – who is this other person, Mr. Hobart?”

“Pardon my rudeness!” Jeff sprang up and bowed brisk apology. “Mr. Stratton, allow me to present Mr. Ballinger, a worthy representative of the Yellow Press. Mr. Stratton – Mr. Ballinger!”

“I have a communication to make to you,” said the displeased Mr. Stratton, in icy tones, “which, in your own interest, should be extremely private.” The Marshal whispered to him; Stratton gave Leo a fiercely intimidating glare.

“Communicate away,” said Jeff airily. “Excommunicate, if you want to. Mr. Ballinger, as a citizen, is part owner of this office. If you want to bar him you’ll have to change the venue to your private residence. And then I won’t come.”

“Very well, sir!” Mr. Stratton rose, inflated his chest and threw back his head. His voice took on a steady roll. “Mr. Bransford, you stand under grave displeasure of the law! You are grievously suspected of being cognizant of, if not actually accessory to, the robbery of the United States Mail by John Taylor, Junior, at Escondido, on the eighteenth day of last October. You may not be aware of it, but you have an excellent chance of serving a term in the penitentiary!”

Jeff pressed his hands between his knees and leaned forward. “I’m sure I’d never be satisfied there,” he said, with conviction. His white teeth flashed in an ingratiatory smile. “But why suspect young John? – why not old John?” He paused, looking at the Register attentively. “H’m! – you’re from Indiana, I believe, Mr. Stratton?” he said.

“The elder Taylor, on the day in question, is fully accounted for,” said Hobart. “Young Taylor claims to have passed the night at Willow Springs, alone. But no one saw him from breakfast time the seventeenth till noon on the nineteenth.”

“He rarely ever has any one with him when he’s alone. That may account for them not seeing him at Willow,” suggested Jeff. He did not look at Hobart, but regarded Stratton with an air of deep meditation.

The Register paced the floor slowly, ponderously, with an impressive pause at each turn, tapping his left hand with his eyeglass to score his points. “He had ample time to go to Escondido and return. The envelope in which Mr. Lake’s copy of this office’s decision in the Lake-Taylor contest was enclosed has been examined. It bears unmistakable signs of having been tampered with.” Turning to mark the effect of these tactics, he became aware of his victim’s contemplative gaze. It disconcerted him. He resumed his pacing. Jeff followed him with a steady eye.

“In the same mail I sent Mr. Lake another letter. The envelope was unfortunately destroyed, Mr. Lake suspecting nothing. A map had been substituted for its contents, and they, in turn, were substituted for the decision in the registered letter, with the evident intention of depriving Mr. Lake of his prior right to file.”

“By George! It sounds probable.” Jeff laughed derisively. “So that’s it! And here we all thought Lake let it go out of giddy generosity! My stars, but won’t he get the horse-smile when the boys find out?”

Stratton controlled himself with an effort. “We have decided not to push the case against you if you will tell what you know,” he began.

Jeff lifted his brows. “We? And who’s we? You two? I should have thought this was a post-office lay.”

“We are investigating the affair,” explained Hobart.

“I see! As private individuals. Yes, yes. Does Lake pay you by the day or by the job?”

Stratton, blazing with anger, smote his palm heavily with his fist. “Young man! Young man! Your insolence is unbearable! We are trying to spare you – as you had no direct interest in the matter and doubtless concealed your guilty knowledge through a mistaken and distorted sense of honor. But you tempt us – you tempt us! You don’t seem to realize the precarious situation in which you stand.”

“What I don’t see,” said Jeff, in puzzled tones, “is why you bother to spare me at all. If you can prove this, why don’t you cinch me and Felix both? Why do you want me to tell you what you already know? And if you can’t prove it – who the hell cares what you suspect?”

“We will arrest you,” said Stratton thickly, “just as soon as we can make out the papers!”

“Turn your wolf loose, you four-flushers! You may make me trouble, but you can’t prove anything. Speaking of trouble – how about you, Mr. Stratton?” As a spring leaps, released from highest tension, face and body and voice flashed from passive indolence to sudden, startling attack. His arm lashed swiftly out as if to deliver the swordsman’s stabbing thrust; the poised body followed up to push the stroke home. “You think your secret safe, don’t you? It’s been some time ago.”

Words only – yet it might have been a very sword’s point past Stratton’s guard. For the Register flinched, staggered, his arrogant face grew mottled, his arm went up. He fell back a step, silent, quivering, leaning heavily on a chair. The Marshal gave him a questioning glance. Jeff kept on.

“You’re prominent in politics, business, society, the church. You’ve a family to think of. It’s up to you, Mr. Stratton. Is it worth while? Had we better drop it with a dull, sickening thud?”

Stratton collapsed into the chair, a shapeless bundle, turning a shriveled, feeble face to the Marshal in voiceless imploring.

Unhesitating, Hobart put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s all right, old man! We won’t give you away. Brace up!” He nodded Jeff to the door. “You win!” he said. Leo followed on tiptoe.

“Why, the poor old duck!” said Jeff remorsefully, in the passage. “Wish I hadn’t come down on him so hard. I overdid it that time. Still, if I hadn’t – ”

At the Hondo Bridge Jeff looked back and waved a hand. “Good-by, old town! Now we go, gallopy-trot, gallopy, gallopy-trot!” He sang, and the ringing hoofs kept time and tune,

 

“Florence Mehitabel Genevieve Jane,

She came home in the wind an’ the rain,

She came home in the rain an’ the snow;

‘Ain’t a-goin’ to leave my home any mo’!’”

 

“Jeff,” said the mystified Ballinger, spurring up beside him, “what has the gray-haired Register done? Has murder stained his hands with gore?”

Jeff raised his bridle hand.

“Gee! Leo, I don’t know! I just taken a chance!”

CHAPTER I
THE PITCHER THAT WENT TO THE WELL

 

“When I bend my head low and listen at the ground,

I can hear vague voices that I used to know,

Stirring in dim places, faint and restless sound;

I remember how it was when the grass began to grow.”

 

– Song of The Wandering Dust,

Anna Hempstead Branch.

The pines thinned as she neared Rainbow Rim, the turfy glades grew wider; she had glimpses of open country beyond – until, at last, crossing a little spit of high ground, she came to the fairest spot in all her voyage of exploration and discovery. She sank down on a fallen log with a little sigh of delight.

The steep bank of a little cañon broke away at her feet – a cañon which here marked the frontier of the pines, its farther side overgrown with mahogany bush and chaparral – a cañon that fell in long, sinuous curves from the silent mystery of forest on Rainbow Crest behind her, to widen just below into a rolling land, parked with green-black powderpuffs of juniper and cedar; and so passed on to mystery again, twisting away through the folds of the low and bare gray hills to the westward, ere the last stupendous plunge over the Rim to the low desert, a mile toward the level of the waiting sea.

Facing the explorer, across the little cañon, a clear spring bubbled from the hillside and fell with pleasant murmur and tinkle to a pool below, fringed with lush emerald – a spring massed about with wild grapevine, shining reeds of arrow-weed; a tangle of grateful greenery, jostling eagerly for the life-giving water. Draped in clinging vines, slim acacias struggled up through the jungle; the exquisite fragrance of their purple bells gave a final charm to the fairy chasm.

But the larger vision! The nearer elfin beauty dwindled, was lost, forgotten. Afar, through a narrow cleft in the gray westward hills, the explorer’s eye leaped out over a bottomless gulf to a glimpse of shining leagues midway of the desert greatness – an ever-widening triangle that rose against the peaceful west to long foothill reaches, to a misty mountain parapet, far-beckoning, whispering of secrets, things dreamed of, unseen, beyond the framed and slender arc of vision. A land of enchantment and mystery, decked with strong barbaric colors, blue and red and yellow, brown and green and gray; whose changing ebb and flow, by some potent sorcery of atmosphere, distance and angle, altered, daily, hourly; deepening, fading, combining into new and fantastic lines and shapes, to melt again as swiftly to others yet more bewildering.

The explorer? It may be mentioned in passing that any other would have found that fairest prospect even more wonderful than did the explorer, Miss Ellinor Hoffman. We will attempt no clear description of Miss Ellinor Hoffman. Dusky-beautiful she was; crisp, fresh and sparkling; tall, vigorous, active, strong. Yet she was more than merely beautiful – warm and frank and young; brave and kind and true. Perhaps, even more than soft curves, lips, glory of hair or bewildering eyes, or all together, her chiefest charm was her manner, her frank friendliness. Earth was sweet to her, sweeter for her.

This by way of aside and all to no manner of good. You have no picture of her in your mind. Remember only that she was young —

 

“The stars to drink from and the sky to dance on”

 

– young and happy, and therefore beautiful; that the sun was shining in a cloudless sky, the south wind sweet and fresh, buds in the willow.

The peace was rent and shivered by strange sounds, as of a giant falling downstairs. There was a crash of breaking boughs beyond the cañon, a glint of color, a swift black body hurtling madly through the shrubbery. The girl shrank back. There was no time for thought, hardly for alarm. On the farther verge the bushes parted; an apparition hurled arching through the sunshine, down the sheer hill – a glorious and acrobatic horse, his black head low between his flashing feet; red nostrils wide with rage and fear; foam flecks white on the black shoulders; a tossing mane; a rider, straight and tall, superb – to all seeming an integral part of the horse, pitch he never so wildly.

The girl held her breath through the splintered seconds. She thrilled at the shock and storm of them, straining muscles and white hoofs, lurching, stumbling, sliding, lunging, careening in perilous arcs. She saw stones that rolled with them or bounded after; a sombrero whirled above the dust and tumult like a dilatory parachute; a six-shooter jolted up into the air. Through the dust-clouds there were glimpses of a watchful face, hair blown back above it; a broken rein snapped beside it, saddle-strings streamed out behind; a supple body that swung from curve to easy curve against shock and plunge, that swayed and poised and clung, and held its desperate dominion still. The saddle slipped forward; with a motion incredibly swift, as a hat is whipped off in a gust of wind, it whisked over withers and neck and was under the furious feet. Swifter, the rider! Cat-quick, he swerved, lit on his feet, leaped aside.

Alas, oh, rider beyond compare, undefeated champion, Pride of Rainbow! Alas, that such thing should be recorded! He leaped aside to shun the black frantic death at his shoulder; his feet were in the treacherous vines: he toppled, grasped vainly at an acacia, catapulted out and down, head first; so lit, crumpled and fell with a prodigious splash into the waters of the pool! Ay di mi, Alhama!

The blankets lay strewn along the hill; but observe that the long lead rope of the hackamore (a “hackamore,” properly jaquima, is, for your better understanding, merely a rope halter) was coiled at the saddle-horn, held there by a stout hornstring. As the black reached the level the saddle was at his heels. To kick was obvious, to go away not less so; but this new terror clung to the maddened creature in his frenzied flight – between his legs, in the air, at his heels, his hip, his neck. A low tree leaned from the hillside; the aërial saddle caught in the forks of it, the bronco’s head was jerked round, he was pulled to his haunches, overthrown; but the tough hornstring broke, the freed coil snapped out at him; he scrambled up and bunched his glorious muscles in a vain and furious effort to outrun the rope that dragged at his heels, and so passed from sight beyond the next curve.

Waist-deep in the pool sat the hatless horseman, or perhaps horseless horseman were the juster term, steeped in a profound calm. That last phrase has a familiar sound; Mark Twain’s, doubtless – but, all things considered, steeped is decidedly the word. One gloved hand was in the water, the other in the muddy margin of the pool: he watched the final evolution of his late mount with meditative interest. The saddle was freed at last, but its ex-occupant still sat there, lost in thought. Blood trickled, unnoted, down his forehead.

The last stone followed him into the pool; the echoes died on the hills. The spring resumed its pleasant murmur, but the tinkle of its fall was broken by the mimic waves of the pool. Save for this troubled sloshing against the banks, the slow-settling dust and the contemplative bust of the one-time centaur, no trace was left to mark the late disastrous invasion.

The invader’s dreamy and speculative gaze followed the dust of the trailing rope. He opened his lips twice or thrice, and spoke, after several futile attempts, in a voice mild, but clearly earnest:

“Oh, you little eohippus!”

The spellbound girl rose. Her hand was at her throat; her eyes were big and round, and her astonished lips were drawn to a round, red O.

Sharp ears heard the rustle of her skirts, her soft gasp of amazement. The merman turned his head briskly, his eye met hers. One gloved hand brushed his brow; a broad streak of mud appeared there, over which the blood meandered uncertainly. He looked up at the maid in silence: in silence the maid looked down at him. He nodded, with a pleasant smile.

“Good-morning!” he said casually.

At this cheerful greeting, the astounded maid was near to tumbling after, like Jill of the song.

“Er – good-morning!” she gasped.

Silence. The merman reclined gently against the bank with a comfortable air of satisfaction. The color came flooding back to her startled face.

“Oh, are you hurt?” she cried.

A puzzled frown struggled through the mud.

“Hurt?” he echoed. “Who, me?.. Why, no – leastwise, I guess not.”

He wiggled his fingers, raised his arms, wagged his head doubtfully and slowly, first sidewise and then up and down; shook himself guardedly, and finally raised tentative boot-tips to the surface. After this painstaking inspection he settled contentedly back again.

“Oh, no, I’m all right,” he reported. “Only I lost a big, black, fine, young, nice horse somehow. You ain’t seen nothing of him, have you?”

“Then why don’t you get out?” she demanded. “I believe you are hurt.”

“Get out? Why, yes, ma’am. Certainly. Why not?” But the girl was already beginning to clamber down, grasping the shrubbery to aid in the descent.

Now the bank was steep and sheer. So the merman rose, tactfully clutching the grapevines behind him as a plausible excuse for turning his back. It followed as a corollary of this generous act that he must needs be lame, which he accordingly became. As this mishap became acute, his quick eyes roved down the cañon, where he saw what gave him pause; and he groaned sincerely under his breath. For the black horse had taken to the parked uplands, the dragging rope had tangled in a snaggy tree-root, and he was tracing weary circles in bootless effort to be free.

Tactful still, the dripping merman hobbled to the nearest shade wherefrom the luckless black horse should be invisible, eclipsed by the intervening ridge, and there sank down in a state of exhaustion, his back to a friendly tree-trunk.

CHAPTER II
FIRST AID

 

“Oh woman! in our hours of ease

Uncertain, coy and hard to please;

But seen too oft, familiar with thy face

We first endure, then pity, then embrace!”

 

A moment later the girl was beside him, pity in her eyes.

“Let me see that cut on your head,” she said. She dropped on her knee and parted the hair with a gentle touch.

“Why, you’re real!” breathed the injured near-centaur, beaming with wonder and gratification.

She sat down limply and gave way to wild laughter.

“So are you!” she retorted. “Why, that is exactly what I was thinking! I thought maybe I was asleep and having an extraordinary dream. That wound on your head is not serious, if that’s all.” She brushed back a wisp of hair that blew across her eyes.

“I hurt this head just the other day,” observed the bedraggled victim, as one who has an assortment of heads from which to choose. He pulled off his soaked gloves and regarded them ruefully. “‘Them that go down to deep waters!’ That was a regular triumph of matter over mind, wasn’t it?”

“It’s a wonder you’re alive! My! How frightened I was! Aren’t you hurt – truly? Ribs or anything?”

The patient’s elbows made a convulsive movement to guard the threatened ribs.

“Oh, no, ma’am. I ain’t hurt a bit – indeed I ain’t,” he said truthfully; but his eyes had the languid droop of one who says the thing that is not. “Don’t you worry none about me – not one bit. Sorry I frightened you. That black horse now – ” He stopped to consider fully the case of the black horse. “Well, you see, ma’am, that black horse, he ain’t exactly right plumb gentle.” His eyelids drooped again.

The girl considered. She believed him – both that he was not badly hurt and that the black horse was not exactly gentle. And her suspicions were aroused. His slow drawl was getting slower; his cowboyese broader – a mode of speech quite inconsistent with that first sprightly remark about the little eohippus. What manner of cowboy was this, from whose tongue a learned scientific term tripped spontaneously in so stressful a moment – who quoted scraps of the litany unaware? Also, her own eyes were none of the slowest. She had noted that the limping did not begin until he was clear of the pool. Still, that might happen if one were excited; but this one had been singularly calm, “more than usual ca’m,” she mentally quoted… Of course, if he really were badly hurt – which she didn’t believe one bit – a little bruised and jarred, maybe – the only thing for her to do would be to go back to camp and get help… That meant the renewal of Lake’s hateful attentions and – for the other girls, the sharing of her find… She stole another look at her find and thrilled with all the pride of the discoverer… No doubt he was shaken and bruised, after all. He must be suffering. What a splendid rider he was!

“What made you so absurd? Why didn’t you get out of the water, then, if you are not hurt?” she snapped suddenly.

The drooped lids raised; brown eyes looked steadily into brown eyes.

“I didn’t want to wake up,” he said.

The candor of this explanation threw her, for the moment, into a vivid and becoming confusion. The dusky roses leaped to her cheeks; the long, dark lashes quivered and fell. Then she rose to the occasion.

“And how about the little eohippus?” she demanded. “That doesn’t seem to go well with some of your other talk.”

“Oh!” He regarded her with pained but unflinching innocence. “The Latin, you mean? Why, ma’am, that’s most all the Latin I know – that and some more big words in that song. I learned that song off of Frank John, just like a poll-parrot.”

“Sing it! And eohippus isn’t Latin. It’s Greek.”

“Why, ma’am, I can’t, just now – I’m so muddy; but I’ll tell it to you. Maybe I’ll sing it to you some other time.” A sidelong glance accompanied this little suggestion. The girl’s face was blank and non-committal; so he resumed: “It goes like this:

 

“Said the little Eohippus,

‘I’m going to be a horse,

And on my middle fingernails

To run my earthly course’ —

 

“No; that wasn’t the first. It begins:

 

“There was once a little animal

No bigger than a fox,

And on five toes he scampered —

 

“Of course you know, ma’am – Frank John he told me about it – that horses were little like that, ’way back. And this one he set his silly head that he was going to be a really-truly horse, like the song says. And folks told him he couldn’t – couldn’t possibly be done, nohow. And sure enough he did. It’s a foolish song, really. I only sing parts of it when I feel like that – like it couldn’t be done and I was going to do it, you know. The boys call it my song. Look here, ma’am!” He fished in his vest pocket and produced tobacco and papers, matches – last of all, a tiny turquoise horse, an inch long. “I had a jeweler-man put five toes on his feet once to make him be a little eohippus. Going to make a watch-charm of him sometime. He’s a lucky little eohippus, I think. Peso gave him to me when – never mind when. Peso’s a Mescalero Indian, you know, chief of police at the agency.” He gingerly dropped the little horse into her eager palm.

It was a singularly grotesque and angular little beast, high-stepping, high-headed, with a level stare, at once complacent and haughty. Despite the first unprepossessing rigidity of outline, there was somehow a sprightly air, something endearing, in the stiff, purposed stride, the alert, inquiring ears, the stern and watchful eye. Each tiny hoof was faintly graven to semblance of five tinier toes; there, the work showed fresh.

“The cunning little monster!” Prison grime was on him; she groomed and polished at his dingy sides until the wonderful color shone out triumphant. “What is it that makes him such a dear? Oh, I know. It’s something – well, childlike, you know. Think of the grown-up child that toiled with pride and joy at the making of him – dear me, how many lifetimes since! – and fondly put him by as a complete horse.” She held him up in the sun: the ingrate met her caress with the same obdurate and indomitable glare. She laughed her rapturous delight: “There! How much better you look! Oh, you darling! Aren’t you absurd? Straight-backed, stiff-legged, thick-necked, square-headed – and that ridiculously baleful eye! It’s too high up and too far forward, you know – and your ears are too big – and you have such a malignant look! Never mind; now that you’re all nice and clean, I’m going to reward you.” Her lips just brushed him – the lucky little eohippus.

The owner of the lucky little horse was not able to repress one swift, dismal glance at his own vast dishevelment, nor, as his shrinking hands, entirely of their own volition, crept stealthily to hiding, the slightest upward rolling of a hopeful eye toward the leaping waters of the spring; but, if one might judge from her sedate and matter-of-fact tones, that eloquent glance was wasted on the girl.

“You ought to take better care of him, you know,” she said as she restored the little monster to his owner. Then she laughed. “Hasn’t he a fierce and warlike appearance, though?”

“Sure. That’s resolution. Look at those legs!” said the owner fondly. “He spurns the ground. He’s going somewheres. He’s going to be a horse! And them ears – one cocked forward and the other back, strictly on the cuidado! He’ll make it. He’ll certainly do to take along! Yes, ma’am, I’ll take right good care of him.” He regarded the homely beast with awe; he swathed him in cigarette papers with tenderest care. “I’ll leave him at home after this. He might get hurt. I might sometime want to give him to – somebody.”

The girl sprang up.

“Now I must get some water and wash that head,” she announced briskly.

“Oh, no – I can’t let you do that. I can walk. I ain’t hurt a bit, I keep telling you.” In proof of which he walked to the pool with a palpably clever assumption of steadiness. The girl fluttered solicitous at his elbow. Then she ran ahead, climbed up to the spring and extended a firm, cool hand, which he took shamelessly, and so came to the fairy waterfall.

Here he made himself presentable as to face and hands. It is just possible there was a certain expectancy in his eye as he neared the close of these labors; but if there were it passed unnoted. The girl bathed the injured head with her handkerchief, and brushed back his hair with a dainty caressing motion that thrilled him until the color rose beneath the tan. There was a glint of gray in the wavy black hair, she noted.

She stepped back to regard her handiwork. “Now you look better!” she said approvingly. Then, slightly flurried, not without a memory of a previous and not dissimilar remark of hers, she was off up the hill: whence, despite his shocked protest, she brought back the lost gun and hat.

Her eyes were sparkling when she returned, her face glowing. Ignoring his reproachful gaze, she wrung out her handkerchief, led the patient firmly down the hill and to his saddle, made him trim off a saddle-string, and bound the handkerchief to the wound. She fitted the sombrero gently.

“There! Don’t this head feel better now?” she queried gayly, with fine disregard for grammar. “And now what? Won’t you come back to camp with me? Mr. Lake will be glad to put you up or to let you have a horse. Do you live far away? I do hope you are not one of those Rosebud men. Mr. La – ” She bit her speech off midword.

“No men there except this Mr. Lake?” asked the cowboy idly.

“Oh, yes; there’s Mr. Herbert – he’s gone riding with Lettie – and Mr. White; but it was Mr. Lake who got up the camping party. Mother and Aunt Lot, and a crowd of us girls – La Luz girls, you know. Mother and I are visiting Mr. Lake’s sister. He’s going to give us a masquerade ball when we get back, next week.”

The cowboy looked down his nose for consultation, and his nose gave a meditative little tweak.

“What Lake is it? There’s some several Lakes round here. Is it Lake of Aqua Chiquite – wears his hair décolleté; talks like he had a washboard in his throat; tailor-made face; walks like a duck on stilts; general sort of pouter-pigeon effect?”

At this envenomed description, Miss Ellinor Hoffman promptly choked.

“I don’t know anything about your Aqua Chiquite. I never heard of the place before. He is a banker in Arcadia. He keeps a general store there. You must know him, surely.” So far her voice was rather stern and purposely resentful, as became Mr. Lake’s guest; but there were complications, rankling memories of Mr. Lake – of unwelcome attentions persistently forced upon her. She spoiled the rebuke by adding tartly, “But I think he is the man you mean!” and felt her wrongs avenged.

The cowboy’s face cleared.

“Well, I don’t use Arcadia much, you see. I mostly range down Rainbow River. Arcadia folks – why, they’re mostly newcomers, health-seekers and people just living on their incomes – not working folks much, except the railroaders and lumbermen. Now about getting home. You see, ma’am, some of the boys are riding down that way” – he jerked his thumb to indicate the last flight of the imperfectly gentle horse – “and they’re right apt to see my runaway eohippus and sure to see the rope-drag; so they’ll likely amble along the back track to see how much who’s hurt. So I guess I’d better stay here. They may be along most any time. Thank you kindly, just the same. Of course, if they don’t come at all – Is your camp far?”

“Not – not very,” said Ellinor. The mere fact was that Miss Ellinor had set out ostensibly for a sketching expedition with another girl, had turned aside to explore, and exploring had fetched a circuit that had left her much closer to her starting-place than to her goal. He misinterpreted the slight hesitation.

“Well, ma’am, thank you again; but I mustn’t be keeping you longer. I really ought to see you safe back to your camp; but – you’ll understand – under the circumstances – you’ll excuse me?”

He did not want to implicate Mr. Lake, so he took a limping step forward to justify his rudeness.

“And you hardly able to walk? Ridiculous! What I ought to do is to go back to camp and get some one – get Mr. White to help you.” Thus, at once accepting his unspoken explanation, and offering her own apology in turn, she threw aside the air of guarded hostility that had marked the last minutes and threw herself anew into this joyous adventure. “When – or if – your friends find you, won’t it hurt you to ride?” she asked, and smiled deliberate encouragement.

“I can be as modest as anybody when there’s anything to be modest about; but in this case I guess I’ll now declare that I can ride anything that a saddle will stay on… I reckon,” he added reflectively, “the boys’ll have right smart to say about me being throwed.”

“But you weren’t thrown! You rode magnificently!” Her eyes flashed admiration.

“Yes’m. That’s what I hoped you’d say,” said the admired one complacently. “Go on, ma’am. Say it again.”

“It was splendid! The saddle turned – that’s all!”

He slowly surveyed the scene of his late exploit.

“Ye – es, that was some riding – for a while,” he admitted. “But you see, that saddle now, scarred up that way – why, they’ll think the eohippus wasted me and then dragged the saddle off under a tree. Leastways, they’ll say they think so, frequent. Best not to let on and to make no excuses. It’ll be easier that way. We’re great on guying here. That’s most all the fun we have. We sure got this joshing game down fine. Just wondering what all the boys’d say – that was why I didn’t get out of the water at first, before – before I thought I was asleep, you know.”

“So you’ll actually tell a lie to keep from being thought a liar? I’m disappointed in you.”

“Why, ma’am, I won’t say anything. They’ll do the talking.”

“It’ll be deceitful, just the same,” she began, and checked herself suddenly. A small twinge struck her at the thought of poor Maud, really sketching on Thumb Butte, and now disconsolately wondering what had become of lunch and fellow-artist; but she quelled this pang with a sage thought of the greatest good to the greatest number, and clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, what a silly I am, to be sure! I’ve got a lunch basket up there, but I forgot all about it in the excitement. I’m sure there’s plenty for two. Shall I bring it down to you or can you climb up if I help you? There’s water in the canteen – and it’s beautiful up there.”

“I can make it, I guess,” said the invited guest – the consummate and unblushing hypocrite. Make it he did, with her strong hand to aid; and the glen rang to the laughter of them. While behind them, all unnoted, Johnny Dines reined up on the hillside; took one sweeping glance at that joyous progress, the scarred hillside, the saddle and the dejected eohippus in the background; grinned comprehension, and discreetly withdrew.

CHAPTER III
MAXWELTON BRAES

 

“Oh the song – the song in the blood!

Magic walks the forest; there’s bewitchment on the air —

Spring is at the flood!”

 

– The Gypsy Heart.

“Well, sir, this here feller, he lit a cigarette an’ throwed away the match, an’ it fell in a powder kaig; an’ do you know, more’n half that powder burned up before they could put it out! Yes, sir!”

– Wildcat Thompson.

Ellinor opened her basket and spread its tempting wares with pretty hostly care – or is there such a word as hostessly?

“There! All ready, Mr. – I declare, this is too absurd! We don’t even know each other’s names!” Her conscious eye fell upon the ampleness of the feast – amazing, since it purported to have been put up for one alone; and her face lit up with mischievous delight. She curtsied. “If you please, I’m the Ultimate Consumer!”

He rose, bowing gravely.

“I am the Personal Devil. Glad to meet you.”

“Oh! I’ve heard of you!” remarked the Ultimate Consumer sweetly. She sat down and extended her hand across the spotless linen. “Mr. Lake says – ”

The Personal Devil flushed. It was not because of the proffered hand, which he took unhesitatingly and held rather firmly. The blush was unmistakably caused by anger.

“There is no connection whatever,” he stated, grimly enough, “between the truth and Mr. Lake’s organs of speech.”

“Oh!” cried the Ultimate Consumer triumphantly. “So you’re Mr. Beebe?”

“Bransford – Jeff Bransford,” corrected the Personal Devil crustily. He wilfully relapsed to his former slipshod speech. “Beebe, he’s gone to the Pecos work, him and Ballinger. Mr. John Wesley Also-Ran Pringle’s gone to Old Mexico to bring back another bunch of black, long-horned Chihuahuas. You now behold before you the last remaining Rose of Rosebud. But, why Beebe?”

“Why does Mr. Lake hate all of you so, Mr. Bransford?”

“Because we are infamous scoundrels. Why Beebe?”

“I can’t eat with one hand, Mr. Bransford,” she said demurely. He looked at the prisoned hand with a start and released it grudgingly. “Help yourself,” said his hostess cheerfully. “There’s sandwiches, and roast beef and olives, for a mild beginning.”

“Why Beebe?” he said doggedly.

“Help yourself to the salad and then please pass it over this way. Thank you.”

“Why Beebe?”

“Oh, very well then! Because of the little eohippus, you know – and other things you said.”

“I see!” said the aggrieved Bransford. “Because I’m not from Ohio, like Beebe, I’m not supposed – ”

“Oh, if you’re going to be fussy! I’m from California myself, Mr. Bransford. Out in the country at that. Don’t let’s quarrel, please. We were having such a lovely time. And I’ll tell you a secret. It’s ungrateful of me, and I ought not to; but I don’t care – I don’t like Mr. Lake much since we came on this trip. And I don’t believe – ” She paused, pinkly conscious of the unconventional statement involved in this sudden unbelief.

“ – what Lake says about us?” A much-mollified Bransford finished the sentence for her.

She nodded. Then, to change the subject:

“You do speak cowboy talk one minute – and all booky, polite and proper the next, you know. Why?”

“Bad associations,” said Bransford ambiguously. “Also for ’tis my nature to, as little dogs they do delight to bark and bite. That beef sure tastes like more.”

“And now you may smoke while I pack up,” announced the girl when dessert was over, at long last. “And please, there is something I want to ask you about. Will you tell me truly?”

“Um – you sing?”

“Yes – a little.”

“If you will sing for me afterward?”

“Certainly. With pleasure.”

“All right, then. What’s the story about?”

Ellinor gave him her eyes. “Did you rob the post-office at Escondido – really?”

Now it might well be embarrassing to be asked if you had committed a felony; but there was that behind the words of this naïve query – in look, in tone, in mental attitude – an unflinching and implicit faith that, since he had seen fit to do this thing, it must needs have been the right and wise thing to do, which stirred the felon’s pulses to a pleasant flutter and caused a certain tough and powerful muscle to thump foolishly at his ribs. The delicious intimacy, the baseless faith, was sweet to him.

“Sure, I did!” he answered lightly. “Lake is one talkative little man, isn’t he? Fie, fie! But, shucks! What can you expect? ‘The beast will do after his kind.’”

“And you’ll tell me about it?”

“After I smoke. Got to study up some plausible excuses, you know.”

She studied him as she packed. It was a good face – lined, strong, expressive, vivid; gay, resolute, confident, alert – reckless, perhaps. There were lines of it disused, fallen to abeyance. What was well with the man had prospered; what was ill with him had faded and dimmed. He was not a young man – thirty-seven, thirty-eight – (she was twenty-four) – but there was an unquenchable boyishness about him, despite the few frosty hairs at his temples. He bore his hard years jauntily: youth danced in his eyes. The explorer nodded to herself, well pleased. He was interesting – different.

The tale suffered from Bransford’s telling, as any tale will suffer when marred by the inevitable, barbarous modesty of its hero. It was a long story, cozily confidential; and there were interruptions. The sun was low ere it was done.

“Now the song,” said Jeff, “and then – ” He did not complete the sentence; his face clouded.

“What shall I sing?”

“How can I tell? What you will. What can I know about good songs – or anything else?” responded Bransford in sudden moodiness and dejection – for, after the song, the end of everything! He flinched at the premonition of irrevocable loss.

The girl made no answer. This is what she sang. No; you shall not be told of her voice. Perhaps there is a voice that you remember, that echoes to you through the dusty years. How would you like to describe that?

 

“Oh, Sandy has monie and Sandy has land,

And Sandy has housen, sae fine and sae grand —

But I’d rather hae Jamie, wi’ nocht in his hand,

Than Sandy, wi’ all of his housen and land.

   

“My father looks sulky; my mither looks soor;

They gloom upon Jamie because he is poor.

I lo’e them baith dearly, as a docther should do;

But I lo’e them not half sae weel, dear Jamie, as you!

   

“I sit at my cribbie, I spin at my wheel;

I think o’ the laddie that lo’es me sae weel.

Oh, he had but a saxpence, he brak it in twa,

And he gied me the half o’t ere he gaed awa’!

   

“He said: ‘Lo’e me lang, lassie, though I gang awa’!’

He said: ‘Lo’e me lang, lassie, though I gang awa’!’

Bland simmer is cooming; cauld winter’s awa’,

And I’ll wed wi’ Jamie in spite o’ them a’!”

 

Jeff’s back was to a tree, his hat over his eyes. He pushed it up.

“Thank you,” he said; and then, quite directly: “Are you rich?”

“Not – very,” said Ellinor, a little breathless at the blunt query.

“I’m going to be rich,” said Jeff steadily.

“‘I’m going to be a horse,’ quoth the little eohippus.” The girl retorted saucily, though secretly alarmed at the import of this examination.

“Ex-actly. So that’s settled. What is your name?”

“Hoffman.”

“Where do you live, Hoffman?”

“Ellinor,” supplemented the girl.

“Ellinor, then. Where do you live, Ellinor?”

“In New York – just now. Not in town. Upstate. On a farm. You see, grandfather’s growing old – and he wanted father to come back.”

“New York’s not far,” said Jeff.

A sudden panic seized the girl. What next? In swift, instinctive self-defense she rose and tripped to the tree where lay her neglected sketch-book, bent over – and started back with a little cry of alarm. With a spring and a rush, Jeff was at her side, caught her up and glared watchfully at bush and shrub and tufted grass.

“Mr. Bransford! Put me down!”

“What was it? A rattlesnake?”

“A snake? What an idea! I just noticed how late it was. I must go.”

Crestfallen, sheepishly, Mr. Bransford put her down, thrust his hands into his pockets, tilted his chin and whistled an aggravating little trill from the Rye twostep.

“Mr. Bransford!” said Ellinor haughtily.

Mr. Bransford’s face expressed patient attention.

“Are you lame?”

Mr. Bransford’s eye estimated the distance covered during the recent snake episode, and then gave to Miss Hoffman a look of profound respect. His shoulders humped up slightly; his head bowed to the stroke: he stood upon one foot and traced the Rainbow brand in the dust with the other.

“I told you all along I wasn’t hurt,” he said aggrieved. “Didn’t I, now?”

“Are you lame?” she repeated severely, ignoring his truthful saying.

“‘Not – very.’” The quotation marks were clearly audible.

“Are you lame at all?”

“No, ma’am – not what you might call really lame. Uh – no, ma’am.”

“And you deceived me like that!” Indignation checked her. “Oh, I am so disappointed in you! That was a fine, manly thing for you to do!”

“It was such a lovely time,” observed the culprit doggedly. “And such a chance might never happen again. And it isn’t my fault I wasn’t hurt, you know. I’m sure I wish I was.”

She gave him an icy glare.

“Now see what you’ve done! Your men haven’t come and you won’t stay with Mr. Lake. How are you going to get home? Oh, I forgot – you can walk, as you should have done at first.”

The guilty wretch wilted yet further. He shuffled his feet; he writhed; he positively squirmed. He ventured a timid upward glance. It seemed to give him courage. Prompted, doubtless, by the same feeling which drives one to dive headlong into dreaded cold water, he said, in a burst of candor:

“Well, you see, ma’am, that little horse now – he really ain’t got far. He got tangled up over there a ways – ”

The girl wheeled and shot a swift, startled glance at the little eohippus on the hillside, who had long since given over his futile struggles and was now nibbling grass with becoming resignation. She turned back to Bransford. Slowly, scathingly, she looked him over from head to foot and slowly back again. Her expression ran the gamut – wonder, anger, scorn, withering contempt.

“I think I hate you!” she flamed at him.

Amazement triumphed over the other emotions then – a real amazement: the detected impostor had resumed his former debonair bearing and met her scornful eye with a slow and provoking smile.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said reassuringly. “On the contrary, you don’t hate me at all!”

“I’m going home, anyhow,” she retorted bitterly. “You may draw your own conclusions.”

Still, she did not go, which possibly had a confusing effect upon his inferences.

“Just one minute, ma’am, if you please. How did you know so pat where the little black horse was? I didn’t tell you.”

Little waves of scarlet followed each other to her burning face.

“I’m not going to stay another moment. You’re detestable! And it’s nearly sundown.”

“Oh, you needn’t hurry. It’s not far.”

She followed his gesture. To her intense mortification she saw the blue smoke of her home campfire flaunting up from a gully not half a mile away. It was her turn to droop now. She drooped.

There was a painful silence. Then, in a far-off, hard, judicial tone:

“How long, ma’am, if I may ask, have you known that the little black horse was tangled up?”

Miss Ellinor’s eyes shifted wildly. She broke a twig from a mahogany bush and examined the swelling buds with minutest care.

“Well?” said her ruthless inquisitor sternly.

“Since – since I went for your hat,” she confessed in a half whisper.

“To deceive me so!” Pain, grief, surprise, reproach, were in his words. “Have you anything to say?” he added sadly.

A slender shoe peeped out beneath her denim skirt and tapped on a buried boulder. Ellinor regarded the toetip with interest and curiosity. Then, half-audibly:

“We were having such a good time… And it might never happen again!”

He captured both her hands. She drew back a little – ever so little; she trembled slightly, but her eyes met his frankly and bravely.

“No, no!.. Not now… Go, now, Mr. Bransford. Go at once. We will have a pleasant day to remember.”

“Until the next pleasant day,” said resolute Bransford, openly exultant. “But see here, now – I can’t go to Lake’s camp or to Lake’s ball” – here Miss Ellinor pouted distinctly – “or anything that is Lake’s. After your masked ball, then what?”

“New York; but it’s only so far – on the map.” She held her hands apart very slightly to indicate the distance. “On a little map, that is.”

“I’ll drop in Saturdays,” said Jeff.

“Do! I want to hear you sing the rest about the little eohippus.”

“If you’ll sing about Sandy!” suggested Jeff.

“Why not? Good-by now – I must go.”

“And you won’t sing about Sandy to any one else?”

The girl considered doubtfully.

“Why – I don’t know – I’ve known you for a very little while, if you please.” She gathered up her belongings. “But we’re friends?”

“No! No!” said Jeff vehemently. “You won’t sing it to any one else – Ellinor?”

She drew a line in the dust.

“If you won’t cross that line,” she said, “I’ll tell you.”

Mr. Bransford grasped a sapling with a firm clutch and shook it to try its strength.

“A bird in the bush is the noblest work of God,” he announced. “I’ll take a chance.”

Her eyes were shining.

“You’ve promised!” she said. She paused: when she spoke again her voice was low and a trifle unsteady. “I won’t sing about Sandy to – any one else – Jeff!”

Then she fled.

Like Lot’s wife, she looked back from the hillside. Jeff clung desperately to the sapling with one hand; from the other a handkerchief – hers – fluttered a good-by message. She threw him a farewell, with an ambiguous gesture.

It was late when Jeff reached Rosebud Camp. He unsaddled Nigger Baby, the little and not entirely gentle black horse, rather unobtrusively; but Johnny Dines sauntered out during the process, announcing supper.

“Huh!” sniffed Jeff. “S’pose I thought you’d wait until I come to get it?”

Nothing more alarming than tallies was broached during supper, however. Afterward, Johnny tilted his chair back and, through cigarette smoke, contemplated the ceiling with innocent eyes.

“Nigger Babe looks drawed,” he suggested.

“Uh-huh. Had one of them poor spells of his.”

Puff, puff.

“Your saddle’s skinned up a heap.”

“Run under a tree.”

Johnny’s look of innocence grew more pronounced.

“How’d you get your clothes so wet?”

“Rain,” said Jeff.

Puff, puff.

“You look right muddy too.”

“Dust in the air,” said Jeff.

“Ah! – yes.” Silence during the rolling of another cigarette. Then: “How’d you get that cut on your head?”

Jeff’s hand went to his head and felt the bump there. He regarded his fingers in some perplexity.

“That? Oh, that’s where I bit myself!” He stalked off to bed in gloomy dignity.

Half an hour later Johnny called softly:

“Jeff!”

Jeff grunted sulkily.

“Camping party down near Mayhill. Lot o’ girls. I saw one of ’em. Young person with eyes and hair.”

Jeff grunted again. There was a long silence.

“Nice bear!” There was no answer.

“Good old bear!” said Johnny tearfully. No answer. “Mister Bear, if I give you one nice, good, juicy bite – ”

“U – ugg – rrh!” said Jeff.

“Then,” said Johnny decidedly, “I’ll sleep in the yard.”

CHAPTER IV
THE ROAD TO ROME

 

“Behold, one journeyed in the night.

He sang amid the wind and rain;

My wet sands gave his feet delight —

When will that traveler come again?”

 

– The Heart of the Road,

Anna Hempstead Branch.

A hypotenuse, as has been well said, is the longest side of a right-angled triangle. There is no need for details. That we are all familiar with the use of this handy little article is shown by the existence of shortcuts at every available opportunity, and by keep-off-o’-the-grass signs in parks.

Now, had Jeff Bransford desired to go to Arcadia – to that masquerade, for instance – his direct route from Jackson’s Ranch would have been cater-cornered across the desert, as has been amply demonstrated by Pythagoras and others.

That Jeff did not want to go to Arcadia – to the masked ball, for instance – is made apparent by the fact that the afternoon preceding said ball saw him jogging southward toward Baird’s, along the lonely base of that inveterate triangle whereof Jackson’s, Baird’s and Arcadia are the respective corners, leaving the fifty-five-mile hypotenuse far to his left. It was also obvious from the tenor of his occasional self-communings.

“I don’t want to make a bally fool of myself – do I, old Grasshopper? Anyhow, you’ll be too tired when we get to ’Gene’s.”

Grasshopper made no response, other than a plucky tossing of his bit and a quickening cadence in his rhythmical stride, by way of pardonable bravado.

“I never forced myself in where my company wasn’t wanted yet, and I ain’t going to begin now,” asserted Jeff stoutly; adding, as a fervent afterthought: “Damn Lake!”

His way lay along the plain, paralleling the long westward range, just far enough out to dodge the jutting foothills; through bare white levels where Grasshopper’s hoofs left but a faint trace on the hard-glazed earth. At intervals, tempting cross-roads branched away to mountain springs. The cottonwood at Independent Springs came into view round the granite shoulder of Strawberry, six miles to the right of him. He roused himself from prolonged pondering of the marvelous silhouette, where San Andres unflung in broken masses against the sky, to remark in a hushed whisper:

“I wonder if she’d be glad to see me?”

Several miles later he quoted musingly:

 

“For Ellinor – her Christian name was Ellinor —

Had twenty-seven different kinds of hell in her!”

 

After all, there are problems which Pythagoras never solved.

The longest road must have an end. Ritch’s Ranch was passed far to the right, lying low in the long shadow of Kaylor; then the mouth of Hembrillo Cañon; far ahead, a shifting flicker of Baird’s windmill topped the brush. It grew taller; the upper tower took shape. He dipped into the low, mirage-haunted basin, where the age-old Texas Trail crosses the narrow western corner of the White Sands. When he emerged the windmill was tall and silver-shining; the low iron roofs of the house gloomed sullen in the sun.

Dust rose from the corral. Now Jeff’s ostensible errand to the West Side had been the search for strays; three days before he had prudently been three days’ ride farther to the north. The reluctance with which he had turned back southward was justified by the fact that this critical afternoon found him within striking distance of Arcadia – striking distance, that is, should he care for a bit of hard riding. This was exactly what Jeff had fought against all along. So, when he saw the dust, he loped up.

It was as he had feared. A band of horses was in the waterpen; among them a red-roan head he knew – Copperhead, of Pringle’s mount; confirmed runaway. Jeff shut the gate. For the first time that day, he permitted himself a discreet glance eastward to Arcadia.

“Three days,” he said bitterly, while Grasshopper thrust his eager muzzle into the water-trough – “three days I have braced back my feet and slid, like a yearlin’ at a brandin’ bee – and look at me now! Oh, Copperhead, you darned old fool, see what you done now!”

In this morose mood he went to the house. There was no one at home. A note was tacked on the door.

Gone to Plomo. Back in two or three days. Beef hangs under platform on windmill tower. When you get it, oil the mill. Books and deck of cards in box under bed. Don’t leave fire in stove when you go.

Gene Baird.

N. B. – Feed the cat.

Jeff built a fire in the stove and unsaddled the weary Grasshopper. He found some corn, which he put into a woven-grass morral and hung on Grasshopper’s nose. He went to the waterpen, roped out Copperhead and shut him in a side corral. Then he let the bunch go. They strained through the gate in a mad run, despite shrill and frantic remonstrance from Copperhead.

“Jeff,” said Jeff soberly, “are you going to be a damned fool all your life? That girl doesn’t care anything about you. She hasn’t thought of you since. You stay right here and read the pretty books. That’s the place for you.”

This advice was sound and wise beyond cavil. So Jeff took it valiantly. After supper he hobbled Grasshopper and took off the nosebag. Then he went to the back room in pursuit of literature.

Have I leave for a slight digression, to commit a long-delayed act of justice – to correct a grievous wrong? Thank you.

We hear much of Mr. Andrew Carnegie and His Libraries, the Hall of Fame, the Little Red Schoolhouse, the Five-Foot Shelf, and the World’s Best Books. A singular thing is that the most effective bit of philanthropy along these lines has gone unrecorded of a thankless world. This shall no longer be.

Know, then, that once upon a time a certain soulless corporation, rather in the tobacco trade, placed in each package of tobacco a coupon, each coupon redeemable by one paper-bound book. Whether they were moved by remorse to this action or by sordid hidden purposes of their own, or, again, by pure, disinterested and farseeing love of their kind, is not yet known; but the results remain. There were three hundred and three volumes on that list, mostly – but not altogether – fiction. And each one was a classic. Classics are cheap. They are not copyrighted. Could I but know the anonymous benefactor who enrolled that glorious company, how gladly would I drop a leaf on his bier or a cherry in his bitters!

Thus it was that, in one brief decade, the cowboys, with others, became comparatively literate. Cowboys all smoked. Doubtless that was a chief cause contributory to making them the wrecks they were. It destroyed their physique; it corroded and ate away their will power – leaving them seldom able to work over nineteen hours a day, except in emergencies; prone to abandon duty in the face of difficulty or danger, when human effort, raised to the nth power, could do no more – all things considered, the most efficient men of their hands on record.

Cowboys all smoked: and the most deep-seated instinct of the human race is to get something for nothing. They got those books. In due course of time they read those books. Some were slow to take to it; but when you stay at lonely ranches, when you are left afoot until the water-holes dry up, so you may catch a horse in the waterpen – why, you must do something. The books were read. Then, having acquired the habit, they bought more books. Since the three hundred and three were all real books, and since the cowboys had been previously uncorrupted of predigested or sterilized fiction, or by “gift,” “uplift” and “helpful” books, their composite taste had become surprisingly good, and they bought with discriminating care. Nay, more. A bookcase follows books; a bookcase demands a house; a house needs a keeper; a housekeeper needs everything. Hence alfalfa – houseplants – slotless tables – bankbooks. The chain which began with yellow coupons ends with Christmas trees. In some proudest niche in the Hall of Fame a grateful nation will yet honor that hitherto unrecognized educator, Front de Bœuf.1

Jeff pawed over the tattered yellow-backed volumes in profane discontent. He had read them all. Another box was under the bed, behind the first. Opening it, he saw a tangled mass of clothing, tumbled in the bachelor manner; with the rest, a much-used football outfit – canvas jacket, sweater, padded trousers, woolen stockings, rubber noseguard, shinguards, ribbed shoes – all complete; for ’Gene Baird was fullback of the El Paso eleven.

Jeff segregated the gridiron wardrobe with hasty hands. His eye brightened; he spoke in an awed and almost reverent voice.

“I ain’t mostly superstitious, but this looks like a leading. First, I’m here; second, Copperhead’s here; third, no one else is here; and, for the final miracle, here’s a costume made to my hand. Thirty-five miles. Ten o’clock, if I hurry. H’m!

“‘When first I put this uniform on’ – how did that go? I’m forgetting all my songs. Getting old, I guess.”

Rejecting the heavy shoes, as unmeet for waxed floors, and the shinguards, he rolled the rest of the uniform in his slicker and tied it behind his saddle. Then he rubbed his chin.

“Huh! That’s a true saying, too. I am getting old. Youth turns to youth. Buck up, Jeff, you old fool! Have some pride about you and just a little old horse-sense.”

Yet he unhobbled Grasshopper, who might then be trusted to find his way to Rainbow in about three days. He went to the corral and tossed a rope on snorting Copperhead. “No; I won’t go!” he said, as he slipped on the bridle. “Just to uncock old Copperhead, I’ll make a little horse-ride to Hospital Springs and look through the stock.” He threw on the saddle with some difficulty – Copperhead was fat and frisky. “She don’t want to see you, Jeff – an old has-been like you! No, no; I’d better not go. I won’t! There, if I didn’t leave that football stuff on the saddle! I’ll take it off. It might get lost. Whoa, Copperhead!”

Copperhead, however, declined to whoa on any terms. His eyes bulged out; he reared, he pawed, he snorted, he bucked, he squealed, he did anything but whoa. Exasperated, Jeff caught the bridle by the cheek piece and swung into the saddle. After a few preliminaries in the pitching line, Jeff started bravely for Hospital Springs.

It was destined that this act of renunciation should be thwarted. Copperhead stopped and dug his feet in the ground as if about to take root. Jeff dug the spurs home. With an agonized bawl, Copperhead made a creditable ascension, shook himself and swapped ends before he hit the ground again. “Wooh!” he said. His nose was headed now for Arcadia; he followed his nose, his roan flanks fanned vigorously with a doubled rope.

“Headstrong, stubborn, unmanageable brute! Oh, well, have it your own way then, you old fool! You’ll be sorry!” Copperhead leaped out to the loosened rein. “This is just plain kidnapping!” said Jeff.

Kidnapped and kidnapper were far out on the plain as night came on. Arcadia road stretched dimly to the east; the far lights of La Luz flashed through the leftward dusk; straight before them was a glint and sparkle in the sky, faint, diffused, wavering; beyond, a warm and mellow glow broke the blackness of the mountain wall, where the lights of low-hidden Arcadia beat up against Rainbow Rim.

Jeff was past his first vexation; he sang as he rode:

 

“There was ink on her thumb when I kissed her hand,

And she whispered: ‘If you should die

I’d write you an epitaph, gloomy and grand!’

‘Time enough for that!’ says I.

 

“Keep a-movin here, Copperhead! Time fugits right along. You will play hooky, will you? ‘I’m going to be a horse!’”

CHAPTER V.
THE MASKERS

 

“For Ellinor (her Christian name was Ellinor)

Had twenty-seven different kinds of hell in her.”

 

– Richard Hovey.

It lacked little of the eleventh hour when the football player reached the ballroom – last comer to the revels. A bandage round his head and a rubber noseguard, which also hid his mouth, served for a mask, eked out by crisscrossed strips of courtplaster. One arm was in a sling – for stage purposes only.

As he limped through the door, Diogenes hurried to meet him, held up his lantern, peered hopefully into the battered face and shook his disappointed head. “Stung again!” muttered Diogenes.

Jeff lisped in numbers which fully verified the cynic’s misgiving. “7 – 11 – 4 – 11 – 44!” he announced jerkily. This was strictly in character and also excused him from entangling talk, leaving him free to search the whirl of dancers.

A bulky Rough Rider volunteered his help. He fixed a gleaming eyeglass on his nose and politely offered Jeff a Big Stick by way of a crutch. “Hit the line hard!” he barked. He bit the words off with a prize-bulldog effect. He had fine teeth.

Jeff waved him off. “16 – 2 – 1!” he proclaimed controversially. He felt his spirits sinking, with a growing doubt of his ability to identify the Only One, and was impatient of interruption. He kept his slow and watchful way down the floor.

Topsy broke away from her partner and stopped Jeff’s crippled progress. Her short hair, braided to a dozen tight and tiny pigtails, bristled away in all directions.

“Laws, young marsta’, you suhtenly does look puny!” she said. Then she clutched at her knee. “Aie!” she tittered, as a loose red stocking dropped flappingly to her ankle. Pray do not be shocked. The effect was startling; but a black stocking, decorously tight and smooth, was beneath the red one. Jeff’s mathematics were not equal to the strain of adequate comment. Topsy dived to the rescue. “Got a string?” she giggled, as she hitched the fallen stocking back to place. “I cain’t fix this good nohow!”

Jeff jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Man over there with an eyeglass cord – maybe you can get that. What makes you act so?” He looked cold disapproval; nevertheless, he looked.

Topsy hung her head, still clutching at the stocking-top. “Dunno. I spec’s it’s ’cause Ise so wicked!” Finger in mouth, she looked after Jeff as he hobbled away.

A slender witch bounced from a chair and barred his way with a broom. Her eyes were brimming sorcery; her lips looked saucy challenge; she leaned close for a whispered word in his ear: “How would you like to tackle me?”

Poor Jeff! “10, 2 – 10, 2!” he promised huskily. Yet he ducked beneath the broom.

“But,” said the little witch plaintively, “you’re going away!” She dropped her broom and wept.

“8, 2 – 8, 2 – 8, 2!” said Jeff, almost in tears himself, and again fell back upon English. “Mere figures or mere words can’t tell you how much I hate to; but I’ve got to follow the ball. I’m looking for a fellow.”

“If he – if he doesn’t love you,” sobbed the stricken witch, “then you’ll come back to me – won’t you? I love a liar!”

“To the very stake!” vowed Jeff. Such heroic, if conditional, constancy was not to go unrewarded. A couple detached themselves from the dancers, threaded their way to a corner of the long hall and stood there in deep converse. Jeff quickened pulse and pace – for one was a Red Devil and the other wore the soft gray costume of a Friend. She was tall, this Quakeress, and the hobnobbing devil was of Jeff’s own height. Jeff began to hope for a goal.

Briskly limping, he came to this engrossed couple and laid a friendly hand on the devil’s shoulder.

“Brother,” he said cordially, “will you please go to – home?”

The devil recoiled an astonished step.

“What? What!! Show me your license!”

“Twenty-three! – Please! – there’s a good devil – 23! I’m the right guard for this lady, I hope. Oh, please to go home!”

The devil took this request in very bad part.

“Go back fifteen yards for offside play and take a drop kick at yourself!” he suggested sourly.

A burly policeman, plainly conscious of fitting his uniform, paused for warning.

“No scrappin’ now! Don’t start nothin’ or I’ll run in the t’ree av yees!” he said, and sauntered on, twirling a graceful nightstick.

“Thee is a local man, judging from thy letters,” said the Quaker lady, to relieve the somewhat strained situation. “What do they stand for? E. P.? Oh, yes – El Paso, of course!”

“I saw you first!” said the Red Devil. “And with your disposition you would naturally find me more suitable. Make your choice of gridirons! Send him back to the side lines! Disqualify him for interference!”

“Don’t be hurried into a decision,” said Jeff. “Eternity is a good while. Before it’s over I’m going to be a – well, something more than a footballer. Golf, maybe – or tiddledywinks.”

The Quakeress glanced attentively from one to the other.

“Doubtless he will do his best to forward Thy Majesty’s interests,” she interposed. “Why not give him a chance?”

The devil shrugged his shoulders. “I always prefer to give this branch of work my personal attention,” he said stiffly.

“A specialty of thine?” mocked the girl.

The devil bowed sulkily.

“My heart is in it. Of course, if you prefer the bungling of a novice, there is no more to be said.”

“Thy Majesty’s manners have never been questioned,” murmured the Quakeress, bowing dismissal. “So kind of you!”

The devil bowed deeply and turned, pausing to hurl a gloomy prophecy over his shoulder. “See you later!” he said, and stalked away with an ill grace.

Pigskin hero and girl Friend, left alone, eyed each other with mutual apprehension. The girl Friend was first to recover speech. Her red lips were prim below her vizor, her eyes downcast to hide their dancing lights. Timidly she spread out fanwise the dove color of her sober costume.

“How does thee like my gray gown?”

“Not at all,” said Jeff brutally. “You’re no friend of mine, I hope.”

A most un-Quakerlike dimple trembled to her chin, relieving the firm austerity of straight lips. Also, Jeff caught a glimpse of her eyes through the vizor. They were crinkling – and they were brown. She ventured another tentative remark, and there was in it an undertone lingering, softly confidential.

“Is thee lame?”

“Not – very,” said Jeff, and saw a faint color start to the unmasked moiety of the Quaker cheek. “Still, if I may have the next dance, I shall be glad if you will sit it out with me.” Painfully he raised the beslinged arm in explanation. Sobre las Olas throbbed out its wistful call; they set their thought to its haunting measure.

“By all means!” She took his undamaged arm. “Let us find chairs.”

Now there were chairs to the left of them, chairs to the right of them, chairs vacant everywhere; but the gallant Six Hundred themselves were not more heedless or undismayed than these two. Still, all the world did not wonder. On the contrary, not even the anxious devil saw them after they passed behind a knot of would-be dancers who were striving to disentangle themselves. For, seeing traffic thus blocked, the policeman rushed to unsnarl the tangle. Magnificently he flourished his stick. He adjured them roughly: “Move on, yous! Move on!” Whereat, with one impulse, the tangle moved on the copper, swept over him, engulfed him, hustled him to the door and threw him out.

So screened, the chair-hunters vanished in far less than a psychological moment: for Jeff, in obedience to a faint or fancied pressure on his arm, dived through portières into a small room set apart for such as had the heart to prefer cards or chess. The room was deserted now and there was a broad window open to the night. Thus, thrice favored of Providence, they found themselves in the garden, chairless but cheerful.

A garden with one Eve is the perfect combination in a world awry. Muffled, the music and the sounds of the ballroom came faint and far to them; star-made shadows danced at their feet. The girl paused, expectant; but it was the unexpected that happened. The nimble tongue which had done such faithful service for Mr. Bransford now failed him quite: left him struggling, dumb, inarticulate, helpless – tongue and hand alike forgetful of their cunning.

Be sure the maid had adroitly heard much of Mr. Bransford, his deeds and misdeeds, during the tedious interval since their first meeting. Report had dwelt lovingly upon Mr. Bransford’s eloquence at need. This awkward silence was a tribute of sincerity above question.

With difficulty Ellinor mastered a wild desire to ask where the cat had gone. “Oh, come ye in peace here or come ye in war?” Such injudicious quotation trembled on the tip of her tongue, but she suppressed it – barely in time. She felt herself growing nervous with the fear lest she should be hurried into some all too luminous speech. And still Jeff stood there, lost, speechless, helpless, unready, a clumsy oaf, an object of pity. Pity at last, or a kindred feeling, drove her to the rescue. And, just as she had feared, she said, in her generous haste, far too much.

“I thought you were not coming?”

The inflection made a question of this statement. Also, by implication, it answered so many questions yet unworded that Jeff was able to use his tongue again; but it was not the trusty tongue of yore – witness this wooden speech:

“You mean you thought I said I wasn’t coming – don’t you? You knew I would come.”

“Indeed? How should I know what you would do? I’ve only seen you once. Aren’t you forgetting that?”

“Why else did you make up as a Friend then?”

“Oh! Oh, dear, these men! There’s conceit for you! I chose my costume solely to trap Mr. Bransford’s eye? Is that it? Doubtless all my thoughts have centered on Mr. Bransford since I first saw him!”

“You know I didn’t mean that, Miss Ellinor. I – ”

“Miss Hoffman, if you please!”

“Miss Hoffman. Don’t be mean to me. I’ve only got an hour – ”

“An hour! Do you imagine for one second – Why, I mustn’t stay here. This is really a farewell dance given in my honor. We go back East day after to-morrow. I must go in.”

“Only one little hour. And I have come a long ways for my hour. They take their masks off at midnight – don’t they? And of course I can’t stay after that. I want only just to ask you – ”

“Why did you come then? Isn’t it rather unusual to go uninvited to a ball?”

“Why, I reckon you nearly know why I come, Miss Hoffman; but if you want me to say precisely, ma’am – ”

“I don’t!”

“We’ll keep that for a surprise, then. Another thing: I wanted to find out just where you live in New York. I forgot to ask you. And I couldn’t very well go round asking folks after you’re gone – could I? Of course I didn’t have any invitation – from Mr. Lake; but I thought, if he didn’t know it, he wouldn’t mind me just stepping in to get your address.”

“Well, of all the assurance!” said Miss Ellinor. “Do you intend to start up a correspondence with me without even the formality of asking my consent?”

“Why, Miss Ellinor, ma’am, I thought – ”

“Miss Hoffman, sir! Yes – and there’s another thing. You said you had no invitation – from Mr. Lake. Does that mean, by any chance, that I invited you?”

“You didn’t say a word about my coming,” said Jeff. He was a flustered man, this poor Bransford, but he managed to put a slight stress upon the word “say.”

Miss Ellinor – Miss Hoffman – caught this faint emphasis instantly.

“Oh, I didn’t say anything? I just looked an invitation, I suppose?” she stormed. “Melting eyes – and that sort of thing? Tears in them, maybe? Poor girl! Poor little child! It would be cruel to let her go home without seeing me again. I will give her a little more happiness, poor thing, and write to her a while. Maybe it would be wiser, though, just to make a quarrel and break loose at once. She’ll get over it in a little while after she gets back to New York. Well! Upon my word!”

As she advanced these horrible suppositions, Miss Hoffman had marked out a short beat of garden path – five steps and a turn; five steps back and whirl again – with, on the whole, a caged-tigress effect. With a double-quick at each turn to keep his place at her elbow, Jeff, utterly aghast at the damnable perversity of everything on earth, vainly endeavored to make coördinate and stumbling remonstrance. As she stopped for breath, Jeff heard his own voice at last, propounding to the world at large a stunned query as to whether the abode of lost spirits could afford aught to excel the present situation. The remark struck him: he paused to wonder what other things he had been saying.

Miss Ellinor walked her beat, vindictive. Her chin was at an angle of complacency. She turned up the perky corners of an imaginary mustache with an air, an exasperating little finger, separated from the others, pointing upward in hateful self-satisfaction. Her mouth wore a gratified masculine smirk, visible even in the starlight; her gait was a leisured and lordly strut; her hand waved airy pity. Jeff shrank back in horror.

“M-Miss Hoffman, I n-never d-dreamed – ”

Miss Hoffman turned upon him swiftly.

“Never have I heard anything like it – never! You bring me out here willy-nilly, and by way of entertainment you virtually accuse me of throwing myself at your head.”

“I never!” said Jeff indignantly. “I didn’t – ”

Miss Hoffman faced him crouchingly and shook an indictment from her fingers.

“First, you imply that I enticed you to come; second, expecting you, I dressed to catch your eye; third, I was watching eagerly for you – ”

“Come – I say now!” The baited and exasperated victim walked headlong into the trap. “The first thing you did was to ask me if I was lame? Wasn’t that question meant to find out who I was? When I answered, ‘Not – very,’ didn’t you know at once that it was me?”

“There! That proves exactly what I was just saying,” raged the delighted trapper. “You don’t even deny it! You say in so many words that I have been courting you! I had to say something – didn’t I? You wouldn’t! You were limping, so I asked you if you were lame. What else could I have said? Did you want me to stand there like a stuffed Egyptian mummy? That’s the thanks a girl gets for trying to help a great, awkward, blundering butter-fingers! Oh, if you could just see yourself! The irresistible conqueror! Not altogether unprincipled though! You are capable of compunction. I’ll give you credit for that. Alarmed at your easy success, you try to spare me. It is noble of you – noble! You drag me out here, force a quarrel upon me – ”

“Oh, by Jove now! Really!” Stung by the poignant injustice of crowding events, Jeff took the bit in his teeth and rushed to destruction. “Really, you must see yourself that I couldn’t drag you out here! I have never been in that hall before. I didn’t know the lay of the ground. I didn’t even know that little side room was there. I thought you pressed my arm a little – ” So the brainless colt, in the quicksands, flounders deeper with each effort to extricate himself.

If Miss Hoffman had been angry before she was furious now.

“So that’s the way of it? Better and better! I dragged you out! Really, Mr. Bransford, I feel that I should take you back to your chaperon at once. You might be compromised, you know!”

Goaded to desperation, he acted on this hint at once. He turned, with stiff and stilted speech:

“I will take you back to the window, Miss Hoffman. Then there is nothing for me to do but go. I am sorry to have caused you even a moment’s annoyance. To-morrow you will see how you have twisted – I mean, how completely you have misinterpreted everything I have said. Perhaps some day you may forgive me. Here is the window. Good-night – good-by!”

Miss Hoffman lingered, however.

“Of course, if you apologize – ”

“I do, Miss Hoffman. I beg your pardon most sincerely for anything I have ever said or done that could hurt you in any way.”

“If you are sure you are sorry – if you take it all back and will never do such a thing again – perhaps I may forgive you.”

“I won’t – I am – I will!” said the abject and groveling wretch. Which was incoherent but pleasing. “I didn’t mean anything the way you took it; but I’m sorry for everything.”

“Then I didn’t beguile you to come? Or mask as a Friend in the hope that you would identify me?”

“No, no!”

Miss Ellinor pressed her advantage cruelly. “Nor take stock of each new masker to see if he possibly wasn’t the expected Mr. Bransford? Nor drag you into the garden? Nor squeeze your arm?” Her hands went to her face, her lissome body shook. “Oh, Mr. Bransford!” she sobbed between her fingers. “How could you – how could you say that?”

The clock chimed. A pealing voice beat out into the night: “Masks off!” A hundred voices swelled the cry; it was drowned in waves of laughter. It rose again tumultuously: “Masks off! Masks off!” Nearer came hateful voices, too, that cried: “Ellinor! Ellinor! Where are you?”

“I must go!” said Jeff. “They’ll be looking for you. No; you didn’t do any of those things. You couldn’t do any of those things. Good-by!”

“Ellinor! Ellinor Hoffman!! Where are you?”

Miss Hoffman whipped off her mask. From the open window a shaft of light fell on her face. It was flushed, sparkling, radiant. “Masks off!” she said. “Stupid!.. Oh, you great goose! Of course I did!” She stepped back into the shadow.

No one, as the copybook says justly, may be always wise. Conversely, the most unwise of us blunders sometimes upon the right thing to do. With a glimmer of returning intelligence Mr. Bransford laid his noseguard on the window-sill.

“Sir!” said Ellinor then. “How dare you?” Then she turned the other cheek. “Good-by!” she whispered, and fled away to the ballroom.

Mr. Bransford, in the shadows, scratched his head dubiously.

“Her Christian name was Ellinor,” he muttered. “Ellinor! H’m – Ellinor! Very appropriate name… Very!.. And I don’t know yet where she lives!”

He wandered disconsolately away to the garden wall, forgetting the discarded noseguard.

CHAPTER VI
THE ISLE OF ARCADY

 

“Then the moon shone out so broad and good

That the barn-fowl crowed:

And the brown owl called to his mate in the wood

That a dead man lay in the road!”

 

– Will Wallace Harney.

Arcadia’s assets were the railroad, two large modern sawmills, the climate and printer’s ink. The railroad found it a patch of bare ground, six miles from water; put in successively a whistling-post, a signboard, a depot, townsite papers and a water-main from the Alamo; and, when the townsite papers were confirmed, established machine shops and made the new town the division headquarters and base for northward building.

The railroad then set up the sawmills, primarily to get out ties and timbers for its own lanky growth, and built a spur to bring the forest down from Rainbow to the mills. The word “down” is used advisedly. Arcadia nestled on the plain under the very eavespouts of Rainbow Range. The branch, following with slavish fidelity the lines of a twisted corkscrew, took twenty-seven miles, mostly tunnel and trestlework, to clamber to the logging camps, with a minimum grade that was purely prohibitive and a maximum that I dare not state; but there was a rise of six thousand feet in those twenty-seven miles. You can figure the average for yourself. And if the engine should run off the track at the end of her climb she would light on the very roundhouse where she took breakfast, and spoil the shingles.

Yes, that was some railroad. There was a summer hotel – Cloudland – on the summit, largely occupied by slackwire performers. Others walked up or rode a horse. They used stem-winding engines, with eight vertical cylinders on the right side and a shaft like a steamboat, with beveled cogwheel transmission on the axles. And they haven’t had a wreck on that branch to date. No matter how late a train is, when an engine sees the tail-lights of her caboose ahead of her she stops and sends out flagmen.

The railroad, under the pseudonym of the Arcadia Development Company, also laid out streets and laid in a network of pipe-lines, and staked out lots until the sawmill protested for lack of tie-lumber. It put down miles of cement walks, fringed them with cottonwood saplings, telephone poles and electric lights. It built a hotel and a few streets of party-colored cottages – directoire, with lingerie tile roofs, organdy façades and peplum, intersecting panels and outside chimneys at the gable ends. It decreed a park, with nooks, lanes, mazes, lake, swans, ballground, grandstand, bandstand and the band appertaining thereunto – all of which apparently came into being over night. Then it employed a competent staff of word-artists and capitalized the climate.

The result was astonishing. The cottonwoods grew apace and a swift town grew with them – swift in every sense of the word. It took good money to buy good lots in Arcadia. People with money must be fed, served and amused by people wanting money. In three years the trees cast a pleasant shade and the company cast a balance, with gratifying results. They discounted the unearned increment for a generation to come.

It was a beneficent scheme, selling ozone and novelty, sunshine and delight. The buyers got far more than the worth of their money, the company got their money – and every one was happy. Health and good spirits are a bargain at any price. There were sandstorms and hot days; but sand promotes digestion and digestion promotes cheerfulness. Heat merely enhanced the luxury of shaded hammocks. As an adventurer thawed out, he sent for seven others worse than himself. Arcadia became the metropolis of the county and, by special election, the county-seat. Courthouse, college and jail followed in quick succession.

For the company, Arcadia life was one grand, sweet song, with, thus far, but a single discord. As has been said, Arcadia was laid out on the plain. There was higher ground on three sides – Rainbow Mountain to the east, the deltas of La Luz Creek and the Alamo to the north and south. New Mexico was dry, as a rule. After the second exception, when enthusiastic citizens went about on stilts to forward a project for changing the town’s name to Venice, the company acknowledged its error handsomely. When dry land prevailed once more above the face of the waters, it built a mighty moat by way of the amende honorable– a moat with its one embankment on the inner side of the five-mile horseshoe about the town. This, with its attendant bridges, gave to Arcadia an aspect singularly medieval. It also furnished a convenient line of social demarcation. Chauffeurs, college professors, lawyers, gamblers, county officers, together with a few tradesmen and railroad officials, abode within “the Isle of Arcady,” on more or less even terms with the Arcadians proper; millmen, railroaders, lumberjacks, and the underworld generally, dwelt without the pale.

The company rubbed its lamp again – and behold! an armory, a hospital and a library! It contributed liberally to churches and campaign funds; it exercised a general supervision over morals and manners. For example, in the deed to every lot sold was an ironclad, fire-tested, automatic and highly constitutional forfeiture clause, to the effect that sale or storage on the premises of any malt, vinous or spirituous liquors should immediately cause the title to revert to the company. The company’s own vicarious saloon, on Lot Number One, was a sumptuous and magnificent affair. It was known as The Mint.

All this while we have been trying to reach the night watchman.

In the early youth of Arcadia there came to her borders a warlock Finn, of ruddy countenance and solid build. He had a Finnish name, and they called him Lars Porsena.

Lars P. had been a seafaring man. While spending a year’s wage in San Francisco, he had wandered into Arcadia by accident. There, being unable to find the sea, he became a lumberjack – with a custom, when in spirits, of beating the watchman of that date into an omelet.

The indulgence of this penchant gave occasion for much adverse criticism. Fine and imprisonment failed to deter him from this playful habit. One watchman tried to dissuade Lars from his foible with a club, and his successor even went so far as to shoot him – to shoot Lars P., of course, not his predecessor – the successor’s predecessor, not Lars Porsena’s – if he ever had one, which he hadn’t. (What we need is more pronouns.) He – the successor of the predecessor – resigned when Lars became convalescent; but Lars was no whit dismayed by this contretemps – in his first light-hearted moment he resumed his old amusement with unabated gayety.

Thus was one of our greatest railroad systems subjected to embarrassment and annoyance by the idiosyncrasies of an ignorant but cheerful sailor-man. The railroad resolved to submit no longer to such caprice. A middleweight of renown was imported, who – when he was able to be about again – bitterly reproached the president and demanded a bonus on the ground that he had knocked Lars down several times before he – Lars – got angry; and also because of a disquisition in the Finnish tongue which Lars Porsena had emitted during the procedure – which address, the prizefighter stated, had unnerved him and so led to his undoing. It was obviously, he said, of a nature inconceivably insulting; the memory of it rankled yet, though he had heard only the beginning and did not get the – But let that pass.

The thing became a scandal. Watchman succeeded watchman on the company payroll and the hospital list, until some one hit upon a happy and ingenious way to avoid this indignity. Lars Porsena was appointed watchman.

This statesmanlike policy bore gratifying results. Lars Porsena straightway abandoned his absurd and indefensible custom, and no imitator arose. Also, Arcadia within the moat – the island – which was the limit of his jurisdiction, became the most orderly spot in New Mexico.

In the first gray of dawn, Uncle Sam, whistling down Main Street on his way home from the masquerade, found Lars Porsena lying on his face in a pool of blood.

The belated reveler knelt beside him. The watchman was shot, but still breathed. “Ho! Murder! Help! Murder!” shouted Uncle Sam. The alarm rolled crashing along the quiet street. Heads were thrust from windows; startled voices took up the outcry; other home-goers ran from every corner; hastily arrayed householders poured themselves from street doors.

Lars Porsena was in disastrous plight. He breathed, but that was about all. He was shot through the body. A trail of blood led back a few doors to Lake’s Bank. A window was cut out; the blood began at the sill.

Messengers ran to telephone the doctor, the sheriff, Lake. The knot of men grew to a crowd. A rumor spread that there had been an unusual amount of currency in the bank over night – a rumor presently confirmed by Bassett, the bareheaded and white-faced cashier. It was near payday; in addition to the customary amount to cash checks for railroaders and millhands – itself no mean sum – and the money for regular business, there had been provision for contemplated loans to promoters of new local industries.

The doctor came running, made a hasty examination, took emergency measures to stanch the freshly started blood, and swore whole-heartedly at the ambulance and the crowding Arcadians. He administered a stimulant. Lars Porsena fluttered his eyes weakly.

“Stand back, you idiots! Bash these fools’ faces in for ’em, some one!” said the medical man. He bent over the watchman. “Who did it, Lars?”

Lars made a vain effort to speak. The doctor gave him another sip of restorative and took a pull himself.

“Try again, old man. You’re badly hurt and you may not get another chance. Did you know him?”

Lars gathered all his strength to a broken speech:

“No… Bank … Found window … Midnight … nearly… Shot me… Didn’t see him.” He fell back on Uncle Sam’s starry vest.

“Ambulance coming,” said Uncle Sam. “Will he live, doc?”

Doc shook his head doubtfully.

“Poor chance. Lost too much blood. If he had been found in time he might have pulled through. Wonderful vitality. Ought to be dead now, by the books. Still, there’s a chance.”

“I never thought,” said Uncle Sam to Cyrano de Bergerac, as the ambulance bore away its unconscious burden, “that I would ever be so sorry at anything that could happen to Lars Porsena – after the way he made me stop singing on my own birthday. He was one grand old fighting machine!”

CHAPTER VII
STATES-GENERAL

 

“And they hae killed Sir Charlie Hay

And laid the wyte on Geordie.”

 

– Old Ballad.

That the master’s eye is worth two servants had ever been Lake’s favorite maxim. He had not yet gone to bed when the message reached him, where he kept his masterly eye on the proper closing up of the ballroom. He came through the crowd now, shouldering his way roughly, still in his police costume – helmet, tunic and belt. In his wake came the sheriff, who had just arrived, scorching to the scene on his trusty wheel.

On the bank steps, Lake turned to face the crowd. His strong canine jaw was set to stubborn fighting lines; the helmet did not wholly hide the black frown or the swollen veins at his temple.

“Come in, Thompson, and help the sheriff size the thing up – and you, Alec” – he stabbed the air at his choice with a strong blunt finger – “and Turnbull – you, Clarke – and you… Bassett, you keep the door. Admit no one!”

Lake was the local great man. Never had he appeared to such advantage to his admirers; never had his ascendency seemed so unquestioned and so justified. As he stood beside the sheriff in the growing light, the man was the incarnation of power – the power of wealth, position, prestige, success. In this moment of yet unplumbed disaster, taken by surprise, summoned from a night of crowded pleasure, he held his mastery, chose his men and measures with unhesitant decision – planned, ordered, kept to that blunt direct speech of his that wasted no word. A buzz went up from the unadmitted as the door swung shut behind him.

Lake had chosen well. Arcadia in epitome was within those pillaged walls. Thompson was president of the rival bank. Alec was division superintendent. Turnbull was the mill-master. Clarke was editor of the Arcadian Day. Clarke had been early to the storm-center; yet, of all the investigators, Clarke alone was not more or less disheveled. He was faultlessly appareled – even to the long Prince Albert and black string tie – in which, indeed, report said, he slept.

So much for capital, industry and the fourth estate. The last of the probers, whom Lake had drafted merely by the slighting personal pronoun “you,” was nevertheless identifiable in private life by the name of Billy White – being, indeed, none other than our old friend the devil. His indigenous mustache still retained a Mephistophelian twist; he was becomingly arrayed in slippers, pajamas and a pink bathrobe, girdled at the waist with a most unhermitlike cord, having gone early and surly to bed. In this improvised committee he fitly represented Society: while the sheriff represented society at large and, ex officio, that incautious portion under duress. Yet one element was unrepresented; for Lake made a mistake which other great men have made – of failing to reckon with the masterless men, who dwell without the wall.

Lake led the way.

“Will the watchman die, Alec, d’you think?” whispered Billy, as they filed through the grilled door to the counting room.

“Don’t know. Hope not. Game old rooster. Good watchman, too,” said Turnbull, the mill-superintendent.

Lake turned on the lights. The wall-safe was blown open; fragments of the door were scattered among the overturned chairs.

In an open recess in the vault there was a dull yellow mass; the explosion had spilled the front rows of coin to a golden heap. Behind, some golden rouleaus were intact: others tottered precariously, as you have perhaps seen beautiful tall stacks of colored counters do. Gold pieces were strewn along the floor.

“Thank God, they didn’t get all the gold anyhow!” said Lake, with a sigh of relief. “Then, of course, they didn’t touch the silver; but there was a lot of greenbacks – over twenty-five thousand, I think. Bassett will know. And I don’t know how much gold is gone. Look round and see if they left anything incriminating, sheriff, anything that we can trace them by.”

“He heard poor old Lars coming,” said the sheriff. “Then, after he shot him, he hadn’t the nerve to come back for the gold. This strikes me as being a bungler’s job. Must have used an awful lot of dynamite to tear that door up like that! Funny no one heard the explosion. Can’t be much of your gold gone, Lake. That compartment is pretty nearly as full as it will hold.”

“Or heard him shoot our watchman,” suggested Thompson. “Still, I don’t know. There’s blasting going on in the hills all the time and almost every one was at the masquerade or else asleep. How many times did they shoot old Lars – does anybody know? Is there any idea what time it was done?”

“He was shot once – right here,” said Alec, indicating the spot on the flowered silk that had been part of his mandarin’s dress. “Gun was held so close it burnt his shirt. Awful hole. Don’t believe the old chap’ll make it. He crawled along toward the telephone station till he dropped. Say! Central must have heard that shot! It’s only two blocks away. She ought to be able to tell what time it was.”

“Lars said it was just before midnight,” said Clarke.

“Oh! – did he speak?” asked Lake. “How many robbers were there? Did he know any of them?”

“He didn’t see anybody – shot just as he reached the window. Hope some one hangs for this!” said Clarke. “Lake, I wish you’d have this money picked up – I’m not used to walking on gold – or else have me watched.”

Lake shook his head, angry at the untimely pleasantry. It was a pleasantry in effect only, put forward to hide uneditorial agitation and distress for Lars Porsena. Lake’s undershot jaw thrust forward; he fingered the blot of whisker at his ear. It was a time for action, not for talk. He began his campaign.

“Look here, sheriff! You ought to wire up and down the line to keep a lookout. Hold all suspicious characters. Then get a posse to ride for some sign round the town. If we only had something to go on – some clue! Later we’ll look through this town with a finetooth comb. Most likely they – or he, if there was only one – won’t risk staying here. First of all, I’ve got to telegraph to El Paso for money to stave off a run on the bank. You’ll help me, Thompson? Of course my burglar insurance will make good my loss – or most of it; but that’ll take time. We mustn’t risk a run. People lose their heads so. I’ll give you a statement for the Day, Clarke, as soon as I find out where Mr. Thompson stands.”

“I will back you up, sir. With the bulk of depositors’ money loaned out, no bank, however solvent, can withstand a continued run without backing. I shall be glad to tide you over if only for my own protection. A panic is contagious – ”

“Thanks,” said Lake shortly, interrupting this stately financial discourse. “Then we shall do nicely… Let’s see – to-morrow’s payday. You fellows” – he turned briskly to the two superintendents – “can’t you hold up your payday, say, until Saturday? Stand your men off. The company stands good for their money. They can wait a while.”

“No need to do that,” said Alec. “I’ll have the railroad checks drawn on St. Louis. The storekeepers’ll cash ’em. If necessary I’ll wire for authority to let Turnbull pay off the millhands with railroad checks. It’s just taking money from one pocket to put it in the other, anyhow.”

“Then that’s all right! Now for the robbers!” The banker’s face betrayed impatience. “My first duty was to protect my clients; but now we’ll waste no more time. You gentlemen make a close search for any possible scrap of evidence while the sheriff and I write our telegrams. I must wire the burglar insurance company, too.” He plunged a pen into an inkwell and fell to work.

Acting upon this hint, the sheriff took a desk. “Wish Phillips was here – my deputy,” he sighed. “I’ve sent for him. He’s got a better head than I have for noticing clues and things.” This was eminently correct as well as modest. The sheriff was a Simon-pure Arcadian, the company’s nominee; his deputy was a concession to the disgruntled Hinterland, where the unobservant rarely reach maturity.

“Oh, Alec!” said Lake over his shoulder, “you sit down, too, and wire all your conductors about their passengers last night. Yes, and the freight crews, too. We’ll rush those through first. And can’t you scare up another operator?” His pen scratched steadily over the paper. “More apt to be some of our local outlaws, though. In that case it will be easier to find their trail. They’ll probably be on horseback.”

“You were an – old-timer yourself, were you not?” asked Billy amiably. “If the robbers are frontiersmen they may be easier to get track of, as you suggest; but won’t they be harder to get?” Billy spoke languidly. The others were searching assiduously for “clues” in the most approved manner, but Billy sprawled easily in a chair.

“We’ll get ’em if we can find out who they were,” snapped Lake, setting his strong jaw. He did not particularly like Billy – especially since their late trip to Rainbow. “There never was a man yet so good but there was one just a little better.”

“By a good man, in this connection, you mean a bad man, I presume?” said Billy in a meditative drawl. “Were you a good man before you became a banker?”

“Look here! What’s this?” The interruption came from Clarke. He pounced down between two fragments of the safe door and brought up an object which he held to the light.

At the startled tones, Lake spun round in his swivel-chair. He held out his hand.

“Really, I don’t think I ever saw anything like this thing before,” he said. “Any of you know what it is?”

“It’s a noseguard,” said Billy. Billy was a college man and had worn a nosepiece himself. He frowned unconsciously, remembering his successful rival of the masquerade.

“A noseguard? What for?”

“You wear it to protect your nose and teeth when playing football,” explained Billy. “Keeps you from swearing, too. You hold this piece between your teeth; the other part goes over your nose, up between your eyes and fastens with this band around your forehead.”

“Why! Why!” gasped Clarke, “there was a man at the masquerade togged out as a football player!”

“I saw him,” said Alec. “And he wore one of these things. I saw him talking to Topsy.”

“One of my guests?” demanded Lake scoffingly. “Oh, nonsense! Some young fellow has been in here yesterday, talking to the clerks, and dropped it. Who went as a football player, White? You know all these college boys. Know anything about this one?”

“Not a thing.” There Billy lied – a prompt and loyal gentleman – reasoning that Buttinski, as he mentally styled the interloper who had misappropriated the Quaker lady, would have cared nothing at that time for a paltry thirty thousand. Thus was he guilty of a practice against which we are all vainly warned – of judging others by ourselves. Billy remembered very distinctly that Miss Ellinor had not reappeared until the midnight unmasking, and he therefore acquitted her companion of this particular crime, entirely without prejudice to Buttinski’s felonious instincts in general. For the watchman had been shot before midnight. Billy made a tentative mental decision that this famous noseguard had been brought to the bank later and left there purposely; and resolved to keep his eye open.

“Oh, well, it’s no great difference anyhow,” said Lake. “Whoever it was dropped it here yesterday, I guess, and got another one for the masquerade.”

“Hold on there!” said Clarke, holding the spotlight tenaciously. “That don’t go! This thing was on top of one of those pieces of the safe!”

For the first time Lake was startled from his iron composure.

“Are you sure?” he demanded, jumping up.

“Sure! It was right here against the sloping side of this piece – so.”

“That puts a different light on the case, gentlemen,” said Lake. “Luck is with us; and – ”

“And, while I think of it,” said Clarke, making the most of his unexpected opportunity, “I made notes of all the costumes and their wearers after the masks were off – for the paper, you know – and I saw no football player there. I remember that distinctly.”

“I only saw him the one time,” confirmed Alec, “and I stayed almost to the break-up. Whoever it was, he left early.”

“But what possible motive could the robber have for going to the dance at all?” queried Lake in perplexity.

“Maybe he made his appearance there in a football suit purposely, so as to leave us some one to hunt for, and then committed the robbery and went back in another costume,” suggested Clarke, pleased and not a little surprised at his own ingenuity. “In that case, he would have left this rubber thing here of design.”

“H’m!” Lake was plainly struck with this theory. “And that’s not such a bad idea, either! We’ll look into this football matter after breakfast. You’ll go to the hotel with me, gentlemen? Our womankind are all asleep after the ball. The sheriff will send some one to guard the bank. Meantime I’ll call the cashier in and find out exactly how much money we’re short. Send Bassett in, will you, Billy? You stay at the door and keep that mob out.”

CHAPTER VIII
ARCADES AMBO

 

“What means this, my lord?”

“Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.”

 

– Hamlet.

“We are here to do what service we may, for honor and not for hire.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson.

With Billy went the sheriff and Alec, the latter with a sheaf of telegrams.

“Now … how did Buttinski’s noseguard get into this bank? That’s what I’d like to know,” said Billy to the doorknob, when the other committeemen had gone their ways. “I didn’t bring it. I don’t believe Buttinski did… And Policeman Lake certainly saw us quarreling. He noticed the football player, right enough, – and he pretends he didn’t. Why – why – why does Policeman Lake pretend he didn’t see that football player? Echo answers – why?.. Denmark’s all putrefied!”

The low sun cleared the housetops. The level rays fell along the window-sill; and Billy, staring fascinated at the single blotch of dried blood on the inner sill, saw something glitter and sparkle there beside it. He went closer. It was a dust of finely powdered glass. Billy whistled.

A light foot ran up the steps. There was a rap at the door.

“No entrance except on business. No business transacted here!” quoted Billy, startled from a deep study. A head appeared at the window. “Oh, it’s you, Jimmy? That’s different. Come in!”

It was Jimmy Phillips, the chief deputy. Billy knew him and liked him. He unbarred the door.

“Well, anything turned up yet?” demanded Jimmy. “I stopped in to see Lars. Him and me was old side partners.”

“How’s he making it, Jimmy?”

“Oh, doc said he had one chance in ten thousand; so he’s all right, I guess,” responded that brisk optimist. “They got any theory about the robber?”

“They have that. A perfectly sound theory, too – only it isn’t true,” said Billy in a low and guarded tone. “They’ll tell you. I haven’t got time. See here – if I give you the straight tip will you work it up and keep your head closed until you see which way the cat jumps? Can you keep it to yourself?”

“Mum as a sack of clams!” said Jimmy.

“Look at this a minute!” Billy pointed to the tiny particles of glass on the inner sill. “Got that? Then I’ll dust it off. This is a case for your gummiest shoes. Now look at this!” He indicated the opening where the patch of glass had been cut from the big pane. Jimmy rubbed his finger very cautiously along the raw edge of the glass.

“Cut out from the inside – then carried out there? A frame-up?”

“Exactly. But I don’t want anybody else to size it up for a frame-up – not now.”

“But,” said Jimmy good-naturedly, “I’d ’a’ seen all that myself after a little if you hadn’t ’a’ showed me.”

“Yes,” said Billy dryly; “and then told somebody! That’s why I brushed the glass-dust off. I’ve got inside information – some that I’m going to share with you and some that I am not going to tell even you!”

“Trot it out!”

“Lake had the key of this front door in the policeman’s uniform that he wore to the dance. Isn’t that queer? If I were you I’d very quietly find out whether he went home to get that key after he got word that the bank was robbed. He was still in the ballroom when he got the message.”

“You think it’s a put-up job? Why?”

“There is something not just right about the man Lake. His mind is too ballbearing altogether. He herds those chumps in there round like so many sheep. He used ’em to make discoveries with and then showed ’em how to force ’em on him. Oh, they made a heap of progress! They’ve got evidence enough up in there to hang John the Baptist, with Lake all the time setting back in the breeching like a balky horse. It’s Lake’s bank, and the bank’s got burglar insurance. Got that? If he gets the money and the insurance, too – see? And I happen to know he has been bucking the market. I dropped a roll with him myself. Then there’s r-r-revenge! – as they say on the stage – and something else beside. Has Lake any bitter enemies?”

“Oodles of ’em!”

“But one worse than the others – one he hates most?”

Jimmy thought for a while. Then he nodded.

“Jeff Bransford, I reckon.”

“Is he in town?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, I never heard of your Mr. Bransford; but he’s in town all right, all right! You’ll see! Lake’s got a case cooked up that’ll hang some one higher than Haman; and I’ll bet the first six years of my life against a Doctor Cook lecture ticket that the first letter of some one’s name is Jeff Bransford.”

“Maybe Jeff can prove he was somewhere else?” suggested Jimmy.

Billy evaded the issue.

“What sort of a man is this Bransford? Any good? Besides being an enemy of Lake’s, I mean?”

“Mr. Bransford is one whom we all delight to humor,” announced the deputy, after some reflection.

“Friend of yours?”

Jimmy reflected again.

“We-ll – yes!” he said. “He limps a little in cold weather, and I got a little small ditch plowed in my skull – but our horses was both young and wild, and the boys rode in between us before there was any harm done. I pulled him out of the Pecos since that, too, and poured some several barrels of water out o’ him. Yes, we’re good friends, I reckon.”

“He’ll shoot back on proper occasion, then? A good sport? Stand the gaff?”

“On proper occasion,” rejoined Jimmy, “the other man will shoot back – if he’s lucky. Yes, sir, Jeff’s certainly one dead game sport at any turn in the road.”

“Considering the source and spirit of your information, you sadden me,” said Billy. “The better man he is, the better chance to hang. Has he got any close friends here?”

“He seldom ever comes here,” said Jimmy. “All his friends is on Rainbow, specially South Rainbow; but his particular side partners is all away just now; leastways, all but one.”

“Can’t you write to that one?”

The deputy grinned hugely.

“And tell him to come break Jeff out o’ jail?” said he. “That don’t seem hardly right, considerin’. You write to him – Johnny Dines, Morningside. You might wire up to Cloudland and have it forwarded from there. I’ll pay.”

Billy made a note of it.

“They’ll be out here in a jiffy now,” he said. “Now, Jimmy, you listen to all they tell you; follow it up; make no comments; don’t see anything and don’t miss anything. Let Lake think he’s having it all his own way and he’ll make some kind of a break that will give him away. We haven’t got a thing against him yet except the right guess. And you be careful to catch your friend without a fight. When you get him I want you to give him a message from me; but don’t mention any name. Tell him to keep a stiff upper lip – that the devil takes care of his own. Say the devil told you himself – in person. I don’t want to show my hand. I’m on the other side – see? That way I can be in Lake’s counsels – force myself in, if necessary, after this morning.”

“You think that if you give Lake rope enough – ”

“Exactly. Here they come – I hear their chairs.”

“Blonde or brunette?” said Jimmy casually.

“Eh? What’s that?”

“The something else that you wouldn’t tell me about,” Jimmy explained. “Is she blonde or brunette?”

“Oh, go to hell!” said Billy.

CHAPTER IX
TAKEN

 

“Lord Huntley then he did speak out —

O, fair mot fa’ his body! —

‘I here will fight doublet alane

Or ony thing ails Geordie!

   

“‘Whom has he robbed? What has he stole?

Or has he killed ony?

Or what’s the crime that he has done

His foes they are so mony?’”

 

– Old Ballad.

Hue and cry, hubbub and mystery, swept the Isle of Arcady that morning, but the most painstaking search and query proved fruitless. It developed beyond doubt that the football man had not been seen since his one brief appearance on the ballroom floor. Search was transferred to the mainland, where, as it neared noon, Lake’s perseverance and thoroughness were rewarded. In Chihuahua suburb, beyond the north wall, Lake noted a sweat-marked, red-roan horse in the yard of Rosalio Marquez, better known, by reason of his profession, as Monte.

Straightway the banker reported this possible clue to the sheriff and to Billy, who was as tireless and determined in the chase as Lake himself. The other masqueraders had mostly abandoned the chase. He found them on the bridge of the La Luz sallyport.

“It may be worth looking into,” Lake advised the sheriff. “Better send some one to reconnoiter – some one not known to be connected with your office. You go, Billy. If you find anything suspicious the sheriff can ’phone to the hospital if he needs me. I’m going over to see how the old watchman is – ought to have gone before. If he gets well I must do something handsome for him.”

Billy fell in with this request. He had a well-founded confidence in Lake’s luck and attached much more significance to the trifling matter of the red-roan horse than did the original discoverer – especially since the discoverer had bethought himself to go to the hospital on an errand of mercy. Billy now confidently expected early developments. And he preferred personally to conduct the arrest, so that he might interfere, if necessary, to prevent any wasting of good cartridges. He did not expect much trouble, however, providing the affair was conducted tactfully; reasoning that a dead game sport with a clean conscience and a light heart would not seriously object to a small arrest. Poor Billy’s own heart was none of the lightest as he went on this loyal service to his presumably favored rival.

Bicycle-back, he accompanied the sheriff beyond the outworks to the Mexican quarter. Near the place indicated by the banker Billy left his wheel and strolled casually round the block. He saw the red-roan steed and noted the Double Rainbow branded on his thigh.

Monte was leaning in the adobe doorway, rolling a cigarette. Billy knew him, in a business way.

“Hello, Monte! Good horse you’ve got there.”

“Yais – tha’s nice hor-rse,” said Monte.

“Want to sell him?”

“Thees ees not my hor-rse,” explained Monte. “He ees of a frien’.”

“I like his looks,” said Billy. “Is your friend here? Or, if he’s downtown, what’s his name? I’d like to buy that horse.”

“He ees weetheen, but he ees not apparent. He ees dormiendo– ah – yais – esleepin’. He was las’ night to the baile mascarada.”

Billy nodded. “Yes; I was there myself.” He decided to take a risk: assuming that his calculations were correct, x must equal Bransford. So he said carelessly: “Let’s see, Bransford went as a sailor, didn’t he? Un marinero?”

“Oh, no; he was atir-re’ lak one —que cosa? – what you call thees theeng? —un balon para jugar con los pies? Ah! si, si! – one feetball! Myself I come soon back. I have no beesness. The bes’ people ees all for the dance,” said Monte, with hand turned up and shrugging shoulder. “So, media noche– twelve of the clock, I am here back. I fin’ here the hor-rse of my frien’, and one carta– letter – that I am not to lock the door; porque he may come to esleep. So I am mek to r-repose myself. Later I am ar-rouse when my frien’ am to r-retir-re heemself. Ah, que hombre! I am yet to esmile to see heem in thees so r-redeeculous vestidos! He ees ver’ gay. Ah! que Jeff! Een all ways thees ees a man ver’ sufficiente, cour-rageous, es-trong, formidabble! Yet he ees keep the disposicion, the hear-rt, of a seemple leetle chil’ —un muchacho!”

“I’ll come again,” said Billy, and passed on. He had found out what he had come for. The absence of concealment dispelled any lingering doubt of Jeff Buttinski. Yet he could establish no alibi by Monte.

Perhaps Billy White may require here a little explanation. All things considered, Billy thought Jeff would be better off in jail, with a friend in the opposite camp working for his interest, than getting himself foolishly killed by a hasty posse. If we are cynical, we may say that, being young, Billy was not averse to the rôle of deus ex machina; perhaps a thought of friendly gratitude was not lacking. Then, too, adventure for adventure’s sake is motive enough – in youth. Or, as a final self-revelation, we may hint that if Jeff was a rival, so too was Lake – and one more eligible. Let us not be cynical, however, or cowardly. Let us say at once shamelessly what we very well know – that youth is the season for clean honor and high emprise; that boy’s love is best and truest of all; that poor, honest Billy, in his own dogged and fantastic way, but sought to give true service where he – loved. There, we have said it; and we are shamed. How old are you, sir? Forty? Fifty? Most actions are the result of mixed motives, you say? Well, that is a notable concession – at your age. Let it go at that. Billy, then, acted from mixed motives.

When Billy brought back his motives – and the sheriff – Monte still held his negligent attitude in the doorway. He waved a graceful salute.

“I want to see Bransford,” said the sheriff.

“He ees esleepin’,” said Monte.

“Well, I want to see him anyway!” The sheriff laid a brusk hand on the gatelatch.

Monte waved his cigarette airily, flicked the ash from the end with a slender finger, and once more demonstrated that the hand is quicker than the eye. The portentously steady gun in the hand was the first intimation to the eye that the hand had moved at all. It was a very large gun as to caliber, the sheriff noted. As it was pointed directly at his nose he was favorably situated to observe – looking along the barrel – that the hammer stood at full cock.

“Per-rhaps you have some papers for heem?” suggested Monte, with gentle and delicate deference. He still leaned against the doorjamb. “But eef not eet ees bes’ that you do not enter thees my leetle house to distur-rb my gues’. That would be to commeet a r-rudeness – no?”

The sheriff was a sufficiently brave man, if not precisely a brilliant one. Yet he showed now intelligence of the highest order. He dropped the latch.

“You Billy, stop your laughing! Do you know, Mr. Monte, I think you are quite right?” he observed, with a smiling politeness equal to Monte’s own. “That would be rude, certainly. My mistake. An Englishman’s house is his castle – that sort of thing? If you will excuse me now we will go and get the papers, as you so kindly pointed out.”

They went away, the sheriff, Billy and motives – Billy still laughing immoderately.

Monte went inside and stirred up his guest with a prodding boot-toe.

“Meester Jeff,” he demanded, “what you been a-doin’ now?”

Jeff sat up, rumpled his hair, and rubbed his eyes.

“Sleepin’,” he said.

“An’ before? Porque, the sheriff he has been. To mek an arres’ of you, I t’eenk.”

“Me?” said Jeff, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I haven’t done anything that I can remember now!”

“Sure? No small leetle cr-rime? Not las’ night? Me, I jus’ got up. I have not hear’.”

Jeff considered this suggestion carefully. “No. I am sure. Not for years. Some mistake, I guess. Or maybe he just wanted to see me about something else. Why didn’t he come in?”

“I mek r-reques’ of heem that he do not,” said Monte.

“I see,” Jeff laughed. “Come on; we’ll go see him. You don’t want to get into trouble.”

They crossed the bridge and met the sheriff just within the fortifications, returning in a crowded automobile. Jeff held up his hand. The machine stopped and the posse deployed – except Billy, who acted as chauffeur.

“You wanted to see me, sheriff – at the hotel?”

“Why, yes, if you don’t mind,” said the sheriff.

“Good dinner? I ain’t had breakfast yet!”

“First-class,” said the sheriff cordially. “Won’t your friend come too?”

“Ah, señor, you eshame me that I am not so hospitabble, ees eet not?” purred Monte, as he followed Jeff into the tonneau.

The sheriff reddened and Billy choked.

“Nothing of the sort,” said the sheriff hastily, lapsing into literalness. “You were quite within your rights. For that matter, I know you were at your own bank, dealing, when the crime was committed. I am holding you for the present as a possible accessory; and, if not, then as a material witness. By the way, Monte, would you mind if I sent some men to look through your place? There is a matter of some thirty thousand dollars missing. Lake asked us to look for it. I have papers for it if you care to see them.”

“Oh, no, señor!” said Monte. He handed over a key. “La casa es suyo!”

“Thank you,” said the sheriff, with unmoved gravity. “Anything of yours you want ’em to bring, Bransford?”

“Why, no,” said Jeff cheerfully. “I’ve got nothing there but my saddle, my gun and an old football suit that belongs to ’Gene Baird, over on the West Side; but if you want me to stay long, I wish you’d look after my horse.”

“I too have lef’ there my gun that I keep to protec’ my leetle house,” observed Monte. “Tell some one to keep eet for me. I am much attach’ to that gun.”

“Why, yes, I have seen that gun, I think,” said the sheriff. “They’ll look out for it. All right, Billy!”

The car turned back.

“Oh – you were speaking about Monte being an accessory. I didn’t get in till ’way late last night, and I’ve been asleep all day,” said Jeff apologetically. “Might I ask before or after exactly what fact Monte was an accessory?”

“Bank robbery, for one thing.”

“Ah!.. That would be Lake’s bank? Anything else?”

The sheriff was not a patient man and he had borne much; also, he liked Lars Porsena. Perfection, even in trifles, is rare and wins affection. He turned on Jeff, with an angry growl.

“Murder!”

“Lake?” murmured Jeff hopefully.

The sheriff continued, ignoring and, indeed, only half sensing the purport of Jeff’s comment:

“At least, the wound may not be mortal.”

“That’s too bad,” said Jeff. He was, if possible, more cheerful than ever.

The sheriff glared at him. Billy, from the front seat, threw a word of explanation over his shoulder. “It’s not Lake. The watchman.”

“Oh, old Lars Porsena? That’s different. Not a bad sort, Lars. Maybe he’ll get well. Hope so… And I shot him? Dear me! When did it happen?”

“You’ll find out soon enough!” said the sheriff grimly. “Your preliminary’s right away.”

“Hell, I haven’t had breakfast yet!” Jeff protested. “Feed us first or we won’t be tried at all.”

Within the jail, while the sheriff spoke with his warder, it occurred to Billy that, since Jimmy Phillips was not to be seen, he might as well carry his own friendly message. So he said guardedly:

“Buck up, old man! Keep a stiff upper lip and be careful what you say. This is only your preliminary trial, remember. Lots of things may happen before court sets. The devil looks after his own, you know.”

Jeff had a good ear for voices, however, and Billy’s mustache still kept more than a hint of Mephistopheles. Jeff slowly surveyed Billy’s natty attire, with a lingering and insulting interest for such evidences of prosperity as silken hosiery and a rather fervid scarfpin. At last his eye met Billy’s, and Billy was blushing.

“Does he?” drawled Jeff languidly. “Ah!.. You own the car, then?”

Poor Billy!

Notwithstanding the ingratitude of this rebuff, Billy sought out Jimmy Phillips and recounted to him the circumstances of the arrest.

“Oh, naughty, naughty!” said the deputy, caressing his nose. “Lake’s been a cowman on Rainbow. He knew the brand on that horse; he knew Jeff was chummy with Monte. He knew in all reason that Jeff was in there, and most likely he knew it all the time. So he sneaks off to see Lars – after shooting him from ambush, damn him! – and sends you to take Jeff. Looks like he might be willing for you and Jeff to damage either, which or both of yourselves, as the case may be.”

“It looks so,” said Billy.

“Must be a fine girl!” murmured Jimmy absently. “Well, what are you going to do? It looks pretty plain.”

“It looks plain to us – but we haven’t got a single tangible thing against Lake yet. We’d be laughed out of court if we brought an accusation against him. We’ll have to wait and keep our eyes open.”

“You’re sure Lake did it? There was no rubber nosepiece at Monte’s house. All the rest of the football outfit – but not that. That looks bad for Jeff.”

“On the contrary, that is the strongest link against Lake. I dare say Buttinski – Mr. Bransford – is eminently capable of bank robbery at odd moments; but I know approximately where that noseguard was at sharp midnight – after the watchman was shot.” Here Billy swore mentally, having a very definite guess as to how Jeff might have lost the noseguard. “Lake, Clarke, Turnbull, Thompson, Alec or myself – one of the six of us – brought that noseguard to the bank after the robbery, and only one of the six had a motive – and a key.”

“Only one of you had a key,” corrected Jimmy cruelly. “But can’t Jeff prove where he was, maybe?”

“He won’t.”

“I’d sure like to see her,” said Jimmy.