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                            SMOKE OF THE .45




[Illustration: “Wal, you’d better untie Gallup. He don’t look happy.”]




                          SMOKE OF THE .45

                                 BY

                        HARRY SINCLAIR DRAGO
                AUTHOR OF “OUT OF THE SILENT NORTH”

                          FRONTISPIECE BY
                        FRANK TENNEY JOHNSON

                              NEW YORK
                        THE MACAULAY COMPANY




                          Copyright, 1923,
                      By THE MACAULAY COMPANY

              PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                 TO
                         THOMAS A. BRANDON

                     —COMPANION OF MANY TRAILS—

                         THROUGH WHOSE EYES
                         I LEARNED TO LOVE
                            THE DESERT.




                                CONTENTS

                      I Out of the Past
                     II The Red Hand
                    III By His Own Hand
                     IV Foot-Loose
                      V The First Clue
                     VI Outside the Law
                    VII If This Be Love
                   VIII Straight Talk
                     IX Two Old Men
                      X Molly Kent
                     XI More Than a Bet
                    XII Molly Explains
                   XIII “He Is My Friend”
                    XIV For the Heart of a Girl
                     XV Madeiras Gets a Chance
                    XVI Bitter Fruit
                   XVII Gallup’s Price
                  XVIII “Kill Him, the Thief”
                    XIX “Come and Get Him”
                     XX Without Pay
                    XXI Two Dead Men
                   XXII The Face in the Window
                  XXIII The Gun Speaks
                   XXIV Johnny Dice Comes Back to Life
                    XXV Madeiras Asserts Himself
                   XXVI Between the Lines
                  XXVII Time to Act
                 XXVIII Johnny Talks at Last
                   XXIX Evidence to Convict
                    XXX Madeiras Appears at Last
                   XXXI The Death Chant
                  XXXII The Debt Is Paid
                 XXXIII Fulfillment




                          SMOKE OF THE .45




                             CHAPTER I

                          OUT OF THE PAST


September had come and gone, leaving the desert brown and somber
against the graying sage. The first of the cold rains had fallen.
Round-up time was past. The cattle left in the hills were moving
down to lower pastures. Unerringly they sensed the brief Indian
summer yet to come, which would turn the grasses green for a few
brief days before the cold, snow-bringing winds of late October were
upon them.

There was that in the air on the range which said the year’s work
was over.... The world was waiting. But in the little towns plumped
down beside the shining rails of the Espee and the Western Pacific,
all was activity and bustle. The steer shipping was on and the
held-over wool clip was going aboard the cars. It was the harvest
time of the mountain desert—the pay day of the range.

Pockets were well lined. There had been famine—days on end of hard
work, of no spending. Now was the time of plenty, of satisfied
appetites. Winnemucca, Golconda, Elko, Halleck, Standing Rock, in
the heart of Ruby Valley—they were all alike—boisterous, turbulent,
prosperous; save that Standing Rock, newer than its sister towns,
was more boisterous, more continuously turbulent, and less concerned
with its future prosperity.

And yet there was one who entered its hospitable gates this late
afternoon who seemed untouched by its gayety. His eyes, screwed into
the perpetual squint of the true desert breed, viewed Standing
Rock’s activities with apparent unconcern. It was an old story to
him. He knew the desert’s little ways!

His coming caused no comment. And this, despite the fact that his
clothes were of an almost forgotten cut, popular in the days when
Dodge City reaped its harvest from the great northward trek of the
longhorns.

The Big Trek is a thing of the past; the trail itself lost,
forgotten. Dodge City has long since settled down to most proper
respectability. And those hard-fisted, quick-shooting men who
squandered their wealth and lives, there, along the way from Santa
Fe, have departed to that limbo from which none return.

But a practiced eye would have said that the man who rode into
Standing Rock this day was of that crew. His face was a fighting
face, withal he was on in years, gray hair closely snugged to his
head. In other days he had been a rugged man; but there was a
sadness upon him now, a wistfulness in the eyes, that softened his
boldly chiseled features.

That he moved unnoticed is proof again that our one cosmopolitan
zone has ever been the great West. Spurs, bridle, saddlebags, reata,
even the big, high-stepping stallion which he rode were foreign to
northern Nevada. That they were Spanish or Mexican—the difference is
slight in the West—no one cared a hoot. The desert is wide. Men have
a habit of coming long distances, and from strange places. And
best—far best of all—a man’s business was his own business!

The two trunk lines paralleled each other in passing through the
town. In the short half mile between them, Standing Rock took form;
half finished, half painted—a one-street town of one story buildings
making a brave show with their Cripple Creek fronts.

Hard by the Espee tracks this monotonously regular sky line was
broken. For there, wonder of wonders, stood a two-story brick
structure—a hotel!—the pride of Ruby Valley; the Marble Palace; J.
Scanlon and V. Escondido, proprietors.

Steer and wool money had financed it, hence Vincenzo. He was a
petulant Basque, and although in the storied past he and his people
had sprung from stock as Celtic as his partner’s, he—Vincenzo—was in
a fair way of being erased by the versatile Scanlon. In quite the
same fashion their institution had lost its chilling and undeserved
title—unless the marble-topped bar were justification—and was
called, in easy familiarity, the Palace.

The profits of this establishment were restricted solely to the
first floor, for, save at times like this, or when some unfortunate
commercial traveler missed No. 19 going west, no one ever thought of
staying there the night. But, oh, the profits of that lower
floor!—bar and keno, roulette and poker of a flexibility well
calculated to satisfy the whim of the most jaded customer.

Having stabled his horse and placed his saddle, saddlebags and bed
roll on a convenient peg, the stranger made for the door of this
hostelry. It was a few minutes after five. The Diamond-Bar waddies
were having their turn at the shipping pens. An hour later they
would be making merry. Now, though, the street was deserted. The
wool platform was directly in back of the hotel. The spur of track
leading to it managed to squeeze past the hotel by the narrowest of
margins.

Four loaded cars stood on the siding. By six o’clock another would
be filled. A freight engine would shunt them upon the main line that
evening, and start them on their long ride to Boston.

For another week this would go on. At least twenty heavy freighters,
piled high with baled wool still reeking of the creosote dip, stood
in the space about the platform waiting to be unloaded. More would
come. Twenty-mule teams dragging three, and even four, wagons
chained together would snake in the smelling fleece.

Standing Rock should have been a place of ample elbow room, but
here, in man’s peculiar way, was its greatest activity jammed in a
space so crowded that the stranger stopped to watch the Basque boys
as they fought the big bales with their long, steel wool hooks.

His interest in the work on the platform caught the attention of a
man who sat in the Palace bar, feet on the window sill, chair tilted
back in comfort. This man had been sitting there some time, busy
with strings of figures on the pages of a small leather-covered
memorandum book. This occupation had absorbed his entire attention
for many minutes; but as he stared at the stranger standing beside
the track the little book fell from his fingers. Almost with one
motion his feet came down from the sill and the chair to its four
legs. His face was white when he straightened from snatching for the
little book.

He darted another glance at the stranger, as if doubting his senses.
He had made no mistake! His hand trembled as he pushed the chair out
of his path.

“It’s him,” he muttered. “Traynor!”

A belated sense of caution caused him to sweep the room with his
eyes to see if any one had observed his ill-concealed alarm. A sigh
of relief forced itself to his lips as he saw that Escondido, the
Basque proprietor, was his only companion. Vin was hunched over the
bar, his head resting in his arms, sound asleep.

A rear door led to the wool platform. The man tiptoed to it quickly,
and without a backward glance passed outside. A second later the
stranger was shaking Vin back to consciousness.

“I want a room, _muchacho_” he said with some impatience.

Vin blinked his eyes. “No room, _señor_. Theese hotel is feel up.
Plenty men in town.”

“I’m not stayin’ all night. It’s goin’ to rain. I’ll go on after the
stormin’s done. You let me have one of the boys’ rooms. They won’t
be turnin’ in till late. I’m dead tired.”

“Sure, Mike! I guess we feex leetla theeng like that. You take the
end room. I call you nine o’clock.”

The Basque turned to fish out from a pile of soiled papers a
dilapidated book which served the place as a register.

“You put your name in theese book, _señor_.”

He held it toward the man, pencil in his free hand. The stranger’s
eyes held Vin’s as he took the book and pencil; but instead of
writing as requested, he closed the book and put the pencil on top
of it, after which he placed them with extravagant care on the
polished bar.

Vin started to protest, but the man’s squinting, smiling gray eyes
made him pause. Damn these gringoes when they smile!

“No,” the stranger was saying. “_Niente, señor._ I’ve just clean
fergot how to write. You understand?”

“_Sí, sí._” Escondido was not lying. He understood the _eyes_. It
was sufficient. Then, with a shrug of the shoulders and a grin: “Me,
I pretty dam’ well ferget how to read somethings, too.”

“_Señor_, you are a man of wisdom.”

A few minutes later, having removed his boots and draped his gun
belt and hat over a convenient chair, the man was asleep. Neither
the noise from the platform nor the heavy smell of creosote drifting
in through the open window disturbed him. He had been in the saddle
twelve hours that day.

The freshening wind and the gathering clouds to the north bore
unmistakable promise of approaching storm. This would have caused
him no concern. He had foreseen it and molded his plans to its whim.
A conversation going on in a cabin across the tracks would have been
of infinitely more interest. He was the subject of that talk; one of
the two thus engaged being the man who had stolen out of the Palace
bar.

“I tell you it’s him,” he repeated doggedly from time to time.
“Ain’t no ghosts scarin’ me thataway. It’s Crosbie Traynor.”

“And him dead these twenty years?”

“I thought he was dead. Men left on the Painted Desert without water
and no food don’t come back. He’s done it, though! It’s him. Still
wearin’ one of my old hats—the one with that Moqui horsehair band.
You remember—had a gold snake luck piece snapped on to the band. I
tell you he looks like the livin’ spit of the way he did that night
down on the Little Colorado.”

His companion said nothing, but the sweat of fear had broken on his
forehead. Crosbie Traynor’s return to the land of living men was as
ominous as those black clouds gathering to the north. Death walked
in the air.

The little schemes, the plotting, the treachery of twenty years now
crumbled to ruins! Not for a second was it to be supposed that
Traynor had come to Standing Rock by accident. The man’s country lay
far to the south, hundreds of miles. Yes, it was his way to ferret
them out, to hang on, drifting from town to town until he tracked
them down.

“Damn you for a bungling fool!” cursed the brooding one. The man
from the hotel sank lower into his chair, spineless, impotent in the
face of that ghost-man’s visit. He raised his hands to shield his
eyes from his companion’s wrath as the other went on:

“A bungling, white-livered fool! That’s what you are! Now we’ll be
lucky if our necks don’t get stretched.”

“What you goin’ to do?”

“Do?” The man got to his feet and shook his fist in his visitor’s
face. “I’m going to do what you tried to do. I’m going to get
Traynor before he gets me. Is that plain enough for you?”

“You—you goin’ to kill him?”

“Oh, bah!” the other hurled back with fine contempt. “That scares
you, huh? Where’ll you be if he ever gets wind of you? That makes
you shiver, eh? Well, you get this idea under your hat and let it
stick there—you’re taking orders from me. ‘Cross’ Traynor is going
to be erased!”




                             CHAPTER II

                            THE RED HAND


Darkness came, bringing the day’s work to an end. The commotion on
the wool platform ceased. Down the tracks from the direction of the
shipping pens came the Diamond-Bar boys. They had just put ten hours
of hard work behind them, but one would not have guessed it from
their present vociferousness.

Johnny Allerdyce, or rather Johnny Dice—to give him what he called
his “_nom devoid_”—led the column headed for the Palace. He was
walking the ties, taking three of them at a step. Behind him some
fifteen of his pals were strung out at varying intervals.

Johnny’s legs were pronouncedly bowed from his life in a saddle, and
this long-stepping walk, or half run, only accentuated his
deformity. Big hat flapping in the wind, the tails of his
neckerchief flattening out behind him, made him seem grotesque. But
there was action in every line of him, untouched vitality. Freckled
face, untamed hair of flaming hue—they were fit companions for his
dancing, mischievous eyes.

“Hi, hi, you gamblin’ fool,” some one in back of him yelled. “I hope
you stub your toe and break yore damned haid. You let me know how
the town is when you git there!”

“You tell him, cowboy!” Johnny flung over his shoulder. “I crave
food and pleasure!”

Laughter of marked contempt greeted this retort. Somebody cried:
“Liar!” Johnny was strictly a night-blooming plant; this talk of
food was just talk.

At the hotel, Vin was going about lighting the lamps. No one ever
locked a door. In turn, he left a light in Crosbie Traynor’s room.
The sleeper had not moved. Vin surveyed him calmly, wondering if he
had ever seen the man before. Without his hat, Traynor seemed older.
Vincenzo shrugged his shoulders as he turned away. The man was a
total stranger to him. And still this mysterious _señor_ aroused the
Basque’s curiosity.

Vin had been on the desert too long not to have learned the wisdom
of keeping his own counsel; but he took much pleasure from building
romantic adventures around his guests. Some _señors_ there had been
who were in great haste. He had sped them on their way. But they
were not forgotten.

This man was in no seeming haste, but something about him sent
delicious little chills racing up and down Vin’s spine. He would
have spent more time on the matter had not Scanlon called to him at
the moment. Johnny and the other Diamond-Bar warriors had arrived.
In this democratic inn the proprietors—or to be exact, one of
them—served the meals. His name was not Scanlon, that individual
confining his efforts to the well-known cash register and the
dealing of much poker.

Jackson Kent, the big boss of the Diamond-Bar, came in before supper
was over. He was a hawk-faced old man, silent as a rule. Hobe
Ferris, his foreman, was with him. Pushing back the knife and fork
set before him, the old man began stacking five, ten, and twenty
dollar gold pieces into neat little piles. This was pay night.

Some of the boys had not drawn a cent in three months. Hobe called
off their names and the amounts due, and old man Kent counted it out
to them as they filed past. The owner of the Diamond-Bar caressed
his little stacks of gold pieces with his fingers as the piles grew
smaller and smaller. He caught Scanlon eyeing him.

“Might jest as well be payin’ him,” he muttered to Hobe, shaking his
head regretfully. “What a waste of good money this is,” he added.
“Won’t a one of ’em have a cent left time they git back to the
ranch.”

“You ain’t includin’ Johnny in that remark, be you?” Hobe demanded.
“Ain’t one of the boys but owes him plenty cash right now. He’ll git
more of their jack tonight.”

“Huh!” the old man grunted. “Huh!” His contempt for Johnny’s genius
was of long standing. “Somebody’ll git him jest like he gits these
fools. Gamblin’s made a smart aleck out of him. Always figurin’ how
things is goin’ to break; talkin’ his head off about the laws of
chance. Jest spoiled a good hand, that’s all gamblin’s done to
Johnny Dice. His mind ain’t on cattle no more. Damn it, Hobe, half
the time I believe he don’t know whether he’s runnin’ sheep or
steers.”

Hobe was a good foreman, so he wisely agreed with the old man. He
had been doing this for ten years; a time in which the Diamond-Bar
had prospered.

“Don’t let ’em git too drunk, Hobe,” Kent cautioned as he began his
supper. “We got work to do tomorrow mornin’. The Lawrence boys will
be here with their stuff by noon. We’ve got to git out of the way.”

Hobe nodded as he strolled to the bar. “We’ll be in the clear, I
reckon,” he drawled. “Hain’t had no trouble yit.”

Hobe Ferris had long since forgotten the knack of smiling, but he
almost remembered it as he thought of the old man’s concern for his
men.

“Old age certainly uses y’u up, don’t it?” he mused. “Yes, sir!
Think of him worryin’ thataway. If this keeps up, Miss Molly’ll be
bossin’ the brand ’fore long.”

Ferris looked about for Johnny, but he and his pal, Tony Madeiras,
had gone down the street. There were other places of chance in
Standing Rock, and wise Johnny was off to a picking.

Stuffy Tyler, who had raced through his supper and who had been busy
ever since refreshing himself at the bar, greeted his foreman with a
hearty smack on the back.

“Y’u again?” Hobe queried.

“Little me, Hobe.”

And then, without further ado, he roared that old range song, the
first two lines of which run:

    “Oh, no, Jenny!
    What would yore father say?”

Hobe knew what father said, and he was not minded to listen to his
complaint this night. A wooden awning stretched across the walk in
front of the hotel. There, the foreman found refuge from Stuffy’s
bawling.

The storm clouds which had been gathering to the north had circled
round to the west; but they were nearer now. Far away, a mile or
more, the steel rails of the Espee main line began to dance in the
glow of a powerful headlight. A second later the light itself
appeared. It was the freight that would roll away with those loaded
cars of wool and those others filled with Diamond-Bar’s steers.

For a brief moment the light seemed to pause there on the brink of
the wide valley. Another second and it was dashing down upon
Standing Rock.

Its coming was dramatic, and it held Hobe’s attention. Suddenly the
speeding circle of light was dimmed. It was rain. Not a drop had
fallen, as yet, where he sat. But there, a quarter of a mile away,
was the coming storm, racing the train into town.

The engineer blew for the station before the rain began to spatter
down in the dry dust of the street in front of the hotel. A few
seconds later the big mogul engine, panting and puffing, came to a
grinding stop fifteen feet from where Ferris sat.

Inside the hotel things were humming. Scanlon was playing cards; Yin
was hammering a staccato tune on the cash register. Two partners
could hardly have been more profitably engaged.

A man skulking in the shadows across the tracks wondered at the big
fellow sitting there on the porch, getting wet beyond a doubt,
refraining from joining the sport of his pals. He had recognized the
big man as Ferris. For the second time he wondered if the foreman by
any chance might be watching him.

The storm became heavier. The high wind in back of it began to send
the rain with such force that the wooden awning no longer offered
any protection. Reluctantly, Hobe arose and went inside.

The man, who had been waiting for him to go in, speedily crossed the
tracks and made for the wool platform in back of the hotel. For a
person of his age, he was spry. Picking up a wool hook, he
noiselessly climbed over the tops of the loaded freighters until he
was abreast one of the freight cars.

With remarkable quickness he crawled to the top of it. Flat on his
stomach he lay, peering into the darkness, trying to make certain
that his movements were unwatched. The rain beat into his face so
violently that he had to raise his hand to protect his eyes.

His roving glance found nothing to disturb him. In the inky
blackness the warehouse beside the platform bulked dark and
forbidding. From its protecting shadows to where he lay now his path
had not crossed any chance ray of light.

Turning on his side, he surveyed the hotel. Curtains flapped in the
second story windows; flickering yellow light streamed through them.
The wind eddied every now and then, bidding fair to extinguish the
lamps Vin had lighted; but, with the persistency of oil wicks, they
fluttered on.

A thankful curse escaped the man as he observed the open windows. He
wondered why Vin had not been up to close them. He knew the Basque’s
habits.

Far down the track at the shipping pens the train crew was switching
the loaded cars. Ten minutes and they would be back here, moving
this very car on which he lay. Ten minutes—it was enough. He had but
to walk these five loaded wool cars to sweep the interior of the
Palace Hotel. If the man he sought slept within—well, it wouldn’t
take ten minutes to finish this little errand.

From the edge of the big freight cars he could reach out and touch
the wall of the hotel. Grasping the steel hook with which he had
provided himself, he began to move toward the lighted windows.

Seconds slipped by as he came abreast the first window before he
satisfied himself that the room was unoccupied. On hands and knees,
drawing himself forward noiselessly, he crept on. An even longer
time did he pause before passing the second window. He began to
wonder if the man he sought had gone downstairs. He knew he had been
in his room twenty minutes ago. Rather, he had believed as much,
inasmuch as the man had not been in the bar.

Subconsciously he became aware of the approaching engine. It drove
him forward. With half the caution he had used in surveying the
other rooms, he stared into the third one. Something stuck in his
throat as he beheld Crosbie Traynor sound asleep on the narrow bed,
his head within a foot of the window.

Black hatred leaped in the man’s soul as he stared at the sleeping
Traynor. This was going to be almost too easy! There had been
moments in his approach to this spot in which his determination to
go through with his mission had wavered; his hands had shaken.

That was gone now. He not only wanted to kill, but he found himself
able to restrain his desire—to snuggle it to his heart, to wait for
the propitious second, to do the deed cleverly. It was a revelation
to the man. He had never suspected himself of such metal.

He had drawn his gun, but he put it back. Wisdom was guiding him.
The long steel wool hook became his weapon. Reaching into the room
with it, he picked Traynor’s belt and loaded holster from its perch
on the chair beside the bed. Next he secured the hat the sleeping
man had worn.

The feel of it infuriated him. Savagely he ripped away the band and
the gold charm snapped into it. He threw the hat back into the room.
It would have pleased him to have hurled the little gold snake into
the blackness, but that was the very sort of thing he had told
himself a minute ago he had mastered. So the little charm went into
his pocket.

With the steel hook, he replaced Traynor’s gun belt, minus the gun.
The engine, with its string of cattle cars, bumped into the line of
cars on which he lay as he drew back from depositing the holster.
For a second he wavered, fighting to regain his balance. He could
hear the air shooting through the brakes. This car would be moving
in another moment. A brakeman ran down alongside the train. Thanks
to the rain he had not come across the tops!

Some one shouted, a lantern waved, the train tensed as if to spring
forward. A grinding, tearing sound, the lurching of the big car, and
then the long-drawn, piercing whistle.

It was for this he had waited. Reaching in through the window, he
fired!

Gloating, wholly evil, the murderer’s face gleamed in the streaming
light. The train was moving—taking him away to safety. The sound of
the shot has been lost, dimmed by the noise of the storm and the
piercing blast of the whistle.

He had played it to the last line! Cross Traynor had been erased.
There’d be no coming back this time. He saw him half out of bed, his
head on the floor—a gory relic of what had been a man.

With an easy toss the killer dropped the dead man’s gun to the floor
beside the body. That was the last, final touch! It made the slayer
smile.

“That’s that, I guess. Dead—and by his own gun, too! Cross, you’ll
never come back now.”

The train was gathering speed. The man flattened himself out. At the
shipping pens the freight moved upon the main track. This slowing
down was the awaited moment. Unseen, the man who had killed so
easily slipped to the ground. The wool hook which had served him so
well was tossed into the sage. Then, with sure step, he moved away
in the night. This affair was a thing of the past. Who was there to
question him?




                            CHAPTER III

                          BY HIS OWN HAND


In the Palace bar all was merry. To the casual eye Scanlon might
have appeared an exception, a frosted flower in a garden of flaming
blooms; but even his moroseness was giving way to a sly smile. Four
mysterious aces had but recently appeared in Stub Rawlings’s hand.
The Scanlon bank roll had been severely injured. The source of that
handful of cards had sorely troubled the red-headed boss of the
Palace. He had become conscious of the storm raging without, but he
had not so much as cast a glance at the streaming windows. Mr.
Rawlings’s play was of greater interest.

Lady Luck began to smile on the house. Scanlon’s stack of blue chips
increased to dizzy heights. He now held Mr. Rawlings’s aces. He
played them much better than Stub had. In fact, so well did he
maneuver that when the Diamond-Bar man called, the game was over as
far as Stub was concerned.

In the interval Scanlon flashed questioning eyes at the windows.
Impatiently then he called to Vin: “The windows, Vin! Upstairs—shut
the windows! This damn place’ll be floatin’ away if you don’t.”

Vin had been much the busier of the two. But that was as usual. He
scowled now, though. Scanlon had been piling straws on the Basque’s
back for some years. This threatened to be the one too many.
Tomorrow he would brood over any damage done to the hotel; but now
he was angry only with Scanlon. “_Madre de Dios!_” he growled. “I do
all these worries for theese firm. I scrub those floors, I mak’
those bed, I wash those window—by Chris’, I not close them.”

“Aw, go on, Vinnie,” the boisterous Stuffy exclaimed, “and be damn
glad you ain’t livin’ in Awregon where they really got rain.”

“That’s him!” Scanlon snorted. “Always tellin’ what he does round
here. Jest workin’ yerself to death, ain’t yuh? Humph! If it wasn’t
fer my brains we wouldn’t have no hotel.” He turned back to his
game. “Let ’er rain,” he roared. “I can swim.”

This indifference to their mutual prosperity seared the Basque’s
soul, but he rolled up his apron and started for the stairs, the air
blue with his cursing. “By damn, I soon git my own hotel, you Irish
gringo!” he hurled at his partner.

The crowd tittered. Vin’s troubles were well understood. A moment
later the Basque was back at the head of the stairs, white of face,
hands shaking.

“_Socorro_—help! Man ees keel heemself! I guess you come like hell
now, Scanlon.”

A hush fell upon the crowded barroom. Little noises were stilled
until only the soft slip-slip of the cards running through Scanlon’s
fingers broke the silence. Sudden, or mysterious, death was quite as
chilling in Standing Rock as in more sophisticated circles.

The tension held for a brief spell. Hobe Ferris was the first to
move. A moment later the crowd was pouring up the stairs.

Traynor lay as the killer had left him—half out of bed, his gun near
his lifeless hand.

Scanlon bent over and examined the powder marks on the man’s
forehead. “Never seen him before,” said he as he straightened up.
“This is Stuffy’s room, Vin. How’d _he_ git up here?”

“Man came ’fore supper. Say he only want to sleep till the rain ees
past. I say take theese room. What diff’rence eet make? Stuffy not
go to baid tonight.”

“You said somethin’, Vinnie. I ain’t ever goin’ to sleep in _that_
bed.”

“Dry up,” Hobe ordered. “We’d better git Doc Ritter. The doc and the
old man are playin’ pinochle in his office. I saw ’em across the
street. Run over and git him, Stub.”

“Ain’t no need gittin’ a doctor,” Scanlon said positively. “This is
a job for the coroner. The man’s as dead as a man can git. Gallup is
the only one that can be of any use here.”

“Yeh, I guess yo’re right, Scanlon. Fine lookin’ man, that. Wonder
where he came from? Ain’t none of y’u boys ever seen him?”

The crowd edged closer to the dead man; but no one seemed to
remember him.

“I’ll go for Gallup,” Stub offered. “He’ll sure be riled, gittin’
out of bed this time of the night. He goes to the hay with the
chickens.”

Stub’s going seemed to unloosen the crowd’s tongue. A dozen
conjectures were voiced, and either denied or affirmed. Hobe brought
them up, standing, by his discovery that no one had heard the shot
which had killed the man.

Scanlon turned on his partner, his mouth sagging a trifle. This
thing had a queer draw to it. “Vin,” he argued, “you ain’t been out
of the house. Didn’t you hear nothin’?”

“I don’ hear anyt’ing. But theese _señor_ have foony look in hees
eye. Mak’ me feel leetla chill in the back. I ask hees name;
_Caramba!_ He say he ees pretty well forget how to mak’ those
writings in book.”

“Sort of a mysterious gent, eh?” Scanlon asked, unpleasantly.

“His name’s his own business,” Hobe flared back. “He might have been
considerate enough to bump hisself off somewheres else; but I pretty
well wouldn’t like to have anybody tellin’ me my name wa’n’t my own
business.”

The Diamond-Bar foreman rightly suspected that Scanlon’s annoyance
was largely due to the fact that this affair would throw a wet
blanket on the spending of money. He had been waiting some three
months for this harvest.

Gallup, the coroner, and Stub returned at this moment, and Scanlon
was saved replying to the challenge in Hobe’s words.

“What’s all the trouble?” Gallup demanded when he had entered the
room.

“It’s a job for you, Aaron,” Ferris replied. “Vin just found him a
few minutes ago.”

Gallup surveyed the dead man.

“Humph! Did a good job, didn’t he? Guess he wouldn’t ’a’ been no
deader in the mornin’. Gittin’ so I can’t git a good night’s sleep
no more.”

“Yo’re still drawin’ down yore wages reg’lar, ain’t yuh?”

Old Aaron wiped his nose with the back of his hand at this query
from Ferris.

“Sorta reg’lar, Hobe,” Gallup answered with a wise little smile.
“All due to me, though. Any man that can git fifteen hundred a year
out of this county has earned it. If you folks ever start raisin’ my
wages I’m goin’ to quit cold.”

While he talked, Gallup had been examining the dead man’s clothes
and his gun.

“This bird sure knew what he was doin’,” he muttered. “Ain’t a mark
on him to identify him. Queer old gun he used. Well, we got men
enough here. I guess I’ll swear you in and git done right now.”

“We’re shy one, Aaron,” said Hobe. “Where’s Johnny? Ought to have
him, he’s so _up_ on these things.”

“Him and Tony’s over to the Bud. They’ll be comin’ soon as the news
gits round.”

“I got enough,” Aaron answered. “Johnny Dice ain’t law-abidin’ no
more, anyhow.”

Without further delay he began swearing them to the truth. Before he
had finished the jingle of spur chains below caught Scanlon’s ear.
“There’s someone now.” He went to the stairs and looked down. “Say,
Johnny, you’re just in time. Need another man up here.”

“Surest thing, old dear. What’s the limit?”

“No limit. It’s a dead man. Gallup’s here.”

“Do I know him?” demanded Johnny.

“No one’s ever clapped eyes on him ’cept Vin. But he don’t know
nothin’, either.”

Johnny had stopped to shake the rain from his hat. He turned now to
Madeiras. “Come on, Tony. What you grumblin’ about?”

Tony smiled. “I t’ought Scanlon say Gallup ees daid.”

“You sound disappointed. What you cookin’ up for old Aaron?”

“You forget my name, Johnny. I am a Madeiras. There ees lots of
Madeiras.”

“Still thinkin’ ’bout that, eh? You best tell your people not to
borrow no money from Aaron. He’s a money hound, boy. I tell yuh he
knows those gents on the greenbacks personal.”

Tony tapped his chest. “Somet’ings we don’t forget, Johnny.”

They were upstairs by this time. Aaron scowled at the Basque, but he
chose him in preference to Johnny.

“One of you is all I need,” the old man muttered. Johnny was
defeated, but not stilled.

“They certainly keep you busy, don’t they, Aaron?” he asked
provokingly.

“That’ll be enough talk from you, Johnny,” Gallup snapped. “If you
want to stay in the room you keep still.”

“Serves me right. The idea of a loose character like me tryin’ to
edge in on the law! Ain’t no hard feelin’s on my part, Aaron.”

The old man ignored this sally.

“Now, Vinnie, you tell us how you found this man,” he began in a
more or less official manner.

Vin explained how he had come up to close the windows, and so forth.

“You hain’t touched nothin’?”

“No, I call downstairs right away I see he ees daid.”

“Humph! Nobody here knows this man, either, eh?” He cleared his
throat importantly. “Well, gentlemen, there don’t seem to be no use
wastin’ any more time. This man came here intendin’ to kill himself.
It ain’t accidental-like for a man to go round without some mark of
identification on him. He cut off every sign by which he might be
traced. He’s got his watch and his money; so it wa’n’t robbery. And
you all see where the powder burned his forehead. The gun’s there on
the floor, just where he dropped it, too. Guess that makes the
answer plain. Best you bring in the usual verdict; death by his own
hand, this day and date. That agreed?”

A muttered chorus of assenting grunts greeted him as he began making
out the death certificate.

“Say, Aaron,” Johnny interrupted. “There’s somethin’ under the bed.
The man’s hat, I reckon.”

Aaron glanced at him over the rims of his glasses.

“Why don’t you wait a little longer? You ain’t tongue-tied, be yuh?”

“You told me to shut up.”

“Little good comes from tellin’ you.”

The old man grunted as he crawled beneath the bed to recover the
hat.

“It’s a hat, all right,” he grumbled. “His hat, no doubt. Ain’t a
mark on it, though.” He held it up for his jury to gaze at it. “Jest
about proves what I contend. The man wanted to die unidentified.”

Tony Madeiras’s eyes bulged as he saw the hat Gallup held aloft.
Pushing his way forward he took the hat in his hand. Gallup watched
him closely.

“Son of a gun!” Madeiras exclaimed slowly and turned to face his
friends. “I change my min’ about those daid man. I know thees hat!”

“What?” exclaimed Johnny.

“_Sí._ I know thees hat. Only t’ree, four days ago I see eet.”

“Yeh!” There was open doubt of the Basque puncher’s word in the
coroner’s voice. “You remember a hat without a band or mark on it
that you saw three or four days ago? It ain’t even a grown-up hat.
It’s just a little runt of a thing. But you remember it, Madeiras?”

Tony’s eyes narrowed as he answered the old man. “I said I remember
theese hat.”

“Well, you’ve got some memory, bosco.”

Big Hobe put his hand upon Gallup’s shoulder as the coroner gave
tongue to the western term of contempt for the Basque.

“Listen here, Aaron. You won’t make no friends for yoreself with
that kind of talk. This Diamond-Bar bunch don’t exactly like to hear
Tony called a bosco. It ain’t good for the health to say it more
than once. You git that? Now if Tony allows he remembers that hat it
ain’t up to you to call him a liar.”

“That’s all right, Hobe,” Tony smiled. “Maybe some time he find out
my people have pretty damn good memory. What he thinks, I don’t
care. But for you, Hobe: last Monday I was on the North Fork.
Evening time I come down to the river. Theese man be there. He have
plenty hair on hees face then. Big whiskers. He spik Spanish. Ask
lots of question. Me, I ask some, too. He come long ways theese
man.”

“You find out his name?”

“Tony Madeiras don’ ask man hees name.”

“Good for you, Tony,” Johnny called. “It ain’t bein’ done.”

Gallup turned on Johnny with face flaming.

“If I hear any more talk from you, out you go. This is your crowd,
but the law is the law, and I ain’t goin’ to stand no impudence from
you.”

Doc Ritter and Jackson Kent came in as Gallup admonished Johnny. The
coroner nodded to Kent.

“Maybe you can put some sense into him,” he said, pointing to Johnny
Dice.

“What’s the matter, Johnny?” asked Kent. “We just heard a man had
killed himself up here.”

“Nothin’ the matter with me. Gallup’s runnin’ things here. And he
ain’t makin’ no hit with it, either. Hobe had to call him a minute
ago.”

“Mr. Gallup’s a good man, boys. Don’t rear and tear too much. Jest
what is wrong, Aaron?”

When Gallup had finished explaining; the Diamond-Bar owner did his
best to restore harmony.

“Now you go on, Tony, and tell the coroner what you know,” he said,
pleadingly. “We don’t want no run-in with the law.”

“That’s sense,” Gallup seconded. “If you saw this man, and talked
with him, tell us what he said.”

“Well, he say—er—he say——” Johnny Dice was coughing so violently
that Tony could not go on. The Basque turned on his pal
questioningly. Johnny was bent nearly double; but Tony caught the
wink and the slight shake of the head which were meant for him. He
started to speak again:

“Well, he say how ees the cattle? How ees the water? How ees the
sheep? How ees——”

“I don’t care about that,” Gallup growled. “Did he say anythin’ that
has any bearin’ on this case? We ain’t interested in anythin’ else.”

“No—I guess not. All he say ees how ees these, how ees that?”

“Then all this talk’s been for nothin’. What do you say, men? Are
you satisfied it’s suicide or not? Raise your hands if you are.”

Tony saw that Johnny was telling him to say yes. When the Basque’s
hand went up, Gallup turned to Doc Ritter.

“Here’s your papers, doc. Take the body any time you want to.”

Aaron scrawled his signature and handed the certificate to the
town’s doctor and undertaker.

Gallup read aloud:

    “Party unknown. Died this 4th of October by his own
    hand; no reason given. The foregoing being the sworn
    verdict of the jury convened by me on this day and date.

            “(Signed) Aaron Gallup,
            “Coroner of Shoshone County, State of Nevada.”

Aaron paused to glance at his listeners. “There it is, gentlemen; in
_my_ own hand.” He smiled superiorly. “Somebody count the man’s
money and we’ll adjourn.”

He glanced at Kent, but the old man was staring at the body.

“You oblige me, Jackson?” Gallup asked.

“No,” he muttered; “let Doc do it. I don’t fancy counting a dead
man’s money.”

Old Aaron smiled. “All right,” he drawled patiently. “Guess Doc
ain’t so finicky. He knows that dead men don’t hurt no one.”




                             CHAPTER IV

                             FOOT-LOOSE


The crowd began trooping downstairs as Doc put the body back on the
bed and covered it. Johnny Dice shook his head as he turned to
follow his friends. There was something wrong about this affair. He
felt it long before he was able to put his fingers on anything
definitely suspicious. His tilt with Gallup was of no consequence.
The old man disliked him because he refused to take the coroner
seriously. And then, too, Johnny and Tony had been stringing along
for some years. Aaron had foreclosed a small mortgage on one of
Tony’s relatives. That made bad blood between them.

Johnny’s suspicions crystallized as Doc lifted the body. He saw a
bit of evidence that no man on earth could contradict. His nerves
began to tingle. This man had not killed himself!

Gallup caught the grim smile on Johnny’s face.

“What you waitin’ for?” he asked.

Johnny continued to smile provokingly. “Ain’t no one sittin’ up for
you at home, is there, Aaron?”

The old man’s face went scarlet at this continued heckling.

“By God,” he cried, “I wisht I was twenty years younger! You’d stop
your insolence.”

“That’s so, Aaron. I forgot that. I’m sorry.”

Johnny meant it, too. The old man was an almost helpless target.
Johnny stooped to hide his chagrin and picked a little curl of wool
from the floor.

The action had been unpremeditated, but as his fingers closed upon
the tuft of wool it became charged with importance. Too late. Johnny
tried to palm it. Aaron saw him.

“What’s that you’re pickin’ up?” he demanded.

“A piece of the golden fleece—I mean the creosoted fleece,” Johnny
said with a laugh. “Want it?”

“’Course not, you idiot.”

“You’d better go downstairs, Johnny,” Kent advised. “You and Gallup
remind me of a pair of clawin’ cats. If you ain’t got no respect for
old age, you ought to have for the law, and them that represents
it.”

Something in Kent’s tone made Johnny resent this advice.

“Respect for the law?” he asked. “I’m plumb hostile to law when it
gits as stupid as this. I pick up that bit of wool, and what does it
mean to him? Nothin’! Well, it ought to.”

“How so?” Gallup snapped.

“There ain’t been no sheepman in here tonight. It’s wet outside. The
wind ain’t blowin’ wet wool into this room. How’d that piece of
fleece git here? And while I’m about it, no one has proved to me
that this gent killed hisself. I could have slipped up here and
bumped him off while he slept, held the gun close enough to singe
hair, too. Droppin’ it on the floor as I went out wouldn’t take no
brains at all.”

“What you think don’t interest me,” old Aaron said hotly. “Vin was
downstairs. He’d have known if any one came up here.”

“You run along, Johnny,” Kent again urged.

“Somehow I just don’t like bein’ told to mind my own business
thataway,” Johnny flared, losing his own temper. “I want to tell Doc
and the rest of you that that man couldn’t have killed
hisself—leastwise, not like this.”

“Couldn’t?” Doc Ritter echoed.

“That’s what I said—couldn’t! That bird was a left-handed gent.
Left-handed men ain’t shootin’ themselves in the right temple! ‘By
his own hand’!” Johnny repeated Gallup’s words with fine contempt.
“Oh, hell! Are you fools or what? This man was murdered—shot down in
cold blood!”

“Ain’t nobody but a smart aleck like you tellin’ that a dead man was
left-handed,” the coroner roared.

“Oh, you didn’t know he was left-handed, then?” Johnny sneered. “You
wouldn’t! You never know! Coroners just don’t. They’re the lowest
form of political infamy. All I got to know about a man is that he’s
hired out to do a job of coronering to know that there ain’t no help
for him.”

Gallup’s teeth fairly chattered with rage. Face working
convulsively, he turned to the body as Johnny pointed to it.

“Look at the man’s pants, you old mossback!” Johnny exclaimed,
excitedly. “Ain’t they all wore shiny on the left side just below
the pocket? Nothing but the rubbin’ of his holster against that leg
did that. And that worn-out place beside the pocket—the butt of his
gun made that! Roll him over, Ritter, and let this poor old imbecile
have a good look.”

Doc rolled the body so that they could see if this was so. Gallup’s
face was red with rage. Was this upstart cow-puncher going to
cheapen him and make his work ridiculous? Election wasn’t so far
away, said Ritter’s eyes. Gallup caught the thought.

Old Kent was wringing his hands. Hobe and Tony said nothing, but
their set faces were proof enough that Johnny Dice had dropped a
bombshell.

No one seemed willing to break the silence which had crept over
them. It grew so still that Gallup’s little throat noises sounded
loud and ominous. He was weighing matters quite beyond the present
trouble with Johnny.

“Well, Johnny,” he said at last in a tone very different from the
one he had previously used, “there may be sense in your contention.
No one can say what was so with a dead man and be sure of it. I
never seen him wearin’ a gun; you never seen him, either. Tell me
why anybody’d want to kill him. Sure wasn’t robbery.”

“Might have been robbery,” Johnny replied. “Forty-six dollars ain’t
no money for a man to have on him in this country. It would have
been a fine stall to have taken his roll and left that measly
forty-six. And then, too, maybe somebody figured he had somethin’ on
them. Might be a dozen reasons.”

“You don’t suspect any one, do you, Johnny?” Doc asked.

“You don’t have to suspect somebody to prove that murder’s been
done.”

“Yes, Johnny,” Gallup cut in, “but you ain’t proved that murder’s
been committed. You talk a lot, but it’s all guesswork.”

“Wouldn’t be guesswork very long with me.”

“You git that idea out of yore head,” Kent warned. “If yo’re workin’
for me you won’t have no time to go runnin’ around doin’ business
the county pays some one else to do.”

Hobe saw the insurgent answer leaping to Johnny’s lips and he tried
to stop it but he was too late.

“If you mean I’ve got the choice of bein’ fired or lettin’ somebody
else do my thinkin’ for me—well, then, I’m fired.”

“Yore words don’t surprise me,” Kent cried. “I told Hobe this
evenin’ that you’d bear watchin’.”

“That’s the blow-off,” Johnny said, angrily. “Ridin’ for you ain’t
the thing I’m fondest of.”

“Yo’re talkin’ big now; you got a few dollars in yore pocket. You’ll
go busted quick enough. Takes money to mind other folks’ business.”

“You’re as bad as he is, Jackson,” Ritter interrupted. “I ain’t so
sure the boy isn’t right. If you need any money, Johnny, you let me
know.”

This offer of assistance made Gallup chortle.

“I won’t want any money, Doc,” drawled Johnny. “A good horse and a
pair of well-oiled guns are all I’ll need. I’m goin’ to find out who
killed this man. How about it, Tony?”

“Eef you say so, Johnny, she’s so wit’ me.”

“Go to it, you young fool!” Aaron managed to articulate. “Kelsey’s
in Reno. He’ll be back next week. Go see him! Maybe he’ll make you
special investigator for this county.”

“I don’t have to see no prosecutin’ attorney!” Johnny’s words
clicked off his tongue. “What I do, I’ll do on my own. If this man
was murdered—by God, I’m goin’ to find out who killed him! It’ll be
time enough to talk of seein’ Kelsey then!”




                             CHAPTER V

                           THE FIRST CLEW


Scanlon’s fear that the night was ruined as far as he was concerned
proved well founded. Gallup paused to buy himself a drink. Kent and
his foreman came down as the coroner went out. Hobe’s face was glum.
The old man’s run-in with Johnny and his pal was only another
evidence of his coming decay. For all of his fault, Johnny was a
good man, and a better _vaquero_ than Madeiras was not to be found
this side of the Humboldt. Kent might figure that, come spring, they
would be back asking to be taken on again. Hobe knew better than
this. Johnny’s pride more than matched his temper.

Times there had been in the past when old Jackson Kent had not
balked at winking an eye at the law. This present deference to it
nettled Hobe. The Diamond-Bar was big and powerful enough to lay
down its own law. No one more than Ferris had built up its
traditions. A few men there are like him who can become so much a
part of their work that a subconscious sense of ownership of the
tools with which they toil takes possession of them. It was that way
with Hobe. He was the Diamond-Bar.

Kent’s daughter, Molly, had healed some previous sore spots between
the foreman and the old man, but this arbitrary handling of the
Diamond-Bar men was poaching on authority long since held by the
foreman. Kent would have been hard put to have found a way to hurt
the man more.

“You better git the boys to bed,” the old man said.

Hobe’s face was sullen.

“Yes, sir.” It was the first time in years that Hobe had “sirred”
the boss. Kent looked at him sharply, feeling the implied
unfriendliness. He had the good sense, though, to say nothing.

Five minutes later the barroom was clear of Diamond-Bar men. Stuffy
Tyler had fallen asleep, but big Hobe easily picked him up, and
throwing him over his shoulder as if the man were a sack of meal,
carried him to his bed.

Doc Ritter brought in a stretcher, and with the aid of Johnny and
Tony, the dead man was carried to Ritter’s undertaking parlor.

Scanlon and Vin faced each other.

“Beats hell, don’t it,” the former asked sullenly, “how one man can
put a town to bed? You’d almost think we knew the man—comin’ in here
and dyin’ thata-way. You know what we stand to lose, don’t you?”

“We don’ lose not’in’, Scanlon. Money? We get heem by an’ by. Next
election, though, we lose somet’ing.”

“Gallup, eh? Maybe so. The man ain’t got no ideas. You ’tend to the
lights and close up, Vin. I’m dead tired. I’m goin’ to bed.”

“Let ’em burn,” the Basque snapped. “I can swim!”

Scanlon smiled as he recognized his own words of the early evening.
But Vinnie put out the lights.

For half an hour after the hotel was in darkness, Johnny and Tony
sat in front of the Palace. The rain was over.

“You go to baid, Johnny?” Tony asked.

“No. I couldn’t sleep. Tell me again just what that man said to you
that night on the North Fork.”

The big Basque smiled. He had already told his story twice.

“I jus’ remember I look at hees hat, and he smile. That’s fonny hat,
you know—so small brim, great beeg crown. No mens wear hats like
those now. He geeve it to me for tak’ good look. The ban’ on eet is
ver-ry fine. ‘Yes,’ he say, ‘that’s Indian ban’. Moqui Indian mak’
those ban’. Mak’ eet out of horsehair.’

“But more fonny that those hat is little green snake he have fasten
on that ban’. That snake have green eyes. Eet’s a gold snake, too.
‘Press the haid of that snake,’ he say. _Por Dios_, that snake fall
into my han’. ‘That’s beeg medicine,’ he say, ‘those snake. Been on
that hat forty year!’

“‘Why you wear those old hat?’ I ask. He tell me; but he don’ smile.
‘Plenty hats like theese, long time ago in Santa Fe and Tombstone,’
he say. ‘Some day I fin’ the man what owns theese hat. He’ll
remember eet!’”

“Yuh can’t git away from it, Tony,” Johnny exclaimed. “He was
lookin’ for somebody, and that somebody got him. Horsehair hat-bands
ain’t uncommon. He wouldn’t have ripped it off his hat to keep folks
from rememberin’ it. That Indian snake was what he’d have hid and
he’d have unsnapped it and put it in his pants. But it’s against all
sense to believe that he took off even the snake. He wanted to be
recognized.”

Johnny slapped his knee emphatically. “I tell you,” he declared,
“the man what killed him tore off that band!”

Tony shrugged his shoulders. “_Quien sabe!_” he muttered.

Johnny was still for a minute. Then suddenly: “Say! That man had a
horse when he came here. He didn’t walk into town.”

“_Diga_, Johnny! He have beeg horse—Spanish horse.”

“Come on! I’m goin’ to find him. The man must have had a bed-roll or
a saddle-bag. We’ll have a look-see.”

The places in Standing Rock where a man might stable a horse were
not so numerous that it took Johnny and Tony any great time to find
the big stallion. He was in Ed Brackett’s barn.

It was Johnny’s intention to become possessed of the man’s personal
effects if any there should be. For this very excellent reason he
entered the barn without disturbing Brackett.

Tony immediately recognized the big horse. The stallion eyed them
nervously. A flow of liquid Spanish from the Basque reassured the
horse. Johnny searched the pegs along the wall for the missing roll.
A low word to Tony told the Basque that he had found what they came
for.

“Come on,” came the whisper. “We’ll drift back to the hotel and look
this stuff over.”

In their little room in the Palace they sorted out the man’s
belongings—shirts, socks, handkerchiefs, and a little bag containing
a sewing kit and odds and ends a lone man might be expected to
carry.

“Not much here,” Johnny said slowly. “Seems like a man would carry
somethin’ personal. Anyways, it proves he didn’t hide that hat-band
or Indian luck piece. It’d be here if he had.”

Tony grunted in answer. Johnny picked up a shirt to stuff it back
into the leather bag. As he did so a black wallet slipped out and
fell upon the bed.

“There’s somet’in’,” the Basque exclaimed.

“Four hundred dollars! He wasn’t robbed, Tony! And here’s a
picture—a kid’s picture!”

Tony crowded close to look at it.

“That’s too bad,” muttered Johnny. “Thought maybe I might recognize
it. That was hopin’ for too much. But it’ll help some day. That’s a
clew! I’ll just freeze on to it.”

Putting the small photograph into his pocket, he proceeded to
replace the other things in the old saddlebag. Tony watched him for
several minutes. The Basque’s face showed dismay. At times he could
not understand his gringo friend. He felt ignored now. Johnny caught
the signs of distress.

“But, Tony, you didn’t know the kid. You was back in that dear Spain
when that little photo was snapped. _Muchachito_, you go to bed.
Tomorrow we got plenty work to do. I got a clew now.”

“Clew? Damn my soul, Johnny, you talk like deeteckteeve.”

“_Companero_, you string along with me. We’re goin’ to see the
sights before this thing’s over.”

Tony went to sleep; not so Johnny. He brought forth the photograph
which he had found, and sat for half an hour studying it; trying to
whip his mind into finding some likeness in it to some one he knew.

“That’s all I got,” he murmured. “It’s got to tell me somethin’.”

He placed the picture on the bed before him, and bent over it, his
eyes screwed into a squint. Minutes slipped by unnoticed. Something
vaguely reminiscent about the photograph began to torture him. Try
as he would, he could not say what it was that was playing a sort of
mental hide and go seek with him. At times he wondered if he were
not the prey of his own desires. And yet, a little voice persisted
within him. There was something here that stirred memories!

When it came to him, it came suddenly. His face went white.

“My God!” he whispered, clutching the picture. “The thing around
that kid’s neck is the locket Molly Kent wears!”

From staring at the picture he turned to the sleeping Tony. He even
started to arouse him, but thought better of it.

“No,” he said to himself. “I’ll keep this secret. This _is_ a clew!”

He tried to argue that the child in the picture bore some
resemblance to Kent’s daughter; but he could not convince himself.

“This picture might be a boy’s, for all that,” he muttered. “Looks
somethin’ like the dead man, too.”

He gave up puzzling his brain over it, and kicking off his boots,
made ready for bed. The locket in the picture and the one Molly wore
were the same. That was enough. How she came by it, he’d try to
learn tomorrow. Maybe old Jackson had bought it for her.

Jackson Kent! That started a new line of thought. Johnny became wide
awake. Kent had fired him; the old man had seemed deaf to certain
facts; and now this locket of Molly’s! A broad-side struck Johnny
Dice.

“My God!” he exclaimed loud enough to wake up his pal. “Is that why
he shut me up? Did Jackson Kent kill that man?”




                             CHAPTER VI

                          OUTSIDE THE LAW


Johnny Dice lay abed the following morning until half past seven
o’clock, shamelessly reveling in his freedom from toil. At five Hobe
and the others, Tony included, had trooped down to breakfast.
Fifteen minutes later the Diamond-Bar boys had headed for the
shipping pens to resume where they had left off the previous
evening. Tony, helpless with nothing to do, waited with growing
impatience for the appearance of the prodigal.

Specters of doubt, tantalizing ghosts of indecision troubled the
sleeping Mr. Dice. His pugnacious face wore a frown. Every now and
then his mouth would straighten and his jaw would shoot out to an
alarming prominence. Maybe a dramatic gesture with his hand would
follow. Johnny seemed continually to lose the decision in this
silent fighting, for he would try it first on one side and then on
the other.

Big Hobe had always found a bucketful of cold water a most excellent
antidote for these symptoms; but Johnny was suffering from more than
just too much sleep. He had closed his eyes convinced that he could
put his hand on the guilty man. His deductions had been honest,
sensible. Old man Kent was as guilty! Subconsciously, doubt had
crept into his mind.

Jackson Kent had become such a meek, painfully righteous person
these last few years that he seemed to lack the spinal stiffening a
killer must possess. If he had been accused of taking nickels out of
the collection box, one might have believed it of him; but murder?
No! You’d have to have the reason for the crime, the whole, inside
story of it before you could go out and expect men to believe you.
Jackson Kent was a rich man, a figure of some importance in Shoshone
County politics.

“Yes, we grant all that,” whispered perverse little fiends in
Johnny’s ear, “but isn’t it men like Kent who, free from popular
suspicion, commit crimes of this sort? Wasn’t his position in the
county, his very respectability his best safeguard?”

Wild-eyed, Johnny sat up suddenly, his red head shaking doggedly. He
looked about the room as if searching for the little devils that had
romped through his sleep.

A grunt and an indulgent smile followed as he threw back the covers.
“I’m sufferin’ from that psychic stuff,” he muttered. “Or is it food
I need?”

His watch in his hands, he went to the door and called down to Vin:
“Hey, Vin! Give me food or give me death! I’ll be there _muy pronto,
muchachito_.”

Vinnie had a steaming breakfast on the table when Johnny entered the
dining room. “By Chris’, Johnny, you sleep lak’ meel-li-on-aire. How
you theenk I run theese bus’ness, breakfuss h’eight o’clock?”

“Aw, go on, you old dude!” Johnny laughed. “I’ll be borrowin’ money
from you before I git through.”

It was only talk on Johnny’s part, but the Basque chose to take it
seriously.

“That’s all right wit’ me, Johnny.” Vin shook his head solemnly. “I
don’ refuse you, Johnny.”

“Oh, how sweet those words, ‘I will lend you,’” Johnny said airily.
“But not yet you won’t, _señor_. Little Johnny has plenty _dinero_.
Is the old man gone?”

“_Sí!_ Hobe and heem go half past five. Leetle while ago the old man
come back alone an’ tak’ the train for Winnemucca.”

“Winnemucca?” Johnny Dice’s eyebrows lifted. Was Kent running away?

Hobe entered then to square the Diamond-Bar debt with the hotel. The
barroom was deserted, and the foreman, peeking into the dining room,
saw Johnny and Vin. He came in and settled himself in a chair
opposite the former.

“Go and figure up yore bill, Vinnie,” he said to the Basque. When
Vin had left, Hobe turned his inquisitive eyes to Johnny. “Last
night was a terrible bust round here, wa’n’t it?”

“It’s all jake with me, Hobe. Don’t you fret.”

Ferris got up and walked back and forth a step or two, glum, his
chin on his chest. “I reckon it ain’t all right with me, though. I
ain’t exactly what you’d call a straw boss with this outfit—not
after all these years. If it wa’n’t for the girl I’d ask for my
time.”

Hobe propped back into his chair.

“Reckon I couldn’t face her, though. She knows he’s slippin’.”

Johnny’s knife and fork came down slowly, a peculiar dryness
creeping into his throat as he thought of Molly Kent. He had
forgotten her! Yet others, Hobe for instance, found time to think of
her and consider her happiness.

And Johnny had been waiting only for Ferris to finish, to voice his
suspicion of the old man.

The thought sent a shiver through him. Whatever old Kent had done,
he was still Molly’s father. Johnny shook his head as he asked
himself if he could send her daddy down to Carson to be hanged. He’d
damn himself for a meddling fool before he’d be a party to that.
Molly Kent meant too much to the old Diamond-Bar hands. No wonder
Hobe thought of her. Hadn’t he taught her all the things a girl
living on the range must know—riding, shooting, man-sense, and all
the rest of it?

Why, hadn’t he—Johnny Dice—broken her first pony? Hadn’t he even
tried to persuade Hobe into letting him show her how to ride that
little coffee cooler? And there had been parties, too, at the big
house; a girl’s pride in the day’s work well done; implicit faith in
the Diamond-Bar’s ability to come through in a pinch.

Cold sweat stood on Johnny’s brow as he asked himself if he could
fail a girl like her. His voice was husky as he spoke to Ferris.

“Where’s the old man?”

Hobe answered without looking up. “Gone to Winnemucca. Coming back
to the ranch from there.”

Nothing more was said for a minute or two. Vin called to Hobe, then,
and Ferris pushed back his chair.

“Might as well pay up and go back to the cars,” he said dolefully.
“We’ll be through, come noon.”

Johnny got to his feet with the foreman.

“Listen, Hobe,” he said, “did I make a fool of myself last night,
lightin’ into the old man thataway?”

Hobe rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “N-o-o-o,” he drawled. “One was
bad as the other. He surprised me. He’d been havin’ such a good time
with Doc all evenin’.”

“Huh? Doin’ what?”

Johnny’s face was white with an emotion that Ferris was at a loss to
understand.

“Playin’ pinochle. I went outside to sit down after supper. The old
man came out with me, and went across to Doc’s place. I sat out in
front till the freight pulled up. Rain drove me in. Doc and him was
still at it. I could see ’em through the window. I could tell he was
winnin’.”

Johnny heaved a sigh of relief. That his solution of last night’s
murder was knocked flat caused no rancor in his heart. Thank God, he
had not given voice to his thoughts. Gallup would have laughed him
out of town.

Ferris, far shrewder than he looked, had caught the signs of the
anxiety which possessed Johnny. “Say, Johnny,” he inquired, “just
what is it that y’u ain’t sayin’?”

Johnny winced at this directness, but he answered with a question
seemingly irrelevant to it.

“Did you touch that dead man last night, Hobe?”

Ferris cocked his head. “Of course,” he said.

“Wasn’t the body warm?”

“Sure was. The man hadn’t been dead over thirty minutes.”

“That’s the way I figured it.”

If the man had been dead only half an hour and Hobe had been
watching the old man during that very time, then to a certainty
Jackson Kent had had no hand in the killing.

Still there was something unsaid between them. Ferris felt it. He
put his hand on Johnny’s shoulder as they started for the door.
Johnny stopped in his tracks. A flash of his eyes and the big man
had his answer.

“Johnny!” he gasped. “No! My God, no! The old man didn’t do that!”

“Did I say so?” Johnny demanded vehemently.

“No. But y’u were thinkin’ it. Up in the room last night it was my
idea, too. I wondered if y’d suspect him.”

Johnny could afford to be belligerent now.

“You bet I did. I suspect every man in this town until I prove to
myself that he’s innocent. That it wasn’t him, is all right with me.
I couldn’t have gone after Molly Kent’s dad. There ain’t no one else
in this town with any strings on him as far as I’m concerned. I’ll
git the man.”

Hobe knew this was not mere talk.

“What are y’u goin’ to do now?”

“Git busy! Like as not I’ll drift out to the ranch some time today
and git my stuff. My address is where I hang my hat until I’ve put
this puzzle together.”

Calling the waiting Tony, the two men went down the street.

“You forget anythin’ I said last night, Tony,” Johnny advised the
Basque. “It’s out—complete. Git that!”

The direction in which they were going made Tony ask their
destination.

“I’m goin’ to have a talk with Brackett. Let me do the palaverin’.”

The liveryman had not yet seen the corpse, so Johnny’s statement
that the big stallion belonged to the dead man was a surprise to
Brackett.

“Do you mind, Ed, if I have a look at the horse?” Johnny asked.

“No harm in that,” Brackett answered. “Nobody know his name, you
say?”

“Total stranger, Ed. There might be some mark or somethin’ on his
stuff.”

This brief minute of importance appealed to Ed, and the three men
began searching for some mark of identification. The missing
saddlebag escaped Brackett’s attention.

The search was a barren one, bed-roll, saddle and slicker being
without any tell-tale mark. The stallion’s brand, a circle-dagger,
had been over-burned years ago.

“Didn’t he have nothin’ up to the hotel with him?” Ed asked. “Man
would have an extra shirt and socks.”

“Wasn’t a thing up there, Ed,” Johnny said truthfully. “Guess we can
give up lookin’ here.”

When they had left the stable Johnny asked the Basque:

“Did you git what I found?”

“No. Me, I get not’ing.”

Johnny smiled.

“The silver buttons on the bridle,” he explained. “Both of them
marked alike—C. T. I never heard of no brand like that. It’s his
initials. That’s somethin’ else to keep under your hat. That’s a
real clew.”

“How you know, pleece, those t’ing ees clew?”

“Know? You don’t have to know. A clew is just a clew. All we’ve got
to do is to keep on gittin’ them. We’re goin’ to saddle up and fan
it out to the ranch and git our stuff. I’m through lookin’ for
evidence round here. If you saw that man on the North Fork three
days ago, I just about know the way he took into town. He must have
got on the North Fork from the west. If he did, he came through
Winnemucca. Ain’t no other way he could have got out of the hills.
I’m goin’ down to old Winnemuc and prospect around.”

“_Cuidado!_” Tony whispered. “Here comes Gallup.”

They were almost in front of Aaron’s house before they came abreast
of him. The coroner’s eyes were snapping. Even his mustache seemed
to stand at attention, bristling as it were with anger.

“Well, I suppose you little boys have been havin’ your fun this
mornin’.” He snickered contemptuously. “You take a word of advice
from me, Johnny Dice—a fool and his money soon depart!”

“Say, Aaron, that’s not bad. Not bad at all, but you paste this in
your hat, and let it stick to your rickety old slats—I go, oh, yes,
but only to return. In other words, I’ll be back! And somebody’s
goin’ to burn the _frijoles_ when I do.” Johnny’s voice became
velvety as he added: “And there ain’t no one in this little old town
makin’ me go, either, _señor_.”

“No?” Gallup inquired with sarcastic politeness. “Don’t you be too
sure about that.”

Tony motioned to Johnny to come along, but the boy pushed him aside.
“Suppose you enlighten me on that last remark,” he said to Gallup.

Aaron did not dodge the issue. “With pleasure! You git out of town
by noon or there’ll be a warrant out for your arrest for disturbin’
the peace. You can’t make a fool out of me and git away with it.”

Tony’s jaw set at the word arrest. Johnny met the threat with a
smile, but he did not take Gallup’s words as easily as he appeared
to take them.

“You can’t shut me up any other way,” he explained for the coroner’s
benefit, “so you’re goin’ to have Roddy throw me in jail, eh? You
politicians certainly stick together, don’t you? I’d like to see
that scarecrow sheriff go up against a real man.”

“If you flatter yourself that you’re one, you hang around.”

It was on Johnny’s tongue to make a fitting retort, to dare Gallup
to bring up his reserves, but wisdom of a sort checked the hot
words. He had set himself to do a certain thing. Shooting it out
with Jasper Roddy would not accomplish it.

Tony’s eyes were smiling now—a smile as guileful as his race was
old. That Basque smile under fire is one of the little ways by which
the children of the far Pyrenees announce that they are not Mexican.
That smile is something to consider if you are involved personally.
Johnny caught it and understood.

Gallup was waiting for an answer. Johnny found one of little truth,
but it caught old Aaron.

“Other business, my dear Mr. Gallup, forbids my doin’ battle with
you and yours today. But some other day, dear sir!” Johnny’s tone
was too extravagantly polite. “That little gun-play last evenin’
still absorbs my attention, Aaron. I could almost tell you who
killed that man.”

The seriousness with which Johnny stated this fooled even Tony.

Gallup’s eyes wavered ever so little as Johnny stared into them.
“Let’s hear his name,” Aaron demanded uneasily.

“You ask that—you of all men?” Johnny exclaimed, piling on the coals
now that he had Aaron on edge.

“Why shouldn’t I ask?” the coroner almost roared. “Are you hintin’
at somethin’?”

Thus did Aaron deliver himself temporarily into Johnny’s hands.

“Why, ain’t you the party what proclaimed long and loud last night
that that dead man killed hisself?”

Gallup swallowed hard.

“That’s all, huh?” he cried angrily. “Sounded to me like you was
puttin’ me under suspicion.”

“Ain’t I?” demanded Johnny. “I aim to, if I haven’t. I suspect every
man in this town today. And in your case, I couldn’t begin to tell
you all that I suspect about you.”

“Mouth talk—sluff, that’s all anybody can git from you!” Gallup
shook his fist in Johnny’s face. “When I talk, I say somethin’.”

“Yeh, your tongue’s all right, Aaron, but your brain is dead. You go
down to Brackett’s place and find out a thing or two. That dead
man’s horse and outfit is down there.”

Tony’s smile melted to one of almost positive enjoyment as he saw
Gallup’s dismay. This bit of information thoroughly upset Aaron.
Truly, this Dice person had put one over on him!

“You meddlin’ insect!” Gallup screeched as he stamped away. “You’ve
got two hours to git out of town. You’ll find I know eighteen or
twenty little ways to shut you up!”

Johnny sped him on his way with a laugh that curdled the old man’s
soul.

At the corner, Johnny stopped to gaze at Aaron’s retreating figure,
now a block away. Turning into the crossroad, they waited until
Gallup entered Brackett’s barn.

“Come on, Tony,” Johnny urged. “I’ve got a strange desire to see the
inside of Mr. Gallup’s house. You stay in front. I’m goin’ through
the window. Move up and down. Whistle if he comes back.”

Johnny did not wait for the Basque to caution him. The window was
open, and without any effort Johnny hoisted himself over the sill.
Five minutes later he was back, and with Tony, started for the
Palace.

Once in their room, Johnny pulled out the dead man’s gun. “We’re
outside the law now, all right,” he muttered. “But we got the reason
for goin’ to Winnemuc!”

“Those gun?”

“Sure, those gun,” Johnny laughed. “That’s a brand new firin’ pin in
that pistol. I’m going to find out who put it there. They ain’t no
gunsmith this side of Winnemucca. Roll your stuff and we’ll drift.”

Five minutes later they were ready.

“Mebbe you suppose Gallup fin’ those bridle buttons?” Tony asked as
they started down the stairs.

“Not a chance, _muchachito_.” Johnny patted his pants pocket. “I
don’t leave nothin’ behind.”




                            CHAPTER VII

                          IF THIS BE LOVE


Shortly after five o’clock that same day, Johnny and Tony emerged
from the lava beds to the east of the Diamond-Bar stronghold. Below
them, its fringe of poplars glistening in the sunlight, stood the
comfortable old house and its outbuildings.

The trail from town led across miles of uninteresting flats, alkali
patches and finally by means of much tortuous winding through the
lava beds. A haze, as of smoke, hung in the sky. The air was warm.
At midday it had been hot in the open. Sage hen and mountain quail
rose before them, the old cocks and hens so heavy that the frantic
flapping of their wings as they got into the air made the horses
throw up their heads every time they flushed a covey.

Sleeping in a saddle is a little trick the rangeman soon acquires.
Many times on this same trail Johnny and the Basque had ridden with
closed eyes, their minds in dreamland. Not so today! And wherever
men toiled north of the Humboldt this exception held true. This day
was one of the awaited ones—one of those few, brief days of Indian
summer when the desert smiles and relents. Perhaps because the time
is so short, God pours the wine of life with a lavish hand. Mexican
_peon_, Basque _pellado_, argonaut, prospector, cowman, herder—not
one but answers to the spell of this magic which the red gods long
ago gave to the tribes.

And yet this marvelous day found a peculiar sadness in Johnny’s
heart. Restless, untalkative, he had ridden the long miles, little
understanding the misery which was in him. The sight of the old
Diamond-Bar house seemed to furnish him with an answer, for he
squinted his eyes to blot out some sudden emotion. Was he homesick?
Was it the knowledge that he would not be riding this trail again
that was setting so heavily upon him?

Johnny need not have wondered longer. He had discovered the truth.
And this day of days had only accentuated his unhappiness.

This was _his_ country. He knew every mesa, draw and coulee as a
city boy knows his own block. Far horizons, towering peaks—they were
landmarks to him; things of life, with personalities. There were
things here that he loved because they were beautiful—colors
unequaled, vistas beyond comparison.

To say that he ever referred to it in these or similar terms would
be more than the truth. But he felt it; answered to the tug of it.
And Johnny Dice was not an emotional person.

And yet men called his chosen land a desert. Passing strange it is
that so ill a name suffices.

When they reached the house they found it seemingly as lazy as the
day. Charlie Sam, the Chinese cook, lay sprawled upon a bench in the
sun. He did not so much as move as Johnny rode past him. Little
Hughie High, who combined the duties of ranch blacksmith, filer, and
man of all work, had been tinkering with the windmill. He waved a
careless hand from his perch above them, but made no word of
greeting, fearing to break the undisturbed comfort which so rarely
came his way.

A wide hall led through the ranch-house, in back of which stood the
bunk-house. Beyond that, at some distance, were the barns and
corrals. On the side of the house facing the men’s quarters, with a
door opening to the hallway, the old man had his office, a big
square-shaped room.

On stated occasions, when it pleased old Jackson to unbend, he
escorted whichever of his men he had invited into his sanctum, down
that long, wide hall to the front door. Only at such times did the
Diamond-Bar hands tread those precincts.

Tony went on to the bunk-house, but Johnny stopped and whistled a
call. It went unanswered. His roving eyes searched the yard and
windows, but Molly Kent was not to be seen. Walking around to the
front of the house, Johnny peered through open doors. Tony had gone
around to the rear of the place by now, and Johnny saw him as he
stepped into the bunk-house.

Left alone with his thoughts, the boy stopped and listened. Only the
penetrating sound of Charlie Sam’s snoring broke the stillness.
Cautiously, Johnny whistled again. His embarrassment grew as he
waited. Minutes passed, and a boldness he had never known in his
days as a Diamond-Bar man took possession of him. Crossing the
threshold he tapped on the door of Molly Kent’s room.

Light as his tap had been the unlatched door moved back an inch or
two. The delicate perfume which he had always associated with Molly
reached his nostrils. Unknown to himself, he trembled.

She was not here; his good-bye would have to go unsaid. He extracted
some slight degree of comfort from that. Good-byes did not come
easily to his lips.

An overwhelming desire to push back that door and to stand for just
one minute in the room which she had sanctified with her presence
all these years took possession of him. There in her room he’d say
his farewell to her.

From his pocket he brought forth a mysterious little package—a mouth
organ. This was in answer to Molly’s often expressed desire for one.
Johnny had not spared his money in purchasing it. He had had it sent
all the way from San Francisco. He looked at the package as if
asking it to answer him.

“Yes,” he murmured; “this’ll be best. I’ll just leave it on her
dresser for her. Maybe she’ll guess it’s from me.”

The inside of that room was a revelation to Johnny Dice. Never
before had he been face to face with feminine daintiness of this
sort. From the chintz curtains and colorful cretonnes to the array
of mysterious articles spread about him this room was as different
from the rest of the house as day is from night.

Something sang in Johnny’s heart as he reached out to place his gift
on Molly’s dresser and found himself gazing at his own picture in a
neat little frame hung to one side of the girl’s large mirror.

The picture was an old-fashioned studio photograph portraying the
subject in one of his saddest and most miserable moments. Johnny’s
pride had long since forced him to destroy the copy he had kept for
himself. But there it was in her room!

The world suddenly became a paradise. Even on Johnny the day had not
been wasted. He smiled sheepishly on catching sight of his own
reflection in the glass. He began to ask himself important
questions. Between Molly and him there had never passed a word
beyond the province of friendship. She was a rich man’s daughter,
and forty a month is no inducement to hold out to young ladies of
her means. And then, too, it didn’t lead to steady employment if one
made eyes at owners’ daughters. There were some social barriers even
in Nevada.

Now, that he was leaving, matters matured very rapidly in the boy’s
mind. What sort of a fool had he been all these years not to have
known that he was over his head, that Molly Kent meant more to him
than any other being who had come into his life? An hour ago he had
told himself he was blue because he was leaving the country and the
Diamond-Bar behind. That was a lie! Own up to it, now. It wasn’t the
Diamond-Bar or the purple shadows on the Tuscaroras that he was
going to miss. No! It was Molly Kent!

And Molly? Johnny’s teeth clenched under his tightly pressed lips as
he gazed once more on that picture of himself.

“She don’t hate me, at least,” he murmured half aloud. “Who’d ever
thought she’d ’a’ kept that thing all these years? Why—and there’s
those little silver spurs I brung her when she was just a kid. Real
silver, they was, too.”

Johnny put his hand on them tenderly. He seemed to have difficulty
in breathing. Emotion was welling up in him to a point which made
him reel. The mouth organ was placed on the bureau. He wanted to get
outside, to think, to tell himself that he had not been dreaming,
that life still went on.

Was it because of Molly that the old man had been so short with him?
The thought galloped through Johnny’s mind. Did Jackson Kent see in
him a possible suitor for her hand—an undesirable, financially
irresponsible suitor? Had there been talk, whisperings behind his
back? Had Molly said anything? A dozen questions leaped to his mind.
He shook his head wearily as he turned for the door, anxious to be
away from this house which only a few minutes before he had been
loath to leave. Another step would have taken him to the door, when
he stopped, mouth open, his eyes bulging as if they could not
believe what they beheld. Slowly the foot which he had poised in
mid-air came down; but the accusing finger which he had pointed at
the thing beside the door did not waver.

“Great God!” he groaned. “That’s a copy of the picture I’ve got in
my pocket!”

It was, beyond question. Set in a small gold frame hung beside the
door was an exact duplicate of the photograph he had found in the
dead man’s wallet.

With cold fingers he held up the picture that he drew from his
pocket until it rested beside the one on the wall. They were the
same!

Eyes transfixed, Johnny stared on and on, and as he stood there
spellbound, the door opened. Jackson Kent faced him. Something too
big for words held the two for a brief second. Johnny was the first
to react. Surreptitiously the hand holding the picture moved to his
pocket, but he was too late. The old man had been staring at it.

Fingers of steel caught and held Johnny’s arm. The surprise had died
out of Kent’s eyes. They were flashing now with a madman’s fury. The
boy could feel the man’s hot breath upon his cheek. Johnny heard the
other’s voice break as he fought for speech.

Then, with heaving lungs, old Jackson cried out:

“Give it to me! Give it to me—do you hear?” His voice arose until it
became almost a scream as he demanded: “What are _you_ doin’ with
_that_ picture of my little girl?”

Kent’s hungry fingers lunged for the coveted photograph. Johnny’s
eyes had narrowed to mere slits.

“No!” he exclaimed. “I keep that picture. It belongs to a dead man!”




                            CHAPTER VIII

                           STRAIGHT TALK


Johnny had immediate cause to regret his melodramatic words.

“Give me his name! Tell me who he was!” the old man shouted.

And obviously Johnny could not answer truthfully. He pondered lie
after lie without finding one to pass muster. Kent saw his
helplessness.

“You can’t answer, eh? Well, maybe you can tell me what you’re doin’
here in this room.”

“Tony and I came to git our stuff,” Johnny replied.

“Your stuff? It ain’t in here, is it?”

“I had a little present for Miss Molly. I wanted to leave it where
she’d git it. I reckoned I’d not be seein’ her again, soon.”

“Present?” Old Jackson’s lips curled contemptuously. “I’ll bring all
the presents she needs. You been treated most like one of the family
round here, so you show your gratitude by shinin’ up to my girl,
eh?”

“You know that ain’t so,” Johnny answered miserably. “Hobe and me
has been bringin’ her little things nigh ten years.”

“She was a child then. And you carryin’ her picture around. I won’t
have it! Damn it, I won’t! My girl ain’t intended for no
forty-dollar-a-month cowpunch. I want that picture.”

Johnny shook his head. Less angry than he had been, he said:

“I can’t give it to you. If Molly says she wants it, all right. I’ll
give it to her. Ain’t no talk goin’ to make me change my mind about
that.”

“She’ll tell you quick enough.” Kent raised his voice to cry out her
name.

“No good doin’ that,” Johnny advised. “She ain’t here.”

“I’ll find out whether she is or not. You git your stuff now. Take
your presents with you, too.”

Johnny had never been dismissed in this fashion. Tight-lipped,
cheeks burning, he shook his head. “No,” he muttered, “I’d not do
that.”

“Well, I’ll take care of it, then.”

And he caught up the harmonica and hurled it through the open
window. “You git your stuff,” he thundered.

The lust to tear this old man’s body with his hands surged in Johnny
Dice. And yet, Molly was his daughter! The thought struck Johnny
with a double significance. Jackson Kent had identified the dead
man’s treasured keepsake. But why had that man carried Molly Kent’s
photograph? Questions began stabbing at Johnny’s brain.

Molly had had nothing to do with the man’s death. Hobe had given the
old man an alibi. But there was a draw to this affair which could
not be argued into nothingness. Molly was mysteriously away from
home; Jackson here when he had left for Winnemucca, and always that
picture of the girl in the dead man’s wallet to be explained.

In a sort of daze Johnny got his blankets and other gear and placed
them upon his saddle.

Kent had roused Charlie Sam and set him to ringing the ranch-house
bell. Only little Hughie answered the bell’s imperative summons.

“Where’s Molly?” the girl’s father demanded.

“Now, that’s a hard question to answer,” Hughie replied. “Never a
word did she say to me. She got her horse herself this mornin’.
’Twa’n’t later than eight when she rode off. Charlie, here, must
have talked to her.”

“No talk,” squint-eyed Charlie Sam declared. “Me pack lunch. She
damn big hurry.”

“One of you must have seen whicha-way she went.”

“Left here headin’ for Argenta,” Hughie exclaimed. “I was over there
last night for the mail. Brought a letter for her. Mayhap she’s
ridden out with the answer.”

“She ain’t been in Argenta,” Kent said positively. “I—got off there
myself, and borrowed a horse from Matt Pease. I’d ’a’ passed her on
the road if she’d been headin’ there.”

Argenta is a flag station half-way between Standing Rock and
Winnemucca. The old man could easily enough have done as he claimed.
But where could Molly have gone? If she had gone south, she must
have come to the railroad. Surely she would not have bothered with
lunch had she set out for Argenta or any neighboring ranch.

Beyond question she had not gone to Standing Rock or else Johnny and
Tony would have passed her. That left only Winnemucca as a possible
destination. Hughie’s observation that she had been “all dressed up”
only added to Johnny’s conviction that he would find her there. But
why had she left without leaving a note for her father? And why the
long ride when she might have caught a train at Argenta or Standing
Rock? Wasn’t it plain that she hoped to go unquestioned? But what
had she to conceal? Could the letter which Hughie had brought be the
answer?

Johnny glanced at the old man, who was pacing back and forth,
mumbling to himself. His concern for his girl swept away some of the
boy’s angry feelings. Old tyrant that he was, no one could deny his
love for Molly.

“She shouldn’t do these fool things,” Johnny heard him say. “Runnin’
off without a word! She’s only a girl; only a child.” He stopped to
catch Johnny’s eye. “You come in here a minute,” he ordered.

Tony sighed impatiently as Johnny and the old man went inside.

When the two men reached the office Kent shot his demand at the boy
without a second’s delay:

“I want that picture!”

“I told you I’d give it to Molly if she won’t let me keep it. That’s
my answer. I never knew till an hour ago what she meant to me. I’m
tellin’ you fair, now, that I’m takin’ my orders from her.”

“Well, you’re armed, and so is the Basque, but I’ll have my say
before very long. You stay ’way from my daughter. You’re a fool if
you’re countin’ on puttin’ her between us. She’s my girl! Keep your
picture! She’ll be askin’ for it quick enough. Don’t let me hear
that you’re showin’ it round, makin’ talk. By God, there won’t be
room enough in this State for you if you do.”

“Your opinion of me does credit to you, don’t it?” the boy snapped
back. “Funny you didn’t find me out long ago.”

“You keep your back talk,” Kent roared. “Where you goin’ when you
leave here?”

Johnny smiled enigmatically.

“That’s a fair question. I’ll ask you one, and we’ll be
even-Stephen. When you left Standing Rock this mornin’ you told Hobe
you were off for Winnemuc. I’d admire to know what made you change
your mind.”

“What do you mean?” gasped the old man. “My comin’s and goin’s are
my own business. Are you hintin’ at somethin’?

“No, I ain’t hintin’. But I’m doin’ some tall thinkin’.”

“You can give it a name if you’re half a man.”

Johnny turned away sadly.

“I guess I don’t measure up,” he said slowly. “And, besides, I’d
hate to give tongue to it. But I’ll say this much”—and he wheeled on
old Kent again—“I’ll answer your first question. I’m goin’ and goin’
when I leave here. And I’m goin’ to keep on movin’ till I find out
who killed that man in Standing Rock. Till I do, my address is in my
hat. I know you’ve got the low-down on me. Well, let it ride. No
matter what you think, I shoot square. You’re rich, you’ve got big
friends; I know what you can do to me. Hop to it! But don’t you ever
forgit that while I live I love your daughter. And if I ever amount
to anythin’, and she’ll have me, I’ll come back and marry her. And
you can please go to hell!”




                             CHAPTER IX

                            TWO OLD MEN


The following morning at eleven o’clock Johnny and Tony sent their
tired ponies across the newfangled concrete bridge which spanned the
Humboldt on upper Bridge Street.

Winnemucca lay somnolent in the midday sun, the street so deep with
dust that it softened the sound of their horses’ hoofs to a dull
pad-pad as they continued on past Rinehart’s general store and the
new State Bank building. The two men had ridden all night. In fact,
they had put a staggering number of miles behind them since they had
left Standing Rock the preceding day.

Johnny swung off his horse in front of the Eldorado Hotel. He had
long since decided that he would find Molly registered there. His
method of ascertaining this was indeed strange, for, instead of
going to the desk where the register lay open to public view, he
made directly for the bar. Whitey Carr, the bartender, nodded to
him. Johnny said “How?” and ordered a drink. It was to win this bit
of recognition that he had entered the room. He had been there often
enough to have more than a nodding acquaintance with Whitey and his
co-workers. In truth, Johnny’s intimacy with the craft was well-nigh
universal.

Being remembered, and thusly armed for his attack on the register,
he searched for some written sign of the girl’s presence. Her name
did not reward him. Whitey Carr saw his perturbance and through the
swinging doors he called:

“Who you looking for, Johnny?”

Johnny’s desire to find the girl outweighed his desire for secrecy.

“Lookin’ for the old man’s daughter,” he called back to Whitey.

The bartender shook his head positively.

“Ain’t been no females here in two days,” he said. “That is,
exceptin’ some show folks.”

There was no need looking for her at the other hotels. If she were
in town she would be here. Johnny’s face wore a frown as he stepped
to the door and motioned to Tony to come in and eat.

“She ain’t here,” he said to the Basque. “We got to eat, though.
Soon as I get a few victuals inside of me I’ll prospect around.”

The restaurant was a long, narrow room set with high stools before a
wooden counter. Tony tried to make talk, but the boy was more intent
on watching the few passers-by on Bridge Street, hoping against hope
that he might catch a glimpse of the girl. But he finished his meal
of ham and eggs and pie without this coming to pass.

When he had paid their check he said to Tony:

“You’d better git a room and turn in for an hour or two. I’ll be
back soon. What we got to do won’t be done in a day.”

“For why you leave me behin’, Johnny?”

“I ain’t leavin’ you behind. I tell you, we need sleep. We may be
headin’ back for Standing Rock tonight. You turn in.”

Leaving the hotel, Johnny went down the street to Dan Secor’s shop.
Old Dan ran a second-hand store and pawnshop in addition to his
business of gunsmithing. He was going home for dinner when Johnny
hailed him.

“Hey, Dan,” the boy called, “I want to see you a minute before you
go. Open up for a second.”

“That’s you boys,” the old fellow growled. “Sit here all mornin’
long ’thout nary a customer, and soon as I gits locked up you flock
in. What you want?”

“Dan, I want you to take a look at this gun. D’you ever see it
before?”

Dan had to put his specs in position before he could answer.

“Sure; put that firin’ pin in myself. That’s an old Ross pistol.”

Johnny was all smiles.

This was the first bit of luck to come his way this day.

“I reckoned you’d fixed it up.”

“Ain’t yore gun, is it?” old Dan questioned. “Leastways, it wa’n’t
you had it in here to be fixed.”

“No. I just came by the gun accidental-like. I’m right interested in
the man what owned it, though. Suppose you got his name in your
books.”

“Umph—umph!” Dan grunted. “Ain’t, neither. I ’member he waited here
while I put in the pin. Had quite a talk.”

Johnny’s face fell. Old Dan’s words had dropped him from the clouds
to the bottomless pit. What mattered it that he had traced the dead
man’s movements to Secor’s shop? His surmising was proved correct,
but the murdered man’s identity remained a mystery, and that had to
be solved before he could proceed with any assurance of success.
Johnny cursed in his chagrin. Could you find two men in a hundred
who would have a gun repaired while they waited? Of course not! It
was just a trick of fate’s to thwart him. It wouldn’t happen so
again in a thousand years.

“You seem right put out,” Dan rejoined. “Man ain’t done nothin’?”

“Not a thing. Say, you mind tellin’ me what you two talked about?”

“Don’t know as I do. Wa’n’t nothin’ puss’nal; ’twas mostly cattle
talk, him askin’ after the brands folks was runnin’ along the river.
You know, light talk—two old men.”

The old gunsmith took off his glasses and gazed vacantly into space,
as if beholding some pleasant vista of almost forgotten years.
“Yes,” he murmured, “two old men. Him and me had been in Santa Fe
’bout the same time.” Dan clucked his lips at the memory. “Them was
the days; riotin’ ever’ night, hell poppin’ over in the Tonto,
Injuns puttin’ on the paint every now and then.”

The old man paused abruptly. Then:

“Say, Johnny!” he exclaimed. “Come to think on it, your man did say
somethin’ puss’nal. Asked me what folks said of old Kent’s
daughter.”

“What?”

Johnny’s exclamation was whipped out with such force as to startle
old Dan. Here was that draw again—Molly and the dead man. Every
place he turned he came face to face with it.

The gunsmith misunderstood the boy’s attitude. “Why, Johnny, they
wa’n’t no harm in the question. I told him folks said only good
things of Molly Kent. And he didn’t seem to set no great store by my
answer. Said he was goin’ over to the Piute Reservation; didn’t say
he was, but I knew it because he asked me if he could git to
Standing Rock from the North Fork without a-comin’ way back here.”

Johnny began to understand that the talk the two men had was of
vital importance, even though old Dan saw nothing of value in it.
The boy wondered if he should tell the old man of the murder.
Another day and he would know of it, anyhow. Better make an ally of
the old man and get him to hold his tongue. And then, too, the
surprise of telling him now might startle him into recalling some
other bit of conversation.

“Dan,” he began, “when did you have that talk?”

“’Bout six days ago, I reckon.”

“You ain’t sure?”

“Le’s see—yes, I’m sot on that. ’Twas the first of the month.”

The first of the month; this was the sixth. Tony had seen the man on
the North Fork five days ago. It fitted in!

“He didn’t say who he was goin’ to see over in the Injun country?”

“Don’t reckon he did.”

“That’s goin’ to be awfully important, Dan, because this man got
hisself killed night before last.”

“No! Not killed?”

“Killed dead. Old Aaron says he killed hisself. It’s a lie. He was
murdered. I’m aimin’ to find out who did it. And, Dan, when folks
git to talkin’ about it down here, I want you to be dumb. That man
got a rotten deal. Ain’t nobody but me goin’ to square it. What do
you say?”

“I say yes. You ain’t askin’ me nothin’.” He shook his head.
“Killed, eh? And him lookin’ to be so handy with a gun. It wa’n’t no
fair fight.”

“You said somethin’. I know he was on the North Fork. Went to the
Rock from there. But there was two days in between. Do you suppose
he was on the Reservation all that time? Can’t you remember who he
was goin’ to see over there? Was it Ames, the trader, or the agent?
Maybe it was old Thunder Bird!”

“No, Johnny, he didn’t say. But he did tell me he was comin’ back!
Said he’d be here Saturday.”

“Saturday? That’s today.” Johnny whistled a surprised note or two.
Dan watched him as he walked back and forth, hands thrust deep into
his pockets. “Saturday,” the boy muttered. “Comin’ back here. Say,
Dan, what would he be comin’ back here for? Was he aimin’ to meet
somebody?”

“That might ’a’ been it. Or mail—he might ’a’ been expectin’ a
letter.”

“That’s it!” Johnny pounded the counter vehemently. “He was comin’
back for his mail!”

Johnny was so excited that the noon-time pedestrians stared at him
as they passed.

The boy was unmindful of them until a girl’s mocking laugh reached
his ears. He turned, then, to stare her down; but the expression on
his face changed with magic swiftness, for, standing there watching
him, her face pressed close to old Dan’s window, was Molly Kent.

She had been watching him these many seconds. A roguish light swam
in her eyes as Johnny’s mouth sagged with amazement.

“Ride him, cowboy!” she called. “Ride him!”

It was the old Diamond-Bar battle-cry.

Johnny shook his head dully. “I’m damned!” was all he could say.




                             CHAPTER X

                             MOLLY KENT


Sweet Molly Kent was as a flower blooming in the grayness of
wind-swept Winnemucca. Johnny wondered how she contrived to be so
clean and pressed. He had been to San Francisco and seen the
fashionable folk of Grant Avenue. Molly could have walked among them
this day to their envy.

On the range she wore fitting clothes, but never—Heaven forbid!—the
side-show “cow-girl” costume which Western girls are popularly
supposed to wear. Brown tweeds of a sensible cut, and boots to match
the best, served her. If she made any concession to the popular idea
it was in the wearing of a small sombrero. Johnny had seen her so
attired times enough to have overcome his awe of her. This new dress
of today, however, was thoroughly disconcerting. Wise Molly divined
his embarrassment and, womanlike, enjoyed it.

The flash of her gleaming white teeth only added to the boy’s
uneasiness. It was so much better to observe girls of her type from
a distance. Not that she was merely pretty or in a true sense
beautiful. Molly’s chin was too masculine for that, her eyes too
wide-set. And yet it was her eyes and that very chin which compelled
attention. There was sense in this girl, a clean body and a clean
mind. Loyalty spoke, too.

Others had noted these things. Men do. Yes, and most women, too.
Springy step, well-rounded ankles, glorious body, the touch of color
in the cheeks glowing against her black hair—they all spoke of
youth, of rare vitality. Here was a human being come thus far from
the Master’s mold unmarred. And this in a rough country. It was no
mean compliment to Jackson Kent.

Poor Johnny! He sensed these things and felt himself ugly, awkward,
hopeless before her. At this moment he would have fought any man so
rash as to claim that she could ever care for his unworthy self.

Taking pity on Johnny, Molly ended his misery by breaking the spell
which held him.

“I thought you were going to strike that old man,” she said half
seriously. “I’d like to know what you are doing down here.”

“Business,” Johnny answered dryly.

“Well, the Diamond-Bar is shipping from Standing Rock, isn’t it?”

Molly’s eyes held his provokingly.

“It is,” Johnny drawled nervously.

“But you’re not. Is that what you are trying to say, Mr. Dice?”

Johnny nodded his head ever so slightly. The smile left Molly’s
eyes.

“Father and you again, Johnny?” she asked anxiously.

“Just me this time, I guess. No matter. I got my pay. But let’s talk
of somethin’ pleasant, if there is any such.”

The girl’s gayety did not return so easily. “I just can’t be
pleasant by request, that way, Johnny,” she said honestly. “I want
to talk to you about this before I start for home.”

“When you leavin’ here?”

“Not before morning.”

This suited Mr. Dice.

“You rode in, didn’t yuh?” he questioned. Molly grinned in spite of
herself. “Folks to home all worried about you,” the boy went on.
“Your daddy tearin’ hair and cursin’. I figured you was down here,
and I looked for you at the hotel.”

“Don’t you tell me what you thought when you found I wasn’t there.
Of course I wouldn’t go to a hotel. The Langwell girls would never
forgive me if I did. Don’t tell me _you_ were worried.”

“That would be kinda hard for me, wouldn’t it?” Johnny drawled.

Molly laughed outright at this. “Next to injured feelings, there’s
nothing like self-pity to make a person miserable, is there, Johnny?
Now you tell me, is father out looking for me?”

“Certainly is. You’d better send a telegram over to Argenta. Hughie
High will be down there tonight for the mail.”

“Of course. I don’t understand what brought father back from the
Rock so quickly. Was it anything to do with you?”

And now Johnny lied. “I’d hate to think so,” he told her.

Shrewd Molly was not more than half convinced of this.

“And the business that brought you here?” she inquired.

Apparently, a violent itching of the Dice scalp followed, but the
girl insisted upon an answer.

“Er—private business,” Johnny said lamely; but to Molly it carried
an air of mystery.

“Well, you meet me at the hotel about two. I wish father had stayed
at the Rock another day.”

Johnny turned back to Dan’s place, but the old man had slipped out.
So, left to himself, the boy promptly began to worry over Molly’s
farewell words. It was plain enough that she had hoped to make her
hurried trip without her father knowing of it. But what reason could
she have for that? The question stayed with Mr. Dice. The girl was
nervous. He could tell that. Coming to Winnemucca had always been
something of a lark. Well, he had failed to find any spirit of
vacation about her today. A blunt question or two would follow this
afternoon!

Johnny had voiced his need of sleep, but now that he had the
opportunity he made no effort to resign himself to it. For one
thing, he wanted to think over that trip to the reservation. Western
men did not go romping over the hills to Indian country for the
thrill of going. It had been one of the dead man’s last acts;
perhaps the one which had led to his death.

The boy could advance a dozen reasons for the man’s going there.
Instinctively he felt it held the answer to the riddle he was trying
to solve. Another talk with Dan was urgent, and then a visit to the
Agency. Johnny could talk the Piute hand language. If necessary he
would stay there for days until he had talked to every brave on the
reservation.

But that was something for this afternoon or tomorrow. For the
immediate present he had a matter of equal importance in mind.
Perhaps nothing would come of it, but it was surely worth the
effort. Johnny was as certain now as he had been when Molly had
interrupted him in his talk with Dan that the stranger had been
coming back to Winnemucca for his mail. It was the boy’s intention
to verify this at once.




                             CHAPTER XI

                          MORE THAN A BET


Noontime was an hour of leisure at the post office, due to the fact
that without exception the east and west mail trains arrived in the
very early morning or late afternoon. This suited Johnny. Strolling
up to the window he found Miss Nannie Price, the assistant
postmistress, in the act of artistically dissecting an orange.

“Mr. Allerdyce!” Nannie gurgled. “You _are_ a stranger, even though
handsomer than usual.”

“Now, you stop, Miss Nannie, ma’am,” Johnny grinned. “A new
neckpiece ain’t deceivin’ you thata-way.”

Nannie laughed. In common with many others, she was fond of Johnny.

“You’re not expecting any mail?” she asked.

“No, ma’am, not exactly. Fact is, Miss Nannie, I want you to do me a
favor. And it ain’t downright reg’lar, either.”

Nannie perked up at once. “Oh, Mr. Allerdyce,” she cooed, “I’m dying
to know what it is.”

“Well, I’ll tell yuh. There was a man over in Standing Rock the
other night, and nobody could find out his name. I just bet I could.
I know he was allowin’ to come back here, and I surmise he gets mail
here. His initials are C. T. I told myself if anybody answered to
that down here, you’d know it.”

“C. T.?” queried Nannie, her memory being put to question. “C.
T.—Charles, Chris, Chester, Cleve—Cleve von Thurlow? No, that would
be C. V., wouldn’t it? Humph! Beats me.” And to show how positive
her statement was she reached for the letters in the T pigeonhole.
Thumbing them with a practiced hand she ran over them speedily.
Johnny’s heart was pounding heavily, for he was having the secrets
of the United States mails opened to him. Putting Nannie on her
mettle had won where a more direct method would have failed most
miserably.

Johnny’s elation began to wane as the girl went on through the
handful of letters without pausing, and then, as he was about to
give up hope, Nannie flapped a letter to the counter.

“That’s him!” she exclaimed. “Crosbie Traynor! Must be, because
here’s another for him. Where was he from—Flagstaff?”

“That’s right,” Johnny assured her. “From down Arizona way. Crosbie
Traynor! Well, ma’am, it’s sure my treat. Next time you go by the
Eagle Drug, you stop in. There’ll be a box of candy there for you.”

“You shouldn’t do that, Mr. Allerdyce,” Nannie protested very
prettily. “You know that I usually do remember names; but we’ve been
so busy.”

Johnny was in no mood to complain of this willing worker. “My laws,
of course!” he hastened to say. “Fools shouldn’t be coming around
botherin’ you.”

And Johnny, further to show his gratitude, purchased a dollar’s
worth of stamps, for which he had absolutely no use. And, of course,
Nannie’s percentage didn’t hold good on the deal, either.

Johnny’s pace, when he had turned back on to Bridge Street, slowed
materially. He was too full for words. To go back to the hotel would
be to share his success with Tony, and he was not yet ready to do
that. As was habitual with him, he wanted to be alone to digest this
latest discovery. He found the proper place for it in the deserted
waiting-room at the Espee station.

His continual repetition of the dead man’s name might have been a
funeral chant, so often did he sound it.

“Crosbie Traynor.” A pause, then: “Crosbie Traynor. I’ve got the
tracks cleared now! I’ll see the Injuns first; but if I’m stopped
there, I’m goin’ on, even if it’s clear to Flagstaff!”




                            CHAPTER XII

                           MOLLY EXPLAINS


Two o’clock found Johnny mounting the stairs to the Eldorado’s
parlor. Molly awaited him, but the boy found her cast down. Her
appearance prompted him to plain speaking.

“Listen, girl,” he said. “There’s somethin’ wrong. Now, tell me what
it is. I felt it this mornin’. It ain’t your way to steal off, and
that’s what you did this trip. You’re worried, and I know it.”

“I am, Johnny,” Molly answered readily. “I’d have told you without
your asking. I did come here hurriedly and without a word to any
one. Maybe I’ve been foolish, but it sounded so genuine that I had
to do as I have. I won’t talk in riddles any longer. Hughie brought
me this letter night before last. It rather upset me, and then, too,
I was curious. I want you to read it.”

Johnny’s face whitened as he obeyed her, for without question it was
a communication from Crosbie Traynor.

The letter ran:

    “Miss Molly Kent, Diamond-Bar Ranch:

    “Please do not be alarmed by this letter. One who wishes
    you well writes it. Although I am a stranger, I have
    traveled many hundred miles to see you.

    “I am an old man—old beyond my time. Seeing you is one
    of the two ambitions I have left me. Let the fact that I
    have loved your mother, living and dead, these forty
    years, explain my interest in you. It is of her that I
    want to talk to you.

    “Will you come to Winnemucca on the sixth? I’ll look for
    you in the parlor of the Eldorado Hotel at noon.

    “For reasons that you will understand then, I hope you
    will come alone and that you will not go to the shipping
    pens until you have seen me.

    “My name would mean nothing to you, so I will sign
    myself just

                                             “Your Friend.”

A sigh escaped Johnny as he handed back the letter.

“Well, what do you make of it?” Molly asked earnestly.

The boy could only shake his head. Here was the final proof of the
dead man’s interest in the girl Johnny loved. What lay in back of it
was still a closed book, but certainly Traynor had felt himself
close to her.

His death may have been without connection with his proposed
intention to see Molly, but Johnny just could not believe it.

There was old Kent’s attitude toward Johnny; the whole sorry
business at Standing Rock; the bickering; the stupidity of men who
were solid citizens.

Was it all a play, a staged show to block justice?

The boy tried to close his eyes to the pictures his sorely puzzled
brain conjectured, but in spite of every resolve an inner voice kept
on dinning in his ears: “Jackson Kent killed this man! Hired it
done! Paid for it!”

But why? Molly’s mother? What other reason could a rich man have for
ordering a crime of this sort?

It was not to be supposed that Johnny’s excitement would escape
Molly’s eyes. In comparison she was less nervous than he.

“Are you reading something between the lines?” she demanded. “Your
face is white.”

“Miss Molly, how long have you been waiting?”

“On and off since eleven. But tell me, shouldn’t I have come? Don’t
be mysterious that way, Johnny. You actually frighten me.”

“No harm in coming,” he told her. He was only marking time. Johnny
knew that he would have to tell some part of what had happened to
the man who had written her this letter. “Can you make a guess as to
who wrote that note?” he went on, still playing against the minutes.

“Why, no. I haven’t the slightest memory of my mother. And I do
believe the man was what he claimed to be.”

“He was,” Johnny answered succinctly. “What you intendin’ doin’
now?”

“I thought I’d wait here the rest of the afternoon.”

Now he had to tell her.

“No use doin’ that, little girl. No use at all.”

Johnny’s manner brought the girl to her feet.

“What _are_ you saying?” she asked falteringly.

“He won’t come.” The words left the boy’s lips slowly. “The man
you’re waiting for is dead!”




                            CHAPTER XIII

                         “HE IS MY FRIEND!”


Call it intuition, a sixth sense, or what you will, a feeling of
loss which she could not explain gripped Molly Kent. That Crosbie
Traynor was dead was tragic; that he had been killed was even more
of a shock, but it did not account for the grief which choked her.

Johnny told himself he had never been more witless. Why had he been
so abrupt? For the first time in his life he saw tears in Molly
Kent’s eyes, and questions which he would have to answer. But even
though he knew that she would have the facts from him, he still
sought to withhold them. This, of course, because he saw no way of
telling the complete truth without putting the girl’s father under
suspicion.

In twenty minutes Johnny managed to become so involved that a child
would have known that he was telling less than half of what he knew.
It definitely added to Molly’s misery. Also, it awakened in her a
sense of shrewdness which left Johnny helpless.

“Just what did all this have to do with your leaving the
Diamond-Bar?” she asked flatly.

Johnny stumbled over his answer. “Why—er—nothin’,” he drawled.

Molly nodded her head sagaciously. She was not fooled.

“I knew it,” she said decisively. “You’ve been telling me only half
the truth. You were too painfully careful not to mention father’s
name. Your quarrel had something to do with Mr. Traynor’s death.”

Johnny hung his head, afraid to meet her eyes, or else he would have
seen the girl’s face pale.

“Tell me, Johnny,” she said with a queer little quaver in her voice,
“is father in trouble?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, go on,” she prompted.

The boy sighed heavily, continuing to look away.

“I didn’t want to say nothin’ ’bout our run-in,” said he. “Now
you’re thinkin’ all sorts of things, and I got to tell you. Old
Aaron’s a fool, and he tried to shut me up. Couldn’t do it, though.
Then the boss came in and sided with him. That riled me, seein’ as
how the man couldn’t have killed hisself. I made some talk about
findin’ out who did the killin’, and I was told pretty plain that I
could either punch cattle or quit, that the Diamond-Bar wasn’t
payin’ wages to have me goin’ around snoopin’ into what didn’t
concern me none.”

“I can just hear father saying that,” Molly declared. “You’ve got to
forgive him, Johnny. He’s so old; and he worries so lately. He
helped to elect Mr. Gallup. Naturally he couldn’t go back on him.
Honestly, you had me worried. I just couldn’t imagine what had
happened. Don’t look so glum. I’ll see that father asks you to come
back.”

Johnny raised his head at that.

“No,” he said positively. “I wouldn’t do that. A girl couldn’t
understand it, I guess; but I’ll never ride for Diamond-Bar again.”

“Because of a few hot words?” Molly stopped abruptly, her eyes
holding Johnny’s. “Or else—” A shiver cascaded down the boy’s spine
as he waited for her to finish, “or else you think that he cut you
short because he had something to do with Mr. Traynor’s death. Is
that what you think?”

Johnny’s face worked convulsively as he strove for an honest answer.

“I don’t know what I think,” he said at last. “Whenever I lie to you
it’s because I want to save you from somethin’ I know’d hurt you.
I’d steal for you, Molly Kent; I’d lie and do ’most anythin’, but
when you ask me a straight question like that, I’ve got to shoot
square. I tell you I don’t know what I think!”

“Oh, Johnny, Johnny! You can’t mean that! You don’t think that my
father could have killed that man? Why, he’s been the salt of the
earth to me. No one has ever had to complain of him. You know what
the last two winters have been, and the price of steers ’way down.
It’s been two years of loss for him, and he’s too old to take it
with a grin. He has been short with Hobe, but Hobe overlooks it. He
understands. But you, Johnny—you suspect him—and of this. Aw-w-w!” A
sob broke from her lips. “And I had such faith in you, Johnny,” she
muttered distractedly. “Do you want to break my heart?”

“Oh, please, Molly, don’t—don’t let it matter,” pleaded Johnny, the
misery in his soul causing his voice to quaver. “What difference
does it make what I think?”

“I’ll be as honest as you,” Molly answered with a straightening of
her lips. “It means my happiness. Do you think I could let you go
away carrying that thought? You are no fool, Johnny Dice. Something
more definite than anything you’ve told me planted that ugly thought
in your mind. I want to know what it was. Don’t say you can’t tell
me. Whatever you say won’t shake my faith in my father. Jackson
Kent’s name is respected from one side of this State to the other.
It’s not to defend him that I implore you to speak. I want you set
right. This letter proves nothing. Mr. Traynor may have had many
enemies. That he wanted to see me to satisfy an old man’s whim was
undoubtedly just the merest coincidence. That in itself could not
put my father under suspicion. Could it?”

“I ain’t said that,” the unhappy Johnny replied. “It’s just my
foolishness.”

Glancing at Molly, he saw that she was re-reading the letter.

“Tell me,” she demanded, “why did he ask me to keep away from the
shipping pens? I’d have no reason for going there.”

“I thought about that, too. It’s beyond me. All I know is that he
was coming back here today. Dan Secor told me that. He’d fixed a gun
for Traynor. Said he’d be back on the sixth.”

“The sixth—the sixth of October!”

The letter fluttered to the floor from the girl’s fingers as, white
of face, she sprang to her feet.

“Johnny!” she cried. “Oh, dear God! Don’t you see it—don’t you
understand? The Diamond-Bar has begun shipping from Winnemucca on
the sixth of October for three years. That is why he didn’t want me
to go to the pens. He thought father would be there.”

In a flash Johnny caught Traynor’s idea. If, as the boy had every
reason to suspect, old Kent was the man Traynor had come to square
accounts with, then he had the answer to the man’s every movement
for a week before his death. That is, of course, excepting those two
mysterious days on the Reservation. This coming back to Winnemucca
was for three purposes: to see the girl, to settle with Kent, and,
obviously, to replenish his funds, inasmuch as the letters from
Flagstaff were from a Flagstaff bank.

Traynor had told Vinnie, the Basque, that he would not stay the
night in Standing Rock. His one idea was to get back to Winnemucca
by the sixth. Going on this thought, Johnny saw that the man’s
presence in Standing Rock had been but incidental to his return
here. But he had been seen. Kent must have kept out of his way, and
after, or during supper, had slipped up to Traynor’s room and shot
him.

Wasn’t there sense in every line of this reasoning? Didn’t all of
the dozen and one little incidents since the crime confirm the
facts?

Johnny wondered if he would find out anything in Elk Valley among
the Indians, to make him change his mind. The evidence he held was
circumstantial. Sometimes it lies. No matter. There was nothing left
for him to do but to go through with this hunt, make the trip to Elk
Valley and keep his own counsel. In no other way could he serve
Molly better.

He had bungled things or else he would have avoided this scene with
her. Her excitement and nervousness were due to him.

He detested himself for having alarmed her. Instead of the pleasant
half hour he had looked forward to, he had frightened and hurt her.
The thing to do now was to still any rising suspicion she might have
and get her started for home. So he made small of Molly’s
deductions.

“Traynor may have been a friend of your father’s,” he said to her.
“Or again just another coincidence. As you rightly said, things like
that don’t prove a thing. Wasn’t nothin’ else planted a doubt in my
mind, and I see how downright senseless it was now.”

“Are you being honest with me, Johnny?”

“Of course. Why don’t you take the night train to Argenta? Matt will
see that you git home. Won’t be no trouble sendin’ your horse out to
the ranch.”

“I guess that would be the best thing to do. But you, Johnny, what
are you going to do?”

“Goin’ over to the Injun country tomorrow.”

“Elk Valley? What strange business is taking you there?”

“Crosbie Traynor. I aim to find out who killed him. He was on the
Reservation two days just before he came into the Rock. I reckon
I’ll find out who had it in for him over there. I owe it to you to
clear up this thing.”

“I wish I could go with you, but of course I can’t. Will you go in
by the way of the ranch? It’s not much farther than by way of the
North Fork.”

It was on Johnny’s tongue to say: “Of course, if you want me to,”
but hadn’t old Jackson Kent warned him off? Rebellion began to surge
in Johnny’s soul. Kent confronted him at every turn. And this would
continue to happen. It began to dawn upon the boy that things indeed
were at a pretty pass. It was squarely up to him to decide those
little questions of conduct by which he would either win or lose
Molly Kent. She was the stake.

Johnny knew that the old man would use any end to turn the girl
against him. So, naturally, he asked himself what he had to gain by
walking wide of the old cattleman. To defy her father might turn the
girl against him. Johnny wondered. Surely Molly would like him less
if he turned tail and ran. Yes, that was the correct answer,
provided he considered himself as only an undesirable suitor. But
just how much did that enter into the break between them?

To be frank, didn’t Jackson Kent see in him his accuser, the man
whom he feared? Therefore, Traynor’s death had to be explained
before he could hope for fair play from Kent. And Johnny was too
pessimistic to believe that when solution of the murder had been
achieved it would prove anything other than the old man’s guilt.
Knowledge of that sort would not heal the breach. They would go to
their death bitter enemies.

Knowing Molly for the girl she was Johnny realized that she would
never go back on her father. The boy’s teeth sank into his lips. He
saw now just how hopeless his dreams were. There was a barrier
between Molly and him which could never be removed.

His head snapped back at the thought. Well, if it was written that
he had to lose her, he at least would go down fighting. To hell with
Jackson Kent! He was her father, but he was also a man. They were
two men facing each other, fighting for her love. Kent was old, but
his money and his power made it a fair fight. Let it ride!

Molly little guessed the thoughts racing through Johnny’s mind or
understood the tenseness of his voice as he answered her.

“Why,” he said slowly, “I’ll stop at the Diamond-Bar if you want me
to.”

“No, you won’t!” came a startling interruption; “the last word I
said to you was ‘git!’ Keep off the Diamond-Bar! I might ’a’ known
I’d find you here fillin’ my girl’s head with your schemes and
nonsense. I told you before to git, and I tell it to you now! Go!”

Kent’s wrinkled face was crimson as he thundered on, and Molly’s
knees shook at his sudden appearance. Johnny’s eyes narrowed angrily
at the old man. How long he had been there in the doorway the boy
did not know. He must have crept up the stairs.

Beseechingly, Molly held out her arms to her father.

“Please, _father_,” she entreated, “don’t make a scene! Are you mad?
You didn’t have to steal upon us in this fashion. Whatever
difference of opinion there is between you two, it doesn’t call for
this sort of conduct.”

“So even you turn against me, eh? He’s poisoned your mind against
me!”

“Stop! You don’t know what you are saying.”

“I do! He’s a treacherous leopard, the——”

Molly’s cheeks were the color of chalk. With clenched fists held to
her breasts she threw back her head and hurled her defiance at the
old man.

“No!” she cried, her head thrown back. “No one, father, not even
you, can speak like that to me. Johnny Dice is my friend! I’d trust
him with my life!”




                            CHAPTER XIV

                      FOR THE HEART OF A GIRL


Something sang in the heart of Johnny Dice. The one being in the
world who mattered had faith in him. The impulse to take her into
his arms at this moment almost overcame him. He had seen Molly Kent
under varied circumstances, but never so superb as now. She was all
woman; mature where Johnny had believed her mere girl. The sight of
her so aroused, so alive, thrilled him in a manner quite new.

Whatever had gone before was as nothing now. Life began here. Down
through the years his memories of Molly Kent would date from this
moment, so utterly did his spirit bend to worship her.

It had needed a moment as dramatic as this to awaken the boy to the
enormity of his loss should he lose her.

And, although he was enraged, Jackson Kent’s eyes had been opened,
too. He saw the abyss yawning at his feet, and an abyss it was,
indeed—the losing of his girl! Death was trivial beside it. Old age
was upon him and it frightened Jackson Kent to the very marrow to
consider the future, robbed of Molly’s great love. And it would get
to that if this man came between them.

In his day Kent had held himself a hard man, cold, unemotional;
asking affection of none. But, as so often happens with men of his
type, he gave when he least suspected it, and now that the tide had
set the other way he knew his need. Often he had fooled himself into
worshiping his money. His false god mocked him.

His hungry heart needed Molly, not money! And he swore that he would
have her; that Johnny Dice should never see her again. Had the fool
bewitched the girl? Wait until she heard how he had been caught
skulking in her room. Yes, and his insolence at the Rock; she’d
resent that. There was good steel in Molly. This Dice person would
find that the Kents stuck together!

And, oh, how he hated Johnny! Anger surged through his brain in
blinding waves until his withered old body trembled. Had he been at
all apoplectic, Jackson Kent would have been stricken dead.

Poor Molly winced as she regarded him. She had insisted on fair
play, but without intending to wound her father. What had got into
folks lately to make them fly at each others’ throats in this
fashion? Thoroughly distressed, she said:

“Father, I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t mean to be impertinent.”

The old man unbent readily enough.

“No matter,” he said, opening his arms to her. “I’m not angry with
you. This man here is the person I’ve got my quarrel with. You look
tired, nervous. I’ll get you a room and you go and lie down for a
spell. When you’re rested up we’ll go home. Anythin’ we’ve got to
say to each other we can say when we’re alone.”

“Maybe that is best; but while the three of us are here, father, I
want to ask you one question. Did you know Crosbie Traynor?”

The suddenness of the question startled Johnny. He thought he saw
the old man sway and struggle for breath even as his head shook his
denial of any knowledge of the dead man. The next instant there was
a grim smile on Kent’s lips. It made Johnny, who knew not the cost
of it, open his eyes still wider.

“Traynor?” Kent questioned. “Crosbie Traynor? No, I never heard of
him. Is he a friend of this man?”

The question was ingenious. Johnny recovered his tongue in time to
answer for himself.

“I don’t know anythin’ about him to make me ashamed to call him
friend.”

“Your standard ain’t high,” snapped the old man. “A person who’ll go
snoopin’ round a girl’s bedroom ain’t likely to pick his friends
carefully.”

The inference was too thinly veiled to escape Molly.

“Explain yourself, father. What do you mean?”

“You bet I’ll explain. He knows what I mean. I figured he wouldn’t
be sayin’ anythin’ about that to you. I caught him red-handed, I
tell you. Snoopin’ in your room, where no man has ever set his
foot—not even me. Wa’n’t anybody to home but the Chink and Hughie.
Just the chance he was lookin’ for. Am I lyin’?” he demanded of
Johnny.

The boy’s cheeks were scarlet! Molly was staring at him amazedly.
With a clicking of syllables Johnny’s answer leaped from his lips:

“Since you speak of it, tell her the whole truth!”

“That’s what I intend!” Turning to Molly the old man said: “When I
surprised him, he made a lot of talk about bringin’ you a present.
Ain’t no need of a forty-dollar-a-month cowpunch spendin’ his money
bringin’ you presents, and lookin’ for some favor in return. Ain’t
nothin’ money would buy that I’ve ever refused you.”

Molly tried to protest, but the old man waved her down.

“Don’t tell me I’m puttin’ it too strong. He’s got his eye set on
you; told me so to my face.”

Kent saw bitter tears flood the girl’s eyes, but he went on.

“This is all true talk, Molly,” he asserted. “Look at the man—he may
be a romantic figure in your eyes, seein’ you’re so young, but I’m
tellin’ you that nine months a year he’s flat broke! It’d take him
three months to earn the price of the dress you’re wearin’. I ain’t
raised you careful-like, givin’ you every advantage a girl ought to
have to see you waste yourself on a forty-dollar man!”

Level-eyed now, Molly searched the faces of the two men before her.
Johnny Dice had spoken no word of love to her. Yes, but love was not
a thing of words. It was something that came to life of its own
volition, and grew and grew until it caught the hearts of men and
women in a vise. Only when it had made its presence known would
retrospection reveal the hundred little ways in which it had sought
to announce itself from the very beginning.

Molly was permitted such a moment. What she beheld left her body
trembling. Was this love? Did she love Johnny Dice? The thought had
never occurred to her before. Was this feeling of comradeship, this
boy and girl friendship, love? At least the thought was not
unpleasant to her. Poor he might be, but Johnny was too much a man
to be unworthy of love. The more she thought of it the greater
became the tug on her heart. Anger, resentment, all her other
emotions were blotted out. Even her insistence on fair play between
the two men became less vital to the girl.

Whether she knew it or not, Molly was taking sides. And, as women
have done down through the ages, she turned from her own to champion
the man who desired her. She was no longer the judge, but the
counsel for the defense.

“Were you better off at his age, father?” she asked.

Kent must have sensed the widening between them, for he answered
almost surlily: “Times have changed. What was good enough for me
ain’t good enough for you. Did he show you the picture of you he’s
got in his pocket? Your picture—carryin’ it around!”

“Why, no, father. I can’t believe it. I haven’t had a picture taken
in years.”

“Well, it was years since this one was took. You know the one you’ve
got framed and hanging beside your door? He’s got a copy of it. I
asked him for it. I don’t want my little girl’s picture goin’ the
rounds of the cow camps. He wouldn’t give it up. Said he’d ask you
if he could keep it. He didn’t, did he? Made some wild talk about
its belonging to a dead man.”

“Dead man!” The words chilled the girl.

She turned questioningly to Johnny. With rising suspicion she saw
the boy nod his head in answer to the interrogation in her eyes.

“Let me see it!” she demanded, stretching out her hands toward
Johnny, who was drawing the picture from his pocket.

One glance at it was enough for the girl.

“Father!” she exclaimed. “It _is_ my picture.”

“Of course,” the old man snapped. “Ask him how he came by it.”

“Johnny, tell me,” Molly cried, “what does it all mean? What is this
talk of ‘dead man’? From whom did you get this picture?”

And now Johnny faced Kent.

“From Crosbie Traynor,” said the boy.

“From Crosbie Traynor,” Molly repeated slowly.

The old man’s smile failed him this time. He choked over his words
as he fought to repress his excitement. “Traynor! Traynor!” he cried
at last. “What’s all this talk of him?”

Molly was sobbing.

“Father, father,” she murmured, “I’m so afraid, so frightened. This
picture, this letter, death, murder—what does it mean, what does it
mean?”

The letter crinkled in Kent’s bony hands as he tried to hold it
steady enough to read it. He seemed to sicken as he read; lines came
into his face; he breathed with difficulty; with shaking hands he
clutched at his collar to loosen it.

As the button snapped under the strain and his hand came away he
flashed a glance at the boy. Quick, ferretlike, it was.

Johnny’s face was wooden. Even his eyes were emotionless. For the
moment Molly was unconscious of his presence. Dumbly she stared at
the older man. She saw him sink into a chair, gasping for breath;
but she did not run to his side to comfort him. Something
unexplainable made her draw back. And she knew that she did, and the
knowledge crucified her. A blush of shame mounted to her cheeks—that
she could watch the misery of her own and be untouched by it. And
she felt herself urged on. This was not yet the end.

“Father,” she heard herself saying, “do you understand that
reference to my not going near the shipping pens? The Diamond-Bar
shipped from here on the sixth last year and the year before. Mr.
Traynor thought you would be there. Please don’t lie to me, father.
You can’t deny that you knew this man.”

Seconds slipped by, with Kent’s spasmodic breathing the only sound
to break the stillness.

At last the old man spoke.

“No, Molly,” he said with an effort. “I can’t deny it any longer. I
knew Traynor. You’ve never heard his name on my lips before. Your
mother knew him, too. God forbid that you should. Trouble always
followed him. He was such another as this man here. He made my life
a hell. I didn’t want anythin’ but to keep out of his way. I never
expected to see him again. A skunk is always a skunk. I’m glad he’s
dead!”

“Then you recognized him the other night in Standing Rock, eh?”
Johnny asked.

“Of course!”

“Well, why didn’t you admit it?”

“Are you dumb enough to ask that? Do you think I wanted my girl’s
name mixed up with a killin’? Ain’t no Kent goin’ to be mixed up
like that. Me and mine stay clean. Let the dead take care of
themselves. No one but you figured he’d been killed. Plain enough he
did it himself. He was that kind. If he figured on meetin’ me here,
it was to make a touch. But he’s dead now and he’ll stay dead. He’s
gone where he’ll never put the tongues of folks on my child. Whether
he killed himself or was murdered makes no difference to me.”

“Justice don’t mean anythin’ to you, eh?”

“You’ve known me for nigh on ten years. You can take your own answer
to your question from that. Traynor was a lowdown, ornery reptile.
He didn’t get less than his deserts!”

Johnny shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said grimly, “but I don’t believe you. I’ll have my
own answer before I’m through. No act or word of mine will bring any
harm to your daughter. Her good opinion of me is the most precious
thing I possess. I aim to keep it. I can’t figure any easier way to
lose it than to let her think I’m two-faced. I finish what I start!
You’ve made me look small with your talk and insinuations. If I
didn’t tell her about the picture and of my own run-in with you, it
was because I knew she was too upset to hear it now. But I said I’d
ask her—and I’m doin’ it this minute.”

Johnnie turned his back on the old man and came close to Molly’s
side.

“You’ve heard it all, Molly,” said Johnny. “You know what I’m
askin’—I want to keep that picture. Am I fit to have it?”

Without looking up, Molly handed the picture to him. It was a
confession of faith well calculated to arouse the best in the boy.

“And about my comin’ to the ranch,” he went on. “If you asked me to
come tomorrow I’d come, and nothin’ wouldn’t stop me. But I can’t
see that it would serve any purpose. From now on I go alone. Even
Tony stays behind. As it is, I’ve not been frank with him. What I
find out no one but me’ll know. If there’s talk you’ll know who to
blame. If ever you want me, you get word to the Basque; he’ll find
me. And—_good-bye_.”

He was gone; nor did he hear the girl’s softly murmured answer.




                             CHAPTER XV

                       MADEIRAS GETS A CHANCE


Molly had quite forgotten that the Langwell girls had arranged a
bridge party for her that afternoon. When three o’clock passed and
their guest had not returned, Miss Sue Langwell set out to find her.

Bridge was remote from Molly’s mind, but Sue’s interruption was
welcomed by old Jackson and he urged the girl to run along. Molly,
with pardonable caution, tried to conceal her distraught condition
and keep from her friend’s eyes any inkling of what had occurred. To
succeed, she allowed herself to be carried off.

With gratitude in his heart, Kent watched the two girls ride away in
Sue’s car. It effectually put an end to talk. There had been too
much of that already this day. So while Molly played cards and the
old man sought forgetfulness in the doing of purely routine
business, Johnny talked to old Dan Secor.

Dan had exhausted himself at noon, so Johnny went back to Tony.

Madeiras was in a bad humor. He had been waiting these many hours
for Johnny and felt himself slighted, left out of something.

Your Basque is thin-skinned and quick to resent a fancied hurt.

“What’s wrong?” Johnny asked.

“Too much,” replied Tony. “For why I come wit’ you? I don’ lak
theese bus’ness, always be left behin’.”

The last hour had frayed Johnny’s nerves. The Basque’s petulance
found him without the patience to accept it for what it was. “Don’t
ride me, Tony,” he grumbled. “I know what I’m doin’.”

“_Sí!_ But _Madre de Dios_, I be dam’ eef I do!”

“Ain’t you willin’ to follow my lead? When you stay back, it’s
because it’s best you do. We ain’t on no picnic. Things may break so
that you’ll go on and I’ll stay behind.”

“I guess you no stay behin’ much, Johnny.”

“Well, you threw up your job for me. We stick till this thing’s over
and we’ve caught on somewhere else.”

“Those job mean not’ing. Tony Madeiras always get job.”

“Then what in hell’s on your mind?”

The Basque grinned. He was getting a little action at last. “Maybe,”
he said bombastically, “Tony Madeiras mak’ good deetecteeve, too.
But how I know. I don’t get no chance.”

“Just what is it that you want to do?” demanded Johnny.

“Mebbe I go ask Kent for my job. Mebbe somet’ing happen on the
Diamond-Bar. Mebbe that old fool t’ink I go back on you, eh? Then
Tony Madeiras use hees nose and hees eyes.”

“Good Lord!” Johnny cried as he banged the table. “You’re
elected—unanimously! I’m goin’ to Elk Valley in half an hour. You
stay behind. Kent’s still here. Meet him. Let him see that you’ve
turned me down. He’ll jump at the chance to hire you on. Miss
Molly’ll hate you. Play it out, though. If you think you ought to
see me, come to the Reservation. The agent will know where I am.”

Tony’s good nature blossomed again. Intrigue held a peculiar bouquet
for the Basque. Danger, adventure—hadn’t his race answered to them
for centuries?

Ten minutes later Johnny came downstairs by himself. A drink, and a
farewell nod to Whitey, the bartender, and he was off.

Kent saw him go, and followed his progress until the boy was lost in
the dust and heat waves dancing about the base of Winnemucca
Mountain. Turning back to the hotel office the old man saw Tony. The
Basque was pounding upon the desk for the clerk. “How much I owe
theese place?” he demanded.

“Not a cent. Your pal paid the bill.”

“Johnny Dice, he’s no pal wit’ me,” the Basque announced angrily.
“Remember this: Tony Madeiras pay hees own way.”

He knew that Kent was listening, but he never glanced in the
cattleman’s direction. Instead, he stamped into the bar and ordered
a drink. There he poured into Whitey’s ear the story of his break
with Johnny.

“You t’ink I stay behin’, me? No! I am a Madeiras. I belong up
front, you bat my life on that.”

Head erect, Tony started for the door. Kent was waiting for him.
When the Basque reached the sidewalk the old man stopped him.

“What’s all this talk?” he demanded.

“I’m t’rough wit’ Johnny Dice,” the Basque said explosively. “I lose
my job for heem. He say we catch man what keel those fellow at the
Rock. How I catch heem, when all the time I’m tol’ to keep shut
up—don’ say not’ing, don’ do not’ing. _Válgame Dios!_ You t’ink Tony
Madeiras ees dam fool?”

“You’ve acted like it,” old Kent declared. “Winter’s comin’ on; you
had a good job, but you threw it up for a harum-scarum kid. Didn’t
take you long to find out where you stood with him, did it? Smart
Alecks don’t go far. Guess you’ll learn.”

“I learn pretty dam’ good, all right,” Tony admitted. “Now I go look
for job.”

“You won’t find the lookin’ too good,” the boss of the Diamond-Bar
assured him.

“Well, Tony Madeiras ees good vaquero. No man deny that. Mebbe you
tak’ me on again, eh?”

Kent was no fool. He had felt this question a full half minute
before it was asked. He was only too glad to get the man; but he
shrewdly forced the Basque to his knees.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “We don’t need men till spring. If I
did take you on, chances are you’d be flyin’ up and walkin’ off
first time you felt like it. If a man is workin’ for me, he’s
workin’ for _me_. I don’t have to put up with the sort of nonsense
you and that slipper-tongue tried to run on me.”

“Mebbe I’m beeg fool once, but not beeg fool twice.”

“If you mean it,” Kent said dictatorially, “you’re on. You got your
horse and stuff here, ain’t yuh? Well, git my girl’s pony and head
for the ranch. I’ll be there before you come.”

It was the old man’s intention to take the train for Argenta that
evening, and drive to the ranch from there. He wondered what Molly
would say when she learned of Tony’s return to the Diamond-Bar fold.
The thought was uppermost in his mind as he left the hotel. He had
Johnny “on his own” now, and Kent felt that he had gained a definite
advantage.

Long before he met Molly the old man had determined not to say a
word about the incident to her. If he did she would be apt to resent
his hiring the Basque. Let her find out for herself. It wouldn’t
hurt to have her hear Johnny Dice’s shortcomings retailed by other
lips than his.

Molly and the Langwell girls came for Kent at six and carried him
off to the Langwell home for supper. Molly seemed in better spirits
and old Jackson felt relieved. He tried to inveigle the girls into
accompanying them to the Diamond-Bar. They begged off for this time.

Molly guessed the reason in back of the invitation. With the
Langwell girls on hand there would have been little or no chance for
a resumption of the scenes of this afternoon. It would have only
delayed matters. Molly intended to know more about Crosbie Traynor
before the subject was dropped.

The ride to Argenta took but little time. The drive to the ranch,
however, was a matter of some three hours. The old man outdid
himself in trying to keep Molly’s mind far from Johnny Dice and the
dead man. He exhausted himself before the ranch was reached, and
dreaded the remaining miles. Molly, however, surprised him by not
once referring to the subject which obsessed both of them. It was
not delicacy on the girl’s part which made her hold her tongue. She
had heard more than enough for the present. It was her way to ponder
over a matter for a day or two. Questions would be asked and she
would be answered, but not tonight.




                            CHAPTER XVI

                            BITTER FRUIT


For all of the old man’s talk there was plenty to do on the
Diamond-Bar. The men were back from the Rock, but early the
following morning big Hobe had sent them off on various tasks so
that life on the ranch moved as usual.

Before noon Tony arrived. Molly’s eyes opened as she saw who it was
that led her pony into the yard. A dozen questions leaped to her
mind. She even looked about for Johnny. What could the Basque be
doing here?

Five minutes of heated conversation with Tony told her what she
wanted to know.

“As long as I live,” she advised him, “I shall never again trust a
Basque. That Johnny wronged you unintentionally doesn’t enter into
it. He thought so much of you. You were pals. Humph, pals! A pal
sticks right or wrong.” Molly turned back to the house. “I hope your
horse throws you and breaks your wretched neck,” she hurled at him
for a parting shot.

Tony winced. He had received more than he had bargained for, but he
was game. He clucked his tongue to show his utter contempt for
Johnny Dice.

Infuriated, Molly slammed the door behind her. The old man had seen
this pass-at-arms, and although he had heard no word of it, he could
guess what had been said. He promised himself that it was only the
beginning. Before he was through Molly would be thoroughly
disillusioned as far as Johnny Dice was concerned.

Noontime brought two visitors to the Diamond-Bar—Aaron Gallup and
his “man Friday,” Tobias Gale.

Aaron made a business of loaning money at six or seven per cent on
first mortgages. Tobias saw to the details, such little matters as
the rate, for instance. He was a Dickensian character, humble to
self-effacement, but always driving a hard bargain. More than one
rancher in Ruby Valley had cause to regret Tobias.

The man moved in an aura of gloom. His was a funereal appearance,
clothes of ancient cut, once black, but long since faded to a dull
bottle-green. His coming to a ranch-house was equivalent to the
visit of the undertaker. No one knew his age, but if it were to be
guessed from his wrinkled, mummified face one would have put him
down for eighty.

Tobias was a usurer, intended from birth for his present calling.
Old Aaron had given him his opportunity and he rewarded the coroner
with faithful service.

Gallup no longer rode in a saddle. He had a weatherbeaten old
buckboard and a pair of mean-eyed mustangs to get him about. This
turnout, when not in use by Aaron, served Tobias. So the rig and its
span of ponies came to be associated with bad luck, hard times and
overdue interest money. That is, it did when only one of the
precious pair adorned it. Whenever Aaron and Tobias appeared
together it meant more than overdue payments; it spelled
foreclosure!

Jackson Kent thought of this as he caught sight of the two men.

“Howdy!” Gallup called as he pulled up his team.

“What are you two birds of prey doin’ here today?” Kent called
jestingly as he walked out to the rig. “Ain’t come to foreclose?”

Tobias cackled at his pleasantry. Gallup chose to be more serious.
“Wouldn’t be so bold as that about it,” he said. “Just come to talk
things over a little. Saw some of your boys a ways back. I seen
Madeiras as we turned in. What’s he doin’ here?”

“Back on his job,” Kent grinned. “He had more sense than you allowed
him.”

“Glad to hear it,” Gallup answered. “Where’s that rearin’, tearin’
Dice person? Bet he ain’t back.”

“He’ll never git back! Where he is or what he’s doin’ don’t interest
me. Hey, you, Charlie Paul!” Kent called to his Piute teamster.
“Take care of this team.”

The three men entered Kent’s office as the Indian led away the
horses.

“Well, what you got on your mind, Aaron?” the cowman asked when they
were seated.

“Two or three things. Come to think of it, that remark of yours
about foreclosin’ wa’n’t so wide of the mark, only it ain’t a matter
of money—that is, not exactly—that I’m thinkin’ about. To be right
truthful, Jackson, it’s a promise of yours I came to foreclose on.”

“In regard to the notes?”

“No-o-o. In regard to the girl.”

“Molly?”

“You guessed it. Last time I was here, some four months ago, you
promised me you’d talk to her. I ain’t forgot how she treated me,
but I don’t carry no grudges. I’m here today to ask her again.”

Kent’s face fell as he heard the man declare himself.

“Ain’t been four months, has it?” he asked.

“Four months to the day,” Gallup stated. “That’s correct, ain’t it,
Toby?”

Aaron’s factotum nodded his head.

“Don’t seem so long as that to me,” Jackson said unhappily. “Maybe
we’d better talk this over just between the two of us,” he
suggested.

“No-o-o. Toby knows my dark side. I ain’t got no secrets from him.”

“Your dark side, eh?” Kent queried. “I’ve heard tell as how you were
pretty well tanned all over, Aaron.”

“No doubt. When a man owes you money, he can find a lot to tell
about you. I don’t mean that personal. You know how it is—men borrow
money and then they don’t want to pay it back. Makes a hard name for
the folks what does the lendin’. Speakin’ of money, it just reminds
me that I’ve got close to a hundred thousand dollars out on interest
now. Toby can give you the exact figgers. That ought to make a
little difference with the girl.”

“Won’t make no difference with her,” Kent declared. “She’s always
known her own mind; but even so, she’s changed since you saw her
last. She defied me yesterday for the first time in her life. The
girl’s bewitched. She thinks she’s in love with Johnny Dice.”

“You ain’t tellin’ me any news,” Gallup muttered. “I been suspectin’
that this long time—another reason why I’m here today. You better
tell her I’ve come. I want to talk to her.”

Kent got to his feet uneasily. Biting the ends of his mustache he
took a turn around his desk.

“Man, I can’t do it!” he exclaimed at last. “This, on top of what we
were through yesterday, will turn her against me for life.”

“Well, Jackson, a promise is a promise. You don’t want to forget
that in more ways than one you owe this ranch to me. It was me who
gave you a start. Whenever you needed help you’ve always come to me.
I’m old, I know. I ain’t askin’ her to love me. Love is for young
bucks.

“I’m a man of means, now. Mrs. Aaron Gallup will be a somebody in
this country long after I’ve cashed in. She’s got youth, she’s
pretty, and that’s what I want. When we run down to Frisco folk’ll
turn and look twice at her; like as not they’ll have pictures in the
papers, too, of her and me. We’ll let ’em know we’re somebody. And
that’s what I want. It’s what I’ve been wantin’ all the years I’ve
been savin’ pennies and cheatin’ myself out of things no man should
be without.”

“But it’s sellin’ her,” Kent groaned. “Sellin’ her like she was a
slave. Maybe I’ve been dreamin’ my dreams too. What’s goin’ to
happen to me, an old man, without her? I’ve slaved and cheated
myself even as you have. It was for her. Don’t smile at me like
that. You’re hearin’ the truth. Damn it, I tell you, I’ll let you
cut off my right arm before I’ll see her your wife.”

“Well, now, I don’t know about that,” Gallup drawled menacingly.
“Right arms ain’t so precious. Maybe you’re forgettin’ that I’m
holding your paper for thirty thousand dollars. It’s overdue, too.
The way the market is, don’t seem as if there’d be much chance of
your payin’ up right off.”

“The ranch is worth five times the amount I owe you.”

“Of course, of course. Tobias consented to the loans, didn’t he?
Toby don’t get over his head.”

“Are you puttin’ it flat to me, then, that you git my girl, or else
you foreclose on my paper?”

“You understand me perfectly, Jackson.”

“Well, then, foreclose, and to hell with you!” Kent roared, supreme
for the moment.

Gallup did not move, neither did his eyes leave Jackson’s face. A
minute passed before he spoke.

“Yes? You’re goin’ to make a pauper out of her, eh, so Dice can put
himself in her class and run off with her? You’d better reconsider.
Toby and me’ll go outside and look around the place while you do.”




                            CHAPTER XVII

                           GALLUP’S PRICE


Kent slunk into his chair as they left him. He had foreseen this
day, but events had so happened since the steer-shipping as to leave
his mind no time to worry about it. But now, by comparison, Johnny
Dice and his evil genius seemed of minor importance. Not for a
second did Kent think of begging off. He knew Gallup too well.

Yes, and Gallup knew Jackson Kent. Five years before this he would
not have dared to beard him as he had done this day. But Kent was no
longer the man of old. The last two years had been too much for the
cattleman. Every ounce of his energy had gone into fighting the
perverse fate which lately seemed to pursue all cattlemen.

So, while Kent drank the dregs of despair, Aaron and Tobias wandered
about, confident that old Jackson would back down. What was left of
the man’s fighting spirit might disintegrate slowly, but time would
accomplish it.

Half an hour sufficed—thirty minutes of life which Jackson Kent
would never forget. Slow of step and heavy of heart he made his way
to Molly’s room.

The girl glanced sharply at him as she noted his nervousness.

“We’ve got visitors,” the old man began.

“Madeiras, you mean,” Molly exclaimed. “What is he doing here?”

“Begged me for a job. Hobe needs him, so I let him come.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that he was the man you had found to bring
out my pony?”

“I don’t know, Molly. The two of us are at swords’ points all the
time lately. I knew if I told you that Tony had broken with Dice,
that you’d think I’d had somethin’ to do with it. The Basque came to
me; I didn’t seek him out. But no matter, it ain’t Madeiras I’m
referrin’ to now; it’s Gallup and Tobias Gale. Maybe you can guess
what Gallup wants. It breaks my heart to tell you.”

“Oh, father, father!” Molly cried. “Do I have to go through with
that again? I promise you I’ll kill myself before I’ll marry that
man.”

“I begged off the last time he was here,” the old man wailed. “I
can’t do it today. You don’t know it, but Gallup’s holdin’ my paper
for thirty thousand dollars. It’s overdue. He’s demandin’ his money
or you. I told him to foreclose, and he laughed at me. He doesn’t
want the money, little girl. It’s you he’s aimin’ to take away from
me.

“When he was here four months ago, I told him I’d try to talk you
into marryin’ him. I hadn’t no intention of doin’ that. I figured
prices were goin’ up and that come shippin’ time they be high enough
to give me the cash to square up with him. The market didn’t go
thata-way, though. Now he wants me to trade you like a slave so that
I can keep the ranch. And that after tellin’ me he’s got over a
hundred thousand out at from six per cent up. What am I goin’ to do?
Tell me that, little girl, what am I goin’ to do?”

The old man choked over his words, and turned his head away as tears
filled his eyes.

Unable to control herself, Molly threw her arms about his neck.
“Buck up, father,” she pleaded. “Let me talk to him. He’ll not
frighten me.”

Molly was as good as her word.

“Tell that man to leave the room,” she ordered, pointing to Tobias.
“What I have to say to you I’ll not say before him. Make him go!”

Tobias went.

“Now Aaron Gallup,” Molly rushed on, “just what have you come to
say?”

Aaron steeled himself for his answer. “I’ve come to ask you to marry
me,” he said.

“You have, eh? Have you forgotten what I told you the last time you
were here? Do you think you are less unlovely to me today than you
were then?”

“Reckon not,” Aaron mumbled. “Looks ain’t my long suit. Looks in a
man ain’t worth nothin’. It’s wimmen that needs looks—wimmen like
you. You got looks enough for both of us.”

“You are a fool!” the girl exclaimed angrily. “No wonder Johnny Dice
laughed at you. When he finds out who killed Crosbie Traynor he’ll
show you out of Shoshone County for the imbecile that you are!”

“Crosbie Traynor?” Aaron asked, eyes narrowing.

“Yes, Crosbie Traynor! You didn’t even know the man’s name. Johnny
has only begun. He won’t give up until he can prove who killed that
man.”

“So?” Aaron questioned provokingly. “You seem to be partial to
Johnny Dice. Your father tells me you think you’re in love with
him.”

“Father knows more than I do if he told you that. But when I compare
Johnny Dice with such as you I’m almost convinced that I do love
him.”

“Then I suppose you ain’t goin’ to listen to your father.” Gallup
shook his head pityingly. “Too bad. He’s worked hard for you. It’ll
kill him to lose this place, and lose it he will if you keep on.
Children ain’t like they used to be. Time was when a girl did as her
father asked.”

Molly turned questioningly to Jackson Kent.

“Father!” she queried. “Are you asking me to marry this man?”

Jackson wiped his eyes.

“I don’t know, Molly,” he said with a sigh. “Would it be too hard on
yuh? Gallup’s got money; you’d have everything you’d want.”

“So you would,” Aaron hastened to supplement. “I ain’t askin’ for
love. I’d treat you kind. Ain’t nothin’ I wouldn’t do for you.”

“Oh, I don’t want to seem ungrateful or be disloyal, or go back on
my own flesh and blood; but in my heart I believe you are both
against me. If I refuse to marry this man I condemn my father to
poverty; and if I take him I condemn my own soul. Oh, God, what am I
to do?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about my soul if I was you,” Aaron
confided to her. “Souls have a way of takin’ care of themselves.
They ain’t under any expense.”

“What a fitting estimate of yourself, Aaron Gallup!” Molly cried
scathingly. “No! I shall not marry you. Never! I will repay my
father even as he paid me—with my youth. He toiled and slaved for
me; I’ll do the same. If we lose the ranch I’ll work as no woman
ever worked before—nothing shall be too hard for me; but I will not
marry _you_!”

Gallup got to his feet. “You think it over tonight,” he advised.
“Your father’ll see that you don’t run away. I’ll be back tomorrow
for my answer. And I’ll have a deputy sheriff and a minister with
me. It will be up to you to decide which man we’ll need.”




                           CHAPTER XVIII

                       “KILL HIM, THE THIEF!”


Late evening of the day on which he had left, Winnemucca saw Johnny
encamped on the North Fork for the night. Early the following
morning he breakfasted on trout and flap-jacks and essayed going
over the hills in an airline to the Reservation.

The creek was soon left behind. On the high rimrocks and hills above
it there was no trail, and the boy spent tedious hours in picking
out his way. At high noon he began dropping into the valley.

He had no plan of procedure, so quite naturally he first made for
the Agency. The Agent was not there; but he found Bill Ames, the
post trader, at home. Bill had seen no strangers in the last week or
two. Maybe Thunder Bird had. Indians never talked much. Johnny could
ask him. The old chief and his sons were killing rabbits down below.

Down below Johnny went.

“How, chief?” he greeted the old man, a creature of unassailable
dignity even in his rags. “You catch ’em rabbits, eh?”

“Nah! Boy catch ’em. Me too old.”

There was a note of resignation in the old chief’s answer quite
beyond what the words themselves convey. Men said that Thunder Bird
remembered the Forty-Niners and the Donner party. It might have been
even as they said, for there was a look in the chief’s eyes as old
as the beginning of time.

Johnny spread his blanket and beckoned to the aged Indian to be
seated. This formality accomplished, the boy opened a tin of tobacco
and poured its contents on to the blanket. With his fingers he
divided it. Not in equal portions. Oh, no! As he originally poured
the piles they were approximately even, but without glancing up the
boy kept on transferring small pinches of the tobacco from his own
to the chief’s portion until Thunder Bird’s share was four times
Johnny’s.

Then he produced cigarette papers, and from his share rolled
cigarettes for the old man. To attempt to describe the expression on
Thunder Bird’s face as he watched Johnny would be wasted effort. The
chief’s hair was white, his face gaunt, shriveled; his jaws
toothless; if such a combination can mirror the innocence of
childhood it was achieved in the old Piute.

In back of him, at a respectable distance, Thunder Bird’s squaw sat,
expressionless, watching the dumb show.

“_Hé_,” the old man grunted at last. “Mebbe you come look for mine
this time.”

“No look for mine, Thunder Bird. Look for stranger—white man. You
see him on Reservation last two moons?”

The Indian did not answer for several minutes. Then:

“No see um stranger.”

“Rode a stallion, big horse—a roan,” Johnny persisted.

“Spanish horse, eh?”

“That’s it—Spanish.”

“Mebbe I see um.” A pause, and then a shrug of the shoulders. “No
can tell. Too old. Why you want um? Steal horse?”

Johnny tried hard to conceal his impatience.

“No steal ’em horse,” he answered. Johnny spread his fingers, palms
up. “Him friend—_un ladrón le ha muerto_!”

“Ah, nah—dead?”

For an instant the old chief’s eyes seemed to lose their guile.
Johnny’s pulse quickened at what he thought was a note of concern in
Thunder Bird’s voice.

“Dead,” he repeated. “Maybe you see him, Thunder Bird?”

“Mebbe so boy see um,” the chief countered. “You come tomorrow, eh?”

Johnny knew it would be useless to urge haste. Tomorrow he would
have his answer and not sooner. It would be an answer worth waiting
for. If Thunder Bird had known Traynor and had had a hand in his
death, then he would deny everything tomorrow. If Traynor had been
his friend, the Indian would speak out. If neither of these
suppositions were true, it followed that Thunder Bird’s runners
would comb the Reservation. If Traynor had set foot in Elk Valley
the Piute chief would know by morning.

Johnny went back to the store to eat supper with the trader and to
spend the evening in his company. Just before he reached the post he
came face to face with Charlie Paul, Kent’s teamster.

The Indian had come to the Reservation from the ranch, a distance of
sixty miles, in less than four hours. A fair bit of riding when one
considers the country over which he traveled. The effort left the
man calm, unhurried. He had stolen away and surmised that he came on
an urgent errand, but no trace of excitement was on his face.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Molly had appeared soon after Gallup’s departure, and upon asking
for her pony, had been told that she was not to leave the house.
Angry words followed, and Molly, defying the old man, had set off at
a brisk walk for the hills.

Kent called to Madeiras to follow her and keep her in sight until
she came home. The command to the Basque was enough to dissuade the
girl. She preferred being locked in her room to being spied upon by
Madeiras. Later she became aware of the Basque’s presence on the
porch outside her window. Kent worked in his office, door open.
Molly saw that she was a prisoner. And why a prisoner unless she was
to be forced to marry Gallup?

This very day Molly had denied that she loved Johnny, but it was of
him that she thought now. If any one could save her, he could. If
she could get word to him, he’d come.

It was the old man’s habit to fall asleep after dinner. The girl
waited and listened for the sound of his asthmatic snoring. She had
penned a note to Johnny. When she felt sure that the way to the rear
of the house was open to her she crept out and found Charlie Paul.
Her instructions to him were brief and without any definite
destination. Johnny was somewhere on the Reservation. Charlie Paul
would know how to find him.

Ten minutes later the Piute had streaked away from the Diamond-Bar.
In the eyes of the law he had stolen the horse which he rode; his
job was gone, and he was on the side of danger—all of this just to
repay the girl for the respect she had always shown him. Pretty good
stuff, that, for an Indian.

“Hello, you, Charlie Paul!” Johnny called.

Charlie Paul smiled. “How?” he grunted. “Me find you.”

“Find me? How come?”

Charlie grinned as he handed Molly’s letter to Johnny. He was an
Indian, but he knew a thing or two.

Johnny lost his happy-go-lucky air as he read the following brief
note:

    “Johnny:

    “I am a prisoner here at the ranch. Aaron Gallup came
    today. Father insists that I marry him. The man is
    coming back tomorrow with a minister.

    “Madeiras is here, too, the traitor! If Charlie Paul
    finds you I know you will come.

                                                  “Molly.”

“Good boy, you, Charlie Paul,” Johnny said warmly, laying a hand
upon the Indian’s arm. “You savvy what’s up?”

“Pretty well me savvy.”

“Plenty fight comin’,” Johnny told him. “Shots, kill maybe—all
right, you?”

“All right, me,” Charlie said simply.

“You got rifle?” the boy asked anxiously.

“Me got um. On North Fork.”

“Hide out, eh? Buried?”

“_Hé_,” Charlie laughed mockingly. “I find um.”

Indeed, Charlie Paul was no fool. White men were not taking away his
gun. He had it where he could reach it when needed.

“We go now?” the Indian asked.

“No, Charlie. Horse too tired. Picket the ponies. We eat and sleep.
Moonup we go. Save horses, keep him fresh. Breakfast time we come by
ranch. Ride like hell then. You savvy?”

“Me savvy.”

For the time being Johnny gave up any thought of old Thunder Bird or
Crosbie Traynor. He cursed aloud whenever he thought of Molly
married to Gallup. Well, it would never come to pass. Not if he had
to kill the man.

After sundown they rode to the trader’s store and bought supplies
enough to last them a week. Before twilight was over they were out
of Elk Valley and heading for the North Fork. Sunup found them
hovering close to the ranch. Rose Creek, a branch of the North Fork,
flowed past the house. As usual with desert creeks, its course was
marked by a screening of willows and buckthorn. In this cover Johnny
left Charlie Paul with their ponies and a led one which the Indian
had obtained from the old chief.

“A minute or two after the breakfast bells rings,” the boy told the
Indian, “I’m goin’ to crawl up to the house. You stay here. You keep
me in range. Some man may stop me. If I raise my hand—like this—you
shoot. Right?”

“_Bueno_,” Charlie answered. “Like that”—he imitated Johnny’s
signal—“and I shoot.”

In a few minutes the Chinese cook rang his gong and the men began
trooping from the bunkhouse for their morning meal. Johnny waited no
longer. On his hands and knees he began crawling through the
sagebrush.

Fifteen minutes later he had reached the front porch, the floor of
which was a good foot above the ground. Noiselessly he crept beneath
it. From this shelter he stuck out a long willow gad and began
tapping on the window of Molly’s room.

The girl had been awake most of the night, and it did not take long
for this repeated tapping to draw her attention.

“Johnny!” she gasped as she caught sight of the boy’s face
protruding from the space below the porch.

“Get dressed quickly!” he ordered. “Don’t take over ten minutes.”

And, turtle-like, Johnny drew in his head and left Molly to jump
into her clothes. She whistled to him softly when she was ready.

“Come through the window,” he bade her. A second later she stood on
the porch beside him.

“Charlie’s in the willows with horses,” he said tersely. “You streak
it now. I’ll stop them if they catch sight of you.”

Just a clasp of the hands and she was gone. She had covered more
than half of the distance to the creek before Johnny started to
follow her. He had not taken twenty steps when the front door flew
open and Kent dashed out, gun in hand.

“You freeze where you are or I’ll blow your head off!” the old man
roared.

Johnny tarried not, but sped away as Kent’s gun barked again and
again. Johnny turned and fired over his shoulder as he ran. Molly
was at the creek. A second or two ought to see her mounted. Dropping
to his knees, Johnny emptied his pistol at the house.

The firing had brought twenty men to the old man’s side. Johnny
could hear him yelling:

“He’s stealin’ my girl! Kill him! Kill him! The thief!”

The bullets began kicking up the dust at Johnny’s feet. He had to
run for it now.

“Let’s ride!” he cried as he made the trees. “They’re goin’ for
their horses. We won’t have five minutes’ start on ’em.”

The drumming of their ponies’ hoofs upon the hard-packed road told
Kent that they had got away.

“Where are we heading for?” Molly cried as they raced along.

“God knows!” Johnny called to her. “Idaho, maybe. To the North Fork
first, and then that old stage trail to Boise. I figured we could
slip away and cross the line on the run. Can’t do it now! There’s an
old mine tunnel near the trail where it drops down the Tuscaroras.
We’ll hole up there till night. Got food and water there.”

Molly was crying, even though she rode at a breakneck pace.

“Don’t—don’t let them take me back,” she begged.

“They won’t!” Johnny cried grimly. “You’ll never marry Aaron Gallup!
I’ll see to that.”




                            CHAPTER XIX

                        “COME AND GET HIM!”


Long before Johnny’s party made the hills they could see that they
were closely followed. The dust cloud in back of them came on apace.
For an hour the fugitives held their advantage. After that the
pursuers’ fresh horses began to gain.

“You think we make the mine?” Johnny cried to Charlie Paul.

Charlie weighed his answer before delivering it. “Mebbe, I guess we
make um.”

The Indian patted his rifle and pulled up his horse. Johnny nodded.
In another second they had left Charlie far behind. Johnny strained
his ears for sound of the Indian’s firing. It came, then, a quick
_rat-tat-tat-tat_! Other guns began to roar. The cañon which Johnny
and Molly were ascending began to echo and reëcho the shooting.

They kept on, Molly half mad, Johnny watching their horses. Some
time later Charlie Paul caught up with them, his horse dripping
lather.

“We make um mine now,” he said with a grin.

They still had ten long, uphill miles ahead of them. Johnny began to
believe they would make it. But what about tonight? The horses they
rode would have to face the test again then. The boy knew they would
never meet it.

Better to drive them now to their last ounce of endurance and make
sure of temporary safety.

“Give ’em the spurs!” he cried. “Crowd ’em!”

With it all they were none too soon. Ten minutes after they had
entered the mine, their horses ahead of them, the posse swung around
the bend below.

“They can’t be dumb enough to miss us,” Johnny grumbled. “Some of
them may go by; but they’ll be back. We’ll fight it out here.”

Charlie and he crawled out upon the tailings from the mine, and
there, flat on their stomachs, they watched the men swarming below
them.

“Spotted us first crack,” the boy said with a growl. “I knew it!
Couldn’t fool old Hobe. He savvies this country.”

“Me shoot now?” Charlie questioned.

“No, not now. By and by we shoot. They won’t smoke us out of here in
a hurry.”

Down below the men were spreading out fanwise. Johnny caught
glimpses of them as they moved from cover to cover. They had sent
their horses down the cañon.

Charlie Paul glanced at Johnny. He understood the movement below.
The pursuers were circling them. Being an Indian, Charlie knew that
it was very bad to wait for that circle to close. Death was usually
the price of it.

“No good wait,” he argued. “No use shoot bimeby.”

“Let ’em shoot first,” Johnny counseled. “They used to be my
friends. Reckon they ain’t now. When we shoot we’ll shoot to kill.”

Half an hour passed without a gun being fired. Johnny felt
reasonably safe. The mine was perched on the side of the mountain
high above the surrounding country. In front of the tunnel the
ground fell away rapidly to a small flat seventy-five yards below.
Across this flat the attack would eventually come.

Kent might surround the mountain and thus cut off his quarry’s
escape, but Johnny did not worry about being ambushed from behind.
Only a mountain sheep could climb up those walls of basalt.

Kent must have come to the same conclusion, for his forces began to
close in on the flat. Stuffy Tyler made it first. Johnny’s gun
barked as the man started to dash across the flat. Tyler crawled
back to shelter behind a bowlder.

“Next man who tries that gets killed,” Johnny yelled.

The word brought Molly to the boy’s side. He pulled her down. “Don’t
stand thata-way,” he warned her.

“Is there going to be killing here, Johnny?” Molly asked chokingly.

“Reckon there’s certain to be.”

“Father’s down there. I—I wouldn’t want him killed—”

“He’ll have to look out for himself,” Johnny said without a second’s
hesitancy. “It’s me or him. This thing goes through to a finish this
time. You go back in the tunnel a ways. There’ll be shootin’
directly.”

Dismissed, beside herself with worry and hopelessness, Molly crawled
back to safety. In her heart there was no malice toward Johnny. He
was in danger at her request. It made him the master. He was
fighting for her!

Her deductions were as primitive as a cave-woman’s. Likewise, they
were uncommonly sound.

Kent had his forces in position now, and from behind bowlders a half
dozen men dashed for the flat. Charlie Paul did not wait for
Johnny’s permission to fire. Johnny’s gun began flashing, too. Two
men with arms limp at their sides scurried back. Three others,
uninjured, followed them. One man—Stub Rawlings—lay face upward in
the open, pawing the ground with his legs, one of which had a hole
shot through it.

“Better take care of him, Hobe,” Johnny cried. “Git him out of the
way. Just you alone does the job.”

Stalwart, unafraid, big Hobe walked into view.

“Good God, Johnny!” he shouted. “Are you crazy? I’d sure hate to
shoot you down; but I’m goin’ to if you don’t give in. What’re you
goin’ to do with that girl?”

“Marry her, if she’ll have me.”

The foreman swore a terrible oath. “You can’t steal a girl like
that.”

“Hell I can’t!” Johnny roared. “She’s here, ain’t she?”

“Will you give up if we let you go?” Ferris demanded.

“Ain’t no givin’ up this time, Hobe. Don’t you be so sad about me.”

“You damn fool! You pore damn fool!” he repeated over and over again
as he went downhill, Stub in his arms.

There came another lull. And then reënforcements arrived for
Kent—Gallup, and no less a person than Jasper Roddy, the sheriff of
Shoshone County; and a man Johnny did not know, the Rev. Murray
Whitaker.

There was a prodigious amount of consultation soon after Gallup
arrived. The boy could see them surrounding Aaron’s rig. The upshot
of it was the ascent of the sheriff to the little flat.

“You hear me, there?” Roddy demanded.

“I hear you all right,” Johnny replied. “But I don’t like your
voice.”

“You’re under arrest,” the sheriff bawled. “Shootin’ with intent to
kill, and five or six other things. I want that horse-stealin’ Injun
what’s with you, too.”

“I’d admire to see you git him,” Johnny laughed. “I always had a
hankerin’ to see just how yellow you was.”

“Well, you hear me. I’ve sworn in each one of these men as my
deputies. We’re goin’ to get you! You’re defyin’ the law now.”

“Don’t you scare me thata-way,” Johnny answered sarcastically.
“You’d better stay in the rear of your deputies, Roddy, or this
mountain will be your monument, and it’d be a shame to waste one as
big as this on you.”

Roddy withdrew and appeared in no hurry to close in on his
prisoners. This Dice boy was thoroughly disconcerting.

Kent and Gallup tried to insist on storming the mine at once, but
wily Jasper Roddy could see no sense in wasting life when it would
be easier—and safer—to starve the fugitives into submission.

The morning passed without another shot being fired. The sun,
uncomfortably warm for October, began searching the lower cañon and
finally drove the posse into the shadow of a ledge which cut them
off from Johnny’s vision.

Charlie Paul and the boy dozed in turn as the afternoon wore on.
Molly, stoical now, boiled coffee and fried bacon for them.

They knew they were closely watched. The westering sun, glinting on
polished rifle barrels, betrayed the stalkers.

Evening came on, and with it the acrid smell of burning sagebrush as
the posse prepared its supper. The first thrill of the man hunt had
worn off, and Kent’s men were bad-tempered.

Madeiras was there, stretched out upon the ground, half asleep.
Gallup had been studying him for some time when the Basque, feeling
the man’s eyes on him, sat up and stared insolently at the coroner.

“Guess you ain’t sorry you’re down here,” Aaron growled.

“You bat my life on that,” Tony answered with a grin. “We catch
those fellow pretty soon.”

“Catch ’em? Who wants to catch ’em? If Roddy had any guts he’d march
up there and shoot ’em down. Johnny Dice ain’t worth a cent to me
alive.”

“He mak’ lot of trouble, heem.”

“You said it, Madeiras! He ain’t licked till he’s in the ground.”

“Johnny ain’t worth a cent to you alive; how much he worth daid,
_señor_?”

Aaron’s head came up at that and he studied the Basque’s face
without answering. Then:

“What you drivin’ at?”

“Mebbe man get up those rocks in back of heem, eh?”

“You mean you?”

“Mebbe me,” Tony muttered.

“You show him to me, dead, and there’ll be plenty _dinero_ for you,
Madeiras.”

“Perhaps so, I go to jail, too.”

“Not a chance. Roddy’s sworn you in. If that idiot resists arrest,
blow his head off and the law’ll back you up.”

Tony did not appear to view the prospect with any degree of faith.

“Law no good for Basque,” he stated. “Plenty Basque in jail.”

“Not if I’m for you,” argued Gallup.

“How I know you be for me?”

“I’m for you if you mean business. Why, here”—and Aaron drew from
his pocket a buckskin bag, and undoing the draw-string, held the
purse out to the Basque—“run your fingers through that! All gold,
all twenties. Five hundred. It’s yours if you go through with this.”

Tony sent his fingers deep into the bag. A crafty light came into
Gallup’s eyes as the man felt the precious metal. Tony’s face was
working strangely. The coroner thought he read greed—success for
himself in it.

But the Basque’s fingers were not caressing the gold pieces. They
were searching for something more precious than money.

For weeks he had been yearning to put his fingers in that very
purse. Why? A child’s whim. At least the reasoning behind the desire
was no more intelligent or logical than a child’s.

The swarthy-faced one’s teeth gleamed as he touched that mysterious
thing for which he searched. A thrill passed through his arm. He was
holding the gold snake Crosbie Traynor had worn on his hat band!

Reluctantly, Tony withdrew his hand.

“I do thees thing for you,” he muttered. “The boy ees young, he ees
in luff—the great passion ees on heem. Eet ees bad to keel a man,
then. You—you’re ole; luff ees not for you. But I do thees thing. I
get up there. You tell Kent to keep hees men from shoot me?”

“I’ll ’tend to that,” Gallup said, excitedly, as he put away the
purse.

“All right, I go; but thees purse, I tak’ heem now!”

It was on Aaron’s tongue to demur, to refuse point blank; but why be
cautious? He had gold pieces enough to fill many bags. What were
five hundred dollars weighed against Molly Kent? With Johnny Dice
out of the way the future was unclouded.

“Don’t you double-cross me,” Gallup warned as he passed the purse to
the Basque.

Tony did not even reply. He was gone before Aaron had caught his
breath. When he had control of himself he called to Kent and the
sheriff.

“Madeiras has gone to bring them in,” he told them. “He’s goin’ up
in back of the mine. You pass the word that he’s not to be picked
off from below.”

“The skunk!” Hobe growled when Kent told him what was happening. “I
wouldn’t blame the boys if they did drill him. You know how they
feel toward him. Better not say anythin’ to them.”

It took the Basque more than an hour to get to the top. He made his
plans as he moved, and they were admirable. What Charlie Paul would
do was his one worry.

Molly was the first to become aware of Madeiras’ presence. He was
twenty-five yards above the mine at the time, wriggling along on his
stomach. The girl could not move for a second, and as she stood
dumfounded she saw Tony roll a small bit of rock in Johnny’s
direction. It caught the boy’s attention about the same instant that
he saw the girl’s signals. Charlie Paul had swung his rifle around
so that it covered the Basque. Johnny knocked it down.

“Don’t shoot,” he warned. “The Basque’s all right.”

“All right?” Molly questioned. “Didn’t he turn his back on you?”

“You don’t understand. He went to the ranch on my say-so.”

With his hand the boy beckoned to Madeiras to come down. “Keep low
when you cross the tailin’s,” Johnny told him. “They’ll git you from
below if you ain’t careful.”

The boy thought, of course, that Tony had stolen away from Kent’s
camp to make his stand with the three of them. He knew he would have
done the same thing had the tables been turned.

Imagine his surprise when he saw the Basque kick the Indian’s rifle
over the edge of the dump and heard himself ordered to throw up his
hands.

The order was heard down below. Men were watching. The Basque made
no effort to keep out of sight.

Molly moaned as she saw how Johnny had been fooled by the
treacherous Madeiras. Charlie Paul was crawling after his gun.
Johnny for once in his life was speechless. He tried to lift his
arms, but his muscles would not obey.

The Basque’s gun was not more than three feet from Johnny’s head.
The two men were permitted a second in which to stare into each
other’s eyes.

The Basque said something. What was it? Madeiras was moving his
lips. He was whispering to him, but so low that Molly, even as close
as she was, did not hear. Johnny caught the words then. It was a
command!

The next instant the Basque’s gun roared. Johnny’s arms went up
convulsively. His body whirled, seemed to lose its balance, and for
a second swayed crazily over the edge of the dump. Molly screamed
and ran to catch him, but the boy was gone. She could see him
careening down the tailings, a trail of blood in his wake.

The weight of Johnny’s body set the loose rock in motion. His fall
had sent a small avalanche ahead of him, and now he rode upon a
moving sea of quartz and feldspar.

The direction in which the rock was falling was away from the men
below. Molly saw the almost impenetrable cañon toward which the body
was dashing. She closed her eyes and turned away. But she could not
shut from her ears the roaring of that grinding, splintering mass of
rock.

Clouds of dust arose and hung over the lower cañon long after the
noise had ceased.

Madeiras climbed out to the edge of the dump. It was twilight, but
he could see the men below. They were running about, shouting, and
waving their arms. Gallup and Kent and the sheriff were bunched
together. The Basque shook his fist at them.

“There he ees, Gallup,” he shouted. “You can come and get heem now!”




                             CHAPTER XX

                            WITHOUT PAY


“Git him?” the crowd yelled. “We’ll git you, you bosco—you
white-livered whelp—you low-down, ornery—”

And they meant it, too!

“Git your rope, Stuffy,” some one cried. “We’ll give that hombre a
ride.”

Gallup and Kent glanced at Hobe. The big foreman’s face was black
with hatred. “Come on,” they heard him grumble; “we’re goin’ up
there.”

“He only did what he was told to do,” the sheriff hurried to
explain. “I swore him in. He’s within the law.”

“Law?” Hobe’s jaw looked dangerous. “Ain’t no law that’ll let a man
murder his pal. To hell with your law! We’re goin’ to git him!”

Roddy’s face paled at the crowd’s answer to this statement. Kent,
however, was less frightened.

“I’m tellin’ you, boys,” the old man cried. “Ain’t no man workin’
for me that touches that Basque. I wanted my girl. He got her for
me.”

“Well, I’m tellin’ you, Kent,” Hobe ground out, “it’s either me or
the Basque. We don’t ride the same range after this.”

There wasn’t even the smallest bit of bluff about this. Kent
realized it, too. He could ill afford to lose Hobe. “The Basque’ll
go, then,” he said grudgingly, “but I’ll not see him hung.”

“And what do you think he’d do to the girl if the crowd of you
started up there?” Roddy inquired. “If he’s what you think he is,
he’d fix her.”

“Let all of you stay back,” Kent cried, elbowing his way to Gallup’s
side. “The two of us will go up. I want my girl, and I’ll git her
unharmed. What Roddy says is so. You’re only makin’ a damned
nuisance out of yourself with this talk of hangin’. Come on,
Gallup!”

For a moment Kent was master. He was again the tyrant of bygone
days.

Madeiras was keenly alive to his danger. He had sent Charlie Paul on
his way; Molly was heaping coals of fire upon the Basque’s head, but
the thing which held Tony’s attention was that angry murmur from
below. He recognized the sounds. He had seen men hanged!

With a sigh of relief he saw Gallup and Kent break from the crowd
and start toward him. When they reached the upper side of the little
flat the Basque called to them:

“You drop those gun before you come any closer!”

“I want my daughter!” Kent answered.

“Thass always right wit’ me, _señor_; but those gun—they stay
behin’.”

“Humor the fool,” Gallup cried, throwing his rifle into the sage.
“We want the girl, and I want to see Dice’s body.”

Unarmed, therefore, they climbed to the entrance of the mine.
Madeiras met them with a surly laugh.

“Where is she?” Kent demanded.

Tony pointed to a pile of blankets upon which Molly lay sobbing.
Kent knelt beside her, his bony fingers shaking as he caressed her
hair.

“Come, Molly,” he begged, “we’ll git you home.”

Molly turned from him angrily.

“Don’t touch me,” she cried. “Your hands are as red as that beast’s
there. I didn’t believe you could stoop to this.”

“Now, now,” Kent pleaded, “you’re all upset. I’ll——”

“You’ll do nothing for me!” Molly raised her hand and pointed at
Gallup. “You two men may take me away from here; you may make me go
to the ranch, and even marry me off; but you’ll do it by force!
Father—I think I despise you. I see now why you got Madeiras to come
back. It was nicely worked out. Well, I know where I stand. I’m no
longer the fool.”

The girl was hysterical. The old man thought she would fall, so
helplessly did she sway from side to side.

“My own father—my own flesh and blood,” she sobbed. “That you could
do this to me.” And with a lunge she threw herself toward the edge
of the dump over which Johnny had pitched.

Kent caught her and drew her back, a dead weight in his arms.

“She’s fainted,” he gasped.

“Won’t hurt her,” Gallup assured him. “Here’s horses; git her down
to my rig and take her home. Put her to bed and see that she don’t
try nothin’ foolish. I’m goin’ down there.” And he pointed to the
spot where he expected to find Johnny’s body. “You come along,
Madeiras. We can git down there if we take our time.”

“_Sí, I_ go; but I go alone. _Señor_, you are the coroner, not the
sheriff. Why should I go weeth you?”

“You know why,” Aaron growled.

“I know no such theeng,” Tony argued. “You geeve me five hundret
dollar. I keel him like I promise. You ought be satisfied.”

Kent’s eyes opened.

“You paid him to kill the boy?” the old man asked Aaron.

“Why not?” demanded Gallup. “We’re done with him. I want to see just
how damn dead he is, though. Come on, Madeiras; you can’t afford to
break with me.”

Tony laughed softly to himself. When Kent started downhill with
Molly the Basque motioned to Gallup, and they set off, too. Tony’s
heart was heavy. He had overplayed his hand.

The long Nevada twilight was almost over by the time the two men
reached the bottom of the little side cañon into which Johnny’s body
had shot.

“Here’s the place,” Gallup called. “Tons of rock came down. I don’t
see him, do you? Look around.”

They searched for fifteen minutes—time enough, considering the
place—without finding the body. Madeiras was wildly excited over
this. “Mebbe those rock cover heem up, eh?” he suggested,
white-lipped.

“Naw! Wasn’t he ridin’ on top of them?”

“_Sí!_ But plenty rock come after him. No blood, no not’ing, here.
When the moon come up I deeg in these rock.”

“What’s the use? If he’s buried, he’s dead enough. You can stay here
if you want to; I’m goin’ back. And I’ll trouble you to return that
five hundred. I ain’t payin’ for a dead man unless I see the body.”

“Thass so, _señor_?” the Basque inquired unpleasantly. He paused,
then: “Thees place plenty beeg enough for two daid man.”

He tossed his rifle in back of him, and with hands resting upon his
hips, he faced Gallup.

Aaron felt a shiver pass through his body. The size of those hands
froze his blood. He fancied he could feel them at his
throat—tearing, strangling, forcing the breath from his old carcass.

Gallup’s cunning did not fail him. He knew that the present was the
time for quick thinking and smooth talking.

“Why are you so down on me?” he asked, apparently going off at a
tangent.

“You ask that, _señor_?”

Madeiras’ teeth showed white and even in the half light.

“That mortgage, eh? We can adjust that. Things can be arranged.
Tobias oversteps himself now and then. But give me a little time;
I’ll fix that up. And now about the five hundred—you keep it. You’ll
be goin’ away, and you’ll be needin’ money.” Aaron rubbed his hands.
“Yes,” he repeated, “you keep that money, Tony.”

“No, _señor_,” Tony said lightly. “You have made leetla mistak’. You
tak’ those money back. But you owe me somet’ing, of course. I keep
_thees_.”

Madeiras had been running his fingers through the contents of
Gallup’s purse and now held out for Aaron’s inspection the little
gold snake Crosbie Traynor had worn on his hat band.

Gallup shrank back, his jaws working nervously. The next second he
was reaching for the little charm.

“No, _señor_,” Tony warned. “I keep eet.”

“I didn’t know it was in there,” Gallup shrieked. “It’s mine! What
in hell do you want with it?”

“Thass fonny t’ing why I want heem, _señor_. But since first time I
see those leetla snake I t’ink mebbe I lak’ to wear heem on my hat
ban’ some time.”

“What’re you talkin’ about? I’ve owned that luck piece these forty
years. Who’d you ever see wearin’ it?”

Tony grinned again.

“Mebbe those man what brought eet back to you, _señor_. He say the
man what own eet be sure recognize heem by that snake.”

“What’s that? What—what man?” Aaron babbled.

“Those man what keel himself, _señor_. Johnny Dice mebbe dead; but
me—Tony Madeiras—ees steel here! You go now.”

Aaron was in no position to dispute this.

Bent over, muttering strange words to himself, Gallup moved away, in
his ears the mocking laughter of the Basque.

Tony kept his word with Johnny. As soon as the moon came up he set
the débris in motion again. Tons and tons of small rock cascaded
down upon the mass already piled in the choked cañon, but it failed
to uncover the body of the boy.

It occurred to Madeiras, then, that Johnny might have crawled away
some distance and be lying helpless further down the cañon. He
called for the better part of ten minutes, but received no answer.

Johnny Dice was not to be found.

Hours later Gallup stumbled into Kent’s camp. Only Roddy and Tobias
and one or two others remained.

“You look as though you’d seen a ghost,” the sheriff remarked. “What
in God’s name you been up to?”

“Terrible trip,” Gallup moaned. “Too much for me.”

“Ain’t you goin’ to hold an inquest?”

“Inquest, hell!” Aaron snorted. “The man’s buried under a hundred
ton of rock. The Basque was your deputy. That ends it as far as I’m
concerned.”




                            CHAPTER XXI

                            TWO DEAD MEN


For a dead man Johnny Dice was most active at that very moment. He
was some five miles from the spot where Tony searched for his body.
He was not alone. Some one else moved through the greasewood and
sage ahead of him. Stealthily, too, Johnny felt. The two of them had
been circling each other for some time. Both were anxious to avoid
the other, but for this very reason, seemingly, their trails kept on
crossing and recrossing.

It was uncanny. Johnny thought he was being tracked. By innumerable
little deductions he knew that no animal made those sounds which
alternately retreated and advanced behind and before him. It was a
man! Who? The boy strained his eyes to catch sight of moving shadow
or strange object.

He went unrewarded. It may have been that he was less cautious than
usual. His mind was still blurred from the Basque’s shot. From the
time Madeiras had appeared upon the tailings until the present
moment, things had happened so quickly that Johnny could only grasp
the essential facts.

The boy knew that Tony had whispered: “Play dead!” The Basque’s
every movement had been made to the gallery. The next instant his
gun had flashed fire. Johnny’s fall had not been acted. Madeiras had
given him only a scalp wound, but the impact had been sufficient to
send the boy off his balance. The ride down the moving tailings had
torn Johnny’s clothing to shreds, but had not so much as scratched
his skin. The stunt under other circumstances would have been good
sport.

He had regained consciousness there in the choked cañon. The
Basque’s words had come back to him: “Play dead!”

His wound, a trivial injury, had confirmed his faith in the fact
that the shooting was a game. Madeiras was too handy with a gun to
have missed at that distance! Something had happened at the
ranch—something which would be uncovered if certain parties thought
him dead. It was plain enough to Johnny.

Feeling certain that soon some one would be searching for him, the
boy had crawled over the loose rock and made his way down the cañon
to where it opened on a high plateau.

There he had rested—and worried about Molly. What was to stop Gallup
from marrying her now? Could he depend on Tony to prevent that?
Surely the Basque would not have gone to this desperate measure
unless he was prepared to protect the girl. The boy had to stand on
something, and he chose to do it on this hypothesis. A sensible
decision.

But Johnny proceeded to make a bad mistake. Believing as he did that
Tony wanted the world to consider him dead he hoped to better
accomplish the hoax by hiding from the Basque; never for a moment
realizing that Madeiras on not finding the body would jump to the
conclusion that Johnny was buried under the avalanche of rock.

The boy’s first need was a horse. Being afoot in this country
rendered him almost helpless. Kent and his men would surely be
watching for him, so Johnny had headed for the Reservation as his
best refuge.

Half an hour back his trail had crossed that of the man out there in
the blackness. It had stopped any further thought of Molly and
Madeiras.

And now a very curious thing happened. A thud and the sound of
crackling brush to his right made Johnny turn in that direction. As
he did so some one whispered in back of him:

“Hands up!”

The other man had tossed a rock into the sage and the noise it made
as it landed had claimed the boy’s attention and left him an easy
target.

“You turn him around now,” the voice said.

Johnny did as he was bid and found himself staring at Charlie Paul.
The Indian’s eyes bulged. “You him, Johnny?” he cried.

“Charlie Paul! You damn near scairt me to death.”

“You no dead?” the Indian asked.

“Not yet, Charlie. What happened?”

It took the Indian some time to satisfy the boy’s curiosity.

“Gallup and Kent go ’way, eh?” Johnny questioned. “You sure?”

“Sure. Take horses, too. I watch; I see. All gone now.”

Johnny pondered for some minutes over the Indian’s information.

“Charlie Paul,” he said at last. “I tell you somethin’. You try
understand him, Charlie. Savvy?”

Charlie grunted his assent.

“Well,” the boy began, “everybody think I’m dead—me. You no tell.
The Basque, he good friend me. He not shoot for kill. Me and him
play game, all same like _viente y uno_, you savvy? So! By and by I
catch him man.” Johnny indicated a rope around his neck. “You no
talk, eh?”

“No talk, me.”

“Good. I go back on mine. Plenty grub, plenty water there. You take
him money. Mebbe you go Reservation; buy two horse. No tell Thunder
Bird you buy him for me. You do that, Charlie Paul?”

“I go,” said the Indian. “Mebbe so tomorrow night I be back.”

Sundown the following day found Charlie back at the mine. Johnny had
slept for hours, and soon after the Indian’s arrival he determined
to ride to the Diamond-Bar and let Molly know that he was not dead.
He could depend on her to keep his secret. To withhold the truth
from her was needless cruelty.

Johnny circled the house before he approached it. A dim light burned
in Molly’s room. Crawling to the side window he lay upon the ground
listening for some sound which would tell him she was awake. Once or
twice he fancied he heard a low sob or moan. Getting to his feet he
fastened his hands on the sill above him and began drawing up his
body so that he could see into the room.

His head and shoulders were even with the bottom of the window when
a nail tore into his forearm. The pain of it forced a moan from his
lips. It had a startling effect on the occupants of the room.

Molly was in bed; but not asleep. Old Kent sat beside her. Neither
had been aware of the boy’s nearness until that mournful cry escaped
his lips. They turned, mouths open, eyes wide.

The old man screamed as he saw Johnny. Pain and the dead weight of
his body upon his arms had put a hideous expression on the boy’s
face. His clothes were ragged, his face white, his hair uncombed.
The dim light threw shadows which only magnified his weirdness.

“Take him away! Take him away!” Kent screeched. “Don’t you see him?”
he wailed. “He’s there—in the window. Aw-w-w!” And he covered his
face with his hands to shut out the gruesome sight.

Without knowing that he did it, Johnny flung a beseeching hand
toward Molly. A shriek answered him and he saw her topple over upon
her bed. The men were running from the bunk-house. There was nothing
left for the boy to do but go.

From the cover of the willows by the creek he could see men moving
about with lanterns. Cries came to him, and above others, the sound
of Kent yelling:

“A ghost, I tell yuh! He’s come back to haunt me! Don’t laugh at me!
Don’t laugh!” And Kent’s cry rose until it broke in a fit of
choking.

“Take him inside,” came an order in Hobe’s voice. “He’s babblin’
like a child.”

The old man fought them off as they tried to lift him.

“He’s here!” he cried. “I heard him! Don’t let him git me. Molly,
Molly, I didn’t do it. Gallup paid Madeiras to kill him. I swear I
didn’t do it. I swear——”

The old man’s cries died away in a moan of anguish. The door banged
and Johnny knew that they had taken him to his room.

A cold sweat broke out on Johnny. It had never occurred to him that
this construction would be put on his appearance. Was it possible
that this was the very thing Tony had had in mind when he shot him?
The sight of him had frightened Kent out of his wits.

What would happen if he appeared before Gallup in the dead of night
in similar fashion? Gallup had paid Madeiras to murder him.

Johnny cursed Gallup as he led his horse away from the ranch.

“Reckon I’ll pay you a visit, Aaron,” he said to himself. “And right
soon, too. I may be dead, but I’ll put the fear of hell into your
miserable old carcass. You’ll be thinkin’ of somethin’ else besides
who you are goin’ to marry.”

Johnny’s one brief glance at Molly had shown him the girl tired,
grief-stricken, hysterical. He wanted to tell her, now more than
ever, that he lived; but to do so meant the loss of his best weapon
against Kent and Gallup. Better for her to suffer now than to be
forced into marrying Aaron Gallup.

Thoughts of Crosbie Traynor came to Johnny as he rode along. What
had old Thunder Bird found out? The chief would have something to
say when next they met.

“Strikes me we got quite a lot in common, Crosbie Traynor,” mused
Johnny. “The world’s got both of us figured for dead. Only I’m alive
to avenge myself.”




                            CHAPTER XXII

                       THE FACE IN THE WINDOW


Johnny surprised Charlie Paul on the following day by telling him
that they were going to Standing Rock.

“Me still dead man,” the boy said in answer to the question in the
Indian’s eyes. “We stop this side the Rock. Nobody there know I be
in your camp. Mebbe so, come night time, we go into town, play
ghost, mebbe scare some man, eh?”

Charlie grinned and shook his head. “Ah, nah,” he said, “me no
ghost.”

“I be the ghost, Charlie,” Johnny told him. “Gallup paid Tony to git
me. I’m goin’ to play dead now. You go down and git the horses. I be
ready pretty quick.”

This talk of ghosts was “bad medicine” in Charlie’s eyes, but he
agreed, nevertheless, to do as the boy ordered.

The two traveled far from any road, and so slow was their progress
that night found them still some miles from town.

Low hills came close to the northern limits of Standing Rock. The
Indian knew a spot among them where he decided to camp. It was a
little after nine o’clock before they reached it.

“Leave our stuff here, Charlie,” Johnny advised. “We eat, then we go
see Gallup.”

The Indian answered with a shrug of his shoulders. He favored more
direct action than this business of playing ghost. His way, under
the circumstances, would have been to pot Aaron as he slept.

Johnny thumbled his gun just as they were ready to leave. Charlie
smiled at this. Maybe the night held something of interest, after
all.

“Ghost no have gun,” he laughed mockingly.

“No,” Johnny chuckled. “All the same I take him. You watch sharp
till we cross railroad.”

He knew that once across the tracks they would be in little danger
of being seen. Gallup’s house was one of the few on that side of the
Espee main line.

When they had left the railroad a hundred yards behind they
dismounted and began walking through the sage toward Aaron’s place.
The three or four cabins they had to pass to get there were in
darkness. A light burned in an upper window of Gallup’s house.

“Tobias and him countin’ up the day’s profits, no doubt,” Johnny
thought. The Indian heard the boy muttering. “’Bout time I begun
doin’ a little countin’ up myself,” Johnny went on. Aloud, then, to
Charlie he said:

“You git ahead now. No noise, no tracks, you savvy?”

Again the Indian answered with a nod of his head.

In ten minutes they were lurking in the shadows beneath the lighted
window.

Aaron’s house was a story and a half affair, and the lighted window
at least ten feet from the ground. They could hear the murmur of
voices, but the closed window kept them from understanding a word of
what was being said.

A stone’s throw away the lights of the Palace Hotel burned brightly;
Johnny turned a wistful eye toward it. In a way it was his Times
Square—his Broadway. He wondered who was facing Scanlon tonight.
Something whispered to him that his evenings there were a thing of
the past. Gambling with him had been an art, but it was a sorry
accomplishment, one that would be of doubtful value to him in the
days to come.

Unknown to Johnny, this reasoning was based on the fact that
subconsciously he saw himself treading the future at Molly Kent’s
side.

A through freight thundered by as the two men waited, undecided as
to their next move. Charlie looked blankly at the boy. “How you get
up there?” he whispered.

“I’ll tell you,” Johnny answered, an idea breaking in on him. “I
stand on your shoulders, Charlie, you know, like this”—the boy
stooped and then arose, clasping the legs of an imaginary man. “You
understand?”

Again that unemotional nod from the Indian. Getting down upon all
fours, he waited for Johnny to climb into position. The boy
straightened up, using the side of the house to help him retain his
balance.

“Move along,” he whispered. “Stop when I signal.”

They had only ten feet to go. Charlie felt Johnny’s legs stiffen as
the boy came abreast the window. The Indian stopped.

“Steady,” Johnny warned as he pressed his face to the glass. He
started as he beheld Gallup’s companion. It was Tony Madeiras!

The Basque seemed to be having the best of the conversation. Tony
had his hat on, pushed back from his forehead, his black hair
curling out from beneath the brim. Something strange about the hat
caught and held Johnny’s attention. It was the little gold snake
snapped in the hat band.

“Traynor’s luck piece or I’m a liar,” Johnny gasped to himself.
“Where in God’s name did the Basque git it?”

He could see that Tony was enjoying himself. He knew Madeiras’
manner when things were going his way. A smile all insolence
wreathed the man’s face. His eyes were contemplative, cruel. Gallup
cowered before them.

There was money upon the table between the two men. The Basque
pushed the gold pieces to the floor with a sweep of his hand.

“Money mean not’ing to Tony Madeiras,” Johnny heard him say. “Thass
leetla theeng—money. You tell me ’bout those jail at Carson. Ha, ha!
Those jail be nice place for you, too, _señor_.”

“Don’t be a fool, Madeiras,” old Aaron whined. “You can’t send me
down there without goin’ yourself.”

“I go eef I have to. I’m strong; jail ees no nice place for old man
like you. Me, I do not try to keel Johnny. I just crease him, I
t’ink. Those rock, they keel him; but judge, he say we keel him just
the same, I guess. Now what you say—you steel try marry those girl?”

Aaron did not answer.

“As sure you try those trick,” Tony went on, “I go see the Señor
Kelsey”—the district attorney.

“You will, eh?” Gallup cried. “Like hell you will!”

His hand came up from under the table, a pistol, black and ominous,
held rigidly. “You’ll tell nothin’!” he screamed as he leveled his
gun at the Basque’s head.

A blood-curdling yell broke from Johnny’s lips as he saw the old
man’s finger tighten on the trigger. Gallup jumped. His chair
crashed over as he kicked it out of his way. The Basque’s eyes
rolled until their whites showed.

What was that in the window—a dead man’s face?

“_Hola! Virgen santa!_” Madeiras shouted, and he made the sign of
the cross. “Johnny! Johnny Dice!”

Gallup’s palsied hand pointed his gun at the apparition. Johnny
contorted his face and laughed diabolically. The old man’s finger
pressed the trigger and shot the window pane to bits, but the boy
was gone. He had beaten the gun by an instant.

Charlie Paul had felt the boy’s legs stiffen. The next he knew
Johnny was on the ground beside him. A moment later they were lost
in the night.

When they found their ponies the boy permitted himself his first
laugh. “That yell of mine,” he said, “wasn’t in the play. No, sir!
Madeiras was up there. Gallup would have killed him in another
second.”

“Good old Tony,” thought Johnny. Molly was safe! Madeiras was a
hero. He was making a Judas of himself for his pal’s sake.

“Guess we don’t go back there pretty soon, eh?” Charlie chuckled.

“Surest thing!” exclaimed Johnny. “I know now that he’ll scare. We
have plenty fun along that man, Charlie.”

Madeiras had discovered as much, too. Even seeing the ghost of
Johnny Dice had not robbed him of all sense. When Gallup turned back
from the shattered window he found himself looking into the Basque’s
gun.

“I tak’ those peestol now, _señor_,” he said.

Aaron was too dumfounded to object. “Did yuh see it?” he demanded.
“It was him!”

“_Madre de Dios!_ Of course I see heem,” the Basque cried angrily.
His hands flashed out and caught Gallup. Lifting him off his feet he
hurled him across the room.

“I ought to keel you!” he growled.




                           CHAPTER XXIII

                           THE GUN SPEAKS


The following morning found Kent in Standing Rock closeted with
Gallup. Kent was a nervous wreck. Molly had refused to speak to him;
his men were sullen, aloof; Tobias had been back about the notes,
and to top it all the specter of Johnny Dice walked beside him
wherever he went.

“You been seein’ ghosts, too?” Aaron asked.

“You know, then, eh?” old Jackson answered miserably. “I saw him as
plain as I’m seein’ you, Gallup. The girl did, too. I’ll never
forget how it moaned. I used to laugh at men who believed in
haunts.” Kent shook his head. “I’m past doin’ that now. When did you
see it?”

“Last night. It was here—but it ain’t no haunt. It’s Dice himself! I
found footprints beneath the window this mornin’. Let him come
ag’in. I won’t miss him a second time.”

“You mean he’s alive—that he ain’t killed?”

“You’ve got it! I knew you couldn’t figger him dead unless you’d
seen his body put in the ground. He’s fooled us all, even the
Basque. Madeiras was here last night threatenin’ me. Told me he’d
put me in Carson Penitentiary if I tried to marry Molly.”

“I was hopin’ you’d change your mind about that, Gallup. The girl’s
half mad.”

“Well, you weren’t able to do anythin’ for Tobias yesterday. I’ll
wait ’till day after tomorrow. You pay the money or I take the girl.
She ain’t got no use for you, nohow. A man’s got to have a little
backbone if he wants to keep his head up with wimmen. As soon as she
pulled Traynor’s name on you, you wilted. I don’t know how much Dice
knows, but it’s too much. Madeiras is makin’ big talk, too. The damn
bosco stole that old Moqui charm of mine. He knew who had it, too.”

“What?” Kent’s mouth twitched. He shook his fist in Gallup’s face.
“How’d he know that?” he cried.

“That scares you, does it? Let him prove what he——” Gallup stopped
short, his eyes on the door to the adjoining room. He had seen it
move! He knew that he had closed it when Kent came in. Pushing his
visitor out of the way, Aaron made a leap for the door and threw it
open. Tobias was caught flat-footed.

Gallup grabbed the man by his coat and dragged him into the room.
“Eavesdroppin’, eh?” Aaron screamed. “I’ll teach you to spy on me.
You’re through—fired! You ain’t got a cent but what you got from me.
You pussyfootin’ swine, what were you hopin’ to hear! Take _that_!”

Tobias Gale fairly bristled as he got up from the floor. So wrathful
was he that his little body trembled from head to foot. For years he
had suppressed his emotions, bridled his desires, made a machine of
himself. Gallup marveled as he gazed at him now.

“Let us be honest for once, Aaron Gallup,” Tobias said with fine
impudence. “When the pot calls the kettle black it’s time to tell
the truth. What I’ve got is mine. I earned it doing your dirty
bidding.

“You’ll not kick me out. I’ve protected myself. Indeed I have.
You’ll find that out when you try to call in some of your loans.
Humph! A swine am I, eh? You are the swine, Aaron Gallup.

“I know why you wanted Johnny Dice put out of the way, and I know
that Crosbie Traynor didn’t kill himself. You know it, too! You’ll
crawl to me before I’ve finished. You just try to kick me out, to
cheat me—and I’ll tell what’s what.

“You’ve kicked and beat me for years. You thought I didn’t mind.
Well, I’ve made it my business to find out about you. You start your
little tricks, and Molly Kent will know, and Johnny Dice will know.
I’ll talk you so deep into jail that the Carson Penitentiary will
crumble to ruins before they let you out.”

Tobias hurled a chair from his path.

“Get out of my way!” he warned Gallup. “I’m leaving this house now
forever. When you’ve got something to say to me you can come to the
hotel and find me.”

And the slave marched out, the king at last!

Kent and Gallup sat and stared at each other for countless minutes.
Crushed, dumfounded, Kent reached for his hat finally and without a
word stumbled down the stairs to get into his rig and start for
home.

Gallup seemed unaware of his going. Meal time came, but Aaron still
sat in his upstairs room, fixedly gazing into space. Some one
knocked at his door, but he heard it not. His brain refused to hold
any thought other than that Johnny Dice lived and would have the
truth from Tobias.

Aaron’s gun lay upon the table before him. As he continued to sit in
his trancelike state the pistol began to claim his attention. In
fact, Gallup fancied it talking to him.

“You’ve lived by the gun,” the weapon seemed to say. “I’ve seen you
through every big crisis of your life. I do my work well when
properly handled. I stop babbling tongues; smother secrets; give the
old the strength of the young. I am your friend, Aaron Gallup. Men
whom you have trusted have failed you or else they have been clumsy,
stupid—in me alone can you place dependence.”

Yes, it was plain, Johnny Dice had to die. Tobias and Madeiras were
dangerous—they could be attended to later, but Johnny Dice’s end was
imperative. He had to go. But how? It had to be soon—before the boy
talked with the other two. That meant tonight! Johnny Dice would
have to die tonight!

Gallup began to shake off his lethargy. Between now and sundown he
had to be ready.

He went downstairs and puttered over his stove preparing food. Color
flowed back into his face as his brain began to function again. He
mumbled to himself as he settled on what he would do. Gallup’s
vanity took much pleasure from the proposed plan. It was simple, but
ripe with the native ingenuity which had brought Aaron across many a
rough spot.

In brief, it was this: no one but Tobias Gale and Jackson Kent knew
that he had seen through Johnny’s game. The boy had first appeared
to Kent and then to him. That argued that Johnny would be hiding
out—anxious to keep alive the story of his death.

Last night the boy’s ghostly visit had been more than a success.
Now, if he, Gallup, spread the story of what he had seen—the
grinning face, the fiendish cry—wouldn’t word of his talking reach
Johnny? The man must have some confederate who would carry the tale.

But supposing that failed, if men heard the coroner talking of
having seen a ghost, and this very night that ghost should return
and be killed, and proved no ghost at all—well, wouldn’t that be
alibi enough? Yet the law couldn’t touch Gallup for that.

So, then, it got down to whether Johnny would return. Aaron was
satisfied to believe that he would, so between then and sunset he
spread his story up and down the main street of Standing Rock.

Charlie Paul, loafing in front of the Palace Hotel, heard it and
carried it to Johnny.

“He look sick, Gallup,” the Indian went on. “He pretty damn well
scared, him.”

“Guess Aaron knows haunts is hostile to him,” Johnny said more to
himself than to Charlie.

“Him—Gallup—have big fight, too,” the faithful Indian added.

“What fight? No savvy that, Charlie.”

“Man, Gale—all bus’ up.”

“Split—all off, you mean?”

“Him split,” Charlie grinned. “Him, Gale, live um hotel.”

“Well, I’m damned!” Johnny dropped the frying pan to better voice
his surprise. “Them two old junipers fallin’ out—now what do you
know ’bout that? You hear any more, Charlie?”

“Nah. Gale get horse, he drive away.”

“There’s a kittle of fish for you!” Johnny shook his head
uncomprehendingly. “I should admire to know what’s up. Mebbe so we
find out tonight.”

Unknown to Johnny, Tobias Gale had returned to Standing Rock shortly
after sundown. He had not been alone when he reached the outskirts
of the town. There he had stopped, and the man who occupied the rig
with him had stepped to the ground. Gale had driven on, and the
other man, after ten minutes, had started to walk the remaining
distance into the Rock.

Tobias made no effort to see him again, but he was apparently well
satisfied with his day’s work. The man with whom he had driven
across country that afternoon could be expected to furnish rare
entertainment for one Gallup.

Gale made some discreet, but futile, inquiries regarding the
whereabouts of Tony Madeiras and retired to his room. This was
Gallup’s night, and Tobias was in no way inclined to share the
spotlight with him.




                            CHAPTER XXIV

                   JOHNNY DICE COMES BACK TO LIFE


When Aaron Gallup retired to his home at seven o’clock that evening
he knew that if Johnny Dice hovered in or near Standing Rock he had
heard by now the story of his—Gallup’s—supernatural visitor.
Figuratively speaking, Aaron patted himself on the back for having
set his trap for the smooth Johnny. The old man’s confidence in his
scheme was such that he even whistled snatches of an old tune
popular in the days of the Santa Fe Trail.

He finished his supper without lighting a lamp. Having eaten, he
climbed the stairs and made ready for the expected visitor. He saw
to it that his gun was in order; he lighted a lamp; he raised the
curtains—it was as if he were a stage manager preparing for the
evening’s show.

When his old brain refused to suggest any additional bit of
stagecraft, Aaron took his seat. He had arranged the lamp so that he
sat in shadow. Four or five times he drew a bead upon an imaginary
face in the window—it made him smile. He was ready—he wouldn’t miss
tonight.

It was too early for ghosts, so he half dozed in his chair. A clock
struck eight, but Aaron heard it not, nor did he catch the soft
_pad-pad_ of naked feet ascending the stairs. Gallup was in a
strange world confronting a horde of Johnny Dices. He shot them
down, one after another, until his trigger finger grew tired.

Minutes slipped by as the old man sat lost in reverie, a smile of
satisfaction upon his face. The door had opened noiselessly, a bony
hand forcing it inward. The visitor squinted his eyes at Gallup and
took a step into the room, closing the door behind him as he did so.
He stood still, waiting for the other to catch sight of him.

Aaron became aware of the man’s presence by degrees. When he saw him
and recognition followed, he uttered no word of surprise or fear,
but just stared and stared at him. And eyes as cold as his own
stared back at him.

This specter out of the past was no ghost, and yet it well might
have been, for if, in appearance, there was ever a living dead man
it was this gaunt visitor.

Gallup’s thoughts were no longer on the window. Johnny Dice no
longer obsessed him. He knew there could be no connection between
the boy and this shriveled shadow of a man confronting him.

And yet there was, and not so remote at that. But Johnny knew
nothing of the man’s coming. The boy was playing a lone hand this
night. He had already circled Gallup’s house several times. That a
light should be burning in that same room again tonight looked
suspicious to Johnny. It said all too plainly that he was expected.

Well, it is a poor general who has only one plan of attack. Johnny
flattered himself that he was equal to this occasion.

The eastern freight had not pulled in yet. Two carloads of ore from
the Black Prince mine stood upon the side track. They would have to
be picked up and cut into the train. Very likely the freight would
bring a car of merchandise from San Francisco for the Rock. That
would take more time. Cars would be switched back and forth past the
house. One should be able to see into that lighted upper story room
from the top of one of those cars.

Gallup had not replaced the shattered glass as yet. With fair skill
a man should be able to flip a piece of cardboard into the room.
Johnny had such a thing to toss at Gallup’s feet—the picture of
Molly which he had found in Traynor’s wallet.

The boy had the best of reasons for doing this. Surely if Gallup did
not recognize the picture it would worry him sore just because he
could not place the child’s face. A picture, delivered as this one
would be, carried a message, a warning. And perhaps the man would
fail to reason that it had been tossed into the room from the top of
a passing freight car. If so, he would be at some pains to figure
how it came there upon his floor.

If the incident produced no other effect than this, Johnny told
himself he would be satisfied. It would be another straw added to
Aaron’s load, and to break and unnerve the man was Johnny’s game.

But he stood to win more than this. He had made Kent admit that he
had known Crosbie Traynor. If Gallup recognized that picture it was
proof enough that he, too, had known the man. Then, Johnny felt that
he would have discovered the reason for Kent’s subservience to
Gallup.

As he walked the tracks to the head of the switch just this side of
the shipping pens he told himself that he could not lose. No matter
how the play went, he won.

The freight pulled in half an hour late, but Johnny’s calculation in
regard to the amount of work the train crew would have to do proved
correct. Swinging up to the top of one of the big box cars he
stretched himself flat and waited for the switching to begin. In a
few minutes he was rolling past Gallup’s house.

Rising to his knees, the picture in his hand, he peered into the
lighted room. What he saw there drove his plans far from his mind.
In fact, so great was Johnny’s surprise that he had trouble in
retaining his balance upon the moving car.

Gallup’s visitor was old Thunder Bird! Yes—and the old chief was
bound and gagged! Gallup sat before him. Another second and the
scene was whisked from Johnny’s vision.

Johnny’s breath came in gasps as he rode down the tracks. Some
things were plain now. It was Thunder Bird himself whom Traynor had
gone to see! Could there be any doubt of it? Gallup saw an enemy in
the Indian. Why? What better reason would he want than that Thunder
Bird had known Traynor, and that the old chief knew that
he—Gallup—had known the man, too?

People had called Traynor a stranger, but here were three
men—Thunder Bird, Kent, and Gallup—whose actions proved that they
had known him. There might be others—Tobias Gale, for instance—he
was a mysterious sort of person. Indeed, no stranger’s bullet had
ended Traynor’s life.

Johnny fretted and fumed as the minutes passed while the car stood
still. It seemed that hours dragged by before the engine came back
to shunt the car down the tracks toward town. Finally it began to
move. The boy felt it take the switch just before it crossed the
main street of the town. By this he knew that the car was going on
to the siding which managed to squeeze past the side of the hotel.

Although not so close to Gallup’s house now, the boy could see into
the room by standing erect. The car came to a stop almost opposite
it. Johnny saw Thunder Bird tied in his chair, but Gallup was gone.
“Downstairs, no doubt,” mused Johnny, “lookin’ for me.”

For the ten minutes that the car stood on the siding Johnny stared
into the lighted room. He did not know just what to do. Rescuing men
from Gallup’s lair was hardly a thing to be pursued as a nightly
vocation—that is, if one were at all fond of living. But on the
other hand, Thunder Bird might hold the key to the entire situation.
Johnny felt that the old chief could explain many things if he could
be induced to talk.

Obviously the thing to do was to find Madeiras and then force a way
into Gallup’s house. Tony must be in town. Finding the Basque could
not be more than an hour’s work.

“Damn it,” Johnny muttered. “Wish I’d tipped him off to the truth.
Hain’t helped a bit to let him think he killed me. I sure need him
now. Charlie wouldn’t be no good at all. He’d want to stick a knife
into Gallup.”

The engine kicked a string of cars against the one upon which Johnny
stood. They hit so sharply that the boy’s legs almost went out from
under him. Crawling to the hand irons he swung his foot out to find
the top one. He was facing the hotel for the first time. Before him
was the room in which Traynor had been killed. Johnny drew back his
foot, his brain reeling as he began putting two and two together.

Once he stretched out his arm and touched the window sill.

“My God,” he moaned, “this is _it_! It couldn’t be anythin’ else. It
was this time of the night—the noise of the engine to kill the sound
of the shot, a stick to lift the man’s gun, a toss of the arm to
throw it back into the room after the killin’—it’s right as day!
Why, of course—Traynor’s hat was damp. It was rainin’ that night.
When whoever pulled it out to rip the band off, the rain got at it.
And the wool—I picked up a piece of fleece from the floor. Teixarra
was shippin’ wool that day. His cars stood right here. Mister,
you’ve got the answer!”

Johnny mopped his face with his hands.

“Bumped him off with his own gun, too,” he muttered. “Right clever,
that. Yes, sir, this was one of the most clever murders this State
can boast of. I got to talk to somebody or bust. I’m goin’ to find
Madeiras.”

The car was moving away as Johnny swung to the ground. Half running,
he burst into the Palace barroom. Scanlon dropped his cards as he
caught sight of him.

Vinnie shouted: “My God, you dead, Johnny?”

“Dead, hell!” Johnny roared. “Do I look like a dead one? Where’s
Madeiras?”

“He ain’t been here,” Scanlon answered.

“He was in town last night,” the boy exclaimed. “He ain’t far off
right now. If you see him tell him I’m lookin’ for him—to come on
the run!”

Turning on his heel, Johnny flung himself through the door, deaf to
the questions in Scanlon’s eyes.

Vinnie stared at his partner. The other men present likewise looked
at one another. What had happened? Where had Johnny been? Gallup had
seen his ghost, eh? The laugh was on Aaron.

“He’s rearin’ right up for a ghost, ain’t he?” Scanlon declared.

“Sumthin’ goin’ to happen right soon, now,” somebody stated. “I
ain’t never seen Johnny so hostile.”

“That’s too bad,” Scanlon muttered. “Trouble comin’—and Doc Ritter
forty miles away. They ain’t no advantages in this town!”




                            CHAPTER XXV

                      MADEIRAS ASSERTS HIMSELF


Johnny combed the town without finding the Basque. No one would even
admit that they had seen him. The boy refused to give up. Madeiras
was there, somewhere, and he intended to find him. It was wasted
effort, Tony having left the Rock as Johnny crouched upon the
freight car.

The day had been one of misery for the Basque. He believed that he
had killed Johnny. He was hardly less certain about having seen the
boy’s ghost. He was primitive and superstitious enough, too, to
accept the fact that a dead man’s spirit could return to haunt its
enemies.

Tony had promised himself that Gallup should never get Molly. For
this reason he slept in Brackett’s stable. Aaron kept his rig there.
If he set out for the Diamond-Bar, Madeiras would know it.

The Basque, brooding all day long over Johnny’s death, found the
fact that he was keeping Gallup from Molly small recompense for the
loss of the body. More than once the Basque wished that he had
killed the coroner. He told himself that he would have to do it some
day. Gallup would have to pay his debt.

Tony had managed to secure more than enough to drink during the last
day or two. He had been half intoxicated when Gallup had entered the
stables an hour back and hitched up his team. Soon after the old man
had left, the Basque slid down from his nest in the hay mow.

“_Por Dios!_” he cursed. “So he go after all, eh? Better I tak’ her
than heem. I say, sometime I keel that man—tonight be the time!”

Madeiras had left his horse with an uncle at the _Casa Español_. The
animal was under lock and key when Tony got there. Half an hour was
wasted in awakening Felipe and unlocking the barn.

But at last the Basque set sail for the Diamond-Bar. He raked his
pony with the spurs as he urged him on. Gallup could not be far
ahead. The ride began to sober him and he wondered how Gallup had
come so far.

Miles unwound until the Basque had covered half the distance to the
ranch. He had yet to catch a glimpse of Aaron. After another mile
Madeiras pulled up his horse.

“Where I mees that man?” he asked himself. “I come fas’—no team keep
ahead of me.” He snapped his fingers at a sudden thought. “Mebbe he
leave those team behin’ while I was’e all that time wit’ ole Felipe,
and some mens tak’ him in those dam’ flivver.”

Madeiras uttered a wild cry as he caught sight of the ranch. He was
breaking all records tonight.

Not until he was within a quarter of a mile of the house did he
bring his horse to a canter. A hundred yards more and he vaulted to
the ground. Gun in hand, he left the pony and went crawling away
through the sage. Passing to the rear of the house and finding the
door unlocked, he stepped inside.

Madeiras knew the place too well to need a guide to lead him to the
girl’s room. Not a light was burning. If Gallup had been here he was
gone now. The thought made the Basque less cautious. His spur chains
tinkled as he hurried to Molly’s door. It was locked. Molly heard
him tapping for admission.

“Who is it?” she demanded, frightened.

“Quick!” Tony whispered. “It’s Madeiras. Gallup ees comin’ to tak’
you. Open the door!”

“I will not!” came the girl’s voice, strong, defiant. “Go at once or
I’ll scream.”

“Scream!” the Basque dared her as he put his shoulder to the door
and snapped the lock. “You come wit’ me.”

A wave of emotion smote Madeiras as he sprang into the room. Molly
had lighted a lamp. He saw her crouching against the bed, her
nightgown open at the throat and half revealing the swelling bosom,
the tapering limbs. The fragrance of her pink and white loveliness
intoxicated the Basque. No wonder that Gallup wanted her. No wonder
that Johnny had.

Molly had never been anything more than a tomboy to the Basque. He
saw her now for a flesh-and-blood goddess.

The girl read his look and opened her mouth to cry out. The Basque
saw her start and he leaped toward her. Molly struggled as his hand
closed over her mouth.

“Don’t you yell,” he warned her. “You t’ink I’m pretty bad frien’,
eh? Some day, mebbe, you change your min’. I tak’ you now. You go
wit’ me! What I care for Kent? What I care for Gallup? I keel my
bes’ frien’; but _Madre de Dios_, I die for you!”

Molly beat his hands and scratched his face, but a kitten would not
have been more helpless against the strength of him. She felt
herself lifted into his arms. With one hand Madeiras snatched up a
pile of clothing. The next instant he was striding down the hall,
carrying her as if she were no weight at all.

A hundred yards from the house the Basque turned, and shaking his
fist at it he cried:

“By God, for once Tony Madeiras ees the boss!”




                            CHAPTER XXVI

                         BETWEEN THE LINES


Old Aaron had no intention of going to the Diamond-Bar when he drove
away from Brackett’s stable. If the Basque had followed him for a
block of two he would have known as much because Gallup turned his
team from the main road and pulled up before his own house.

Johnny was standing in front of the hotel at the time and he
promptly surmised the reason for Aaron’s use of his team. The boy
had about given up any hope of finding Madeiras. The appearance of
Gallup made him decide to act alone.

“Sure as you’re born,” he said to himself, “that old crook is goin’
to take Thunder Bird out in the brush and pump lead into him. I bet
I’ll have somethin’ to say about that.”

When Johnny crept around to the front of the house he saw that he
was not mistaken. The old chief, bound and gagged, sat
disconsolately in the rig. Aaron had gone back upstairs. The boy
could hear him closing a door.

“Here’s where I take it on the run,” Johnny told himself. A minute
later he was in the buckboard beside the Indian. Grabbing the reins
and giving the horses the gad took only a second.

When Gallup came out the team was gone. He cursed and ranted, but
Johnny and Thunder Bird were beyond the sound of his rage.

A mile out of town the boy brought the team to a halt. Thunder
Bird’s eyes expressed no surprise. When Johnny had untied him and
removed the gag from his mouth the chief made no attempt to speak.

“Men come soon, chief,” Johnny said, thoroughly provoked at the
other’s reticence. “You make talk pretty quick.”

Thunder Bird shook his head slowly. “No talk, me,” he mumbled.

“No?” Johnny exclaimed hotly. “Mebbe so you change um mind. All the
same I not come, Gallup kill you.”

A sound, almost a laugh, broke from Thunder Bird’s lips. “I
think—me—mebbe so you come. I see you on top train.”

Johnny disregarded the Indian’s words.

“Chief,” he said, “many, many years you not come to white man’s
town. Why you come tonight?”

“No tell him that?”

“Gallup old friend with you, eh? You come, he tie you up—why you let
him do that?”

Thunder Bird’s chin was resting upon his chest. “_Huy!_” he grunted.
“Too old, me—too old.”

Johnny was not getting anywhere. “Chief,” he drawled, unpleasantly,
“it was you that Traynor came to see.”

Thunder Bird turned his shrewd old eyes on the boy. “Mebbe,” he
answered.

It was admission enough.

“So,” Johnny continued, “you know who kill him, too, eh?”

The Indian did not answer at once. When he did, he surprised the
boy.

“Mebbe me.” A soft, mocking laugh followed.

Johnny stared at him. “No,” he said at last. “No—no! He come on
Reservation—he come away from Reservation. You no kill him. White
man kill him.” Johnny tapped his chest. “Me, I know how”—pointing to
the chief—“you know why. Traynor no fool. He watch. Man catch him
when he sleep. If you not tell me his name, chief, easy me, I find
out who brung you to town. Mebbe that man talk. Lots of men talk by
and by. You talk now, eh?”

Thunder Bird shook his head determinedly. “No talk, me. You
wait—two, t’ree day you find out.”

It was an artful answer. Johnny understood the cunning insinuation
it carried. A muttered “Humph!” escaped him. “You mean, chief, that
in two or three days somebody’ll find a man with a bullet hole clean
through him or with a knife stuck in his back, and he’ll be the man
that killed Traynor. I savvy your talk, but it don’t go. Dead men
don’t talk. No talk, no good.”

“Man talk, jail catch um.”

This observation gave Johnny renewed hope. “You talk now,” he said,
“law catch um man, no catch um you. No talk now, mebbe so law catch
um you by and by.”

Thunder Bird was unmoved. “No,” he murmured. “Law no catch um me.
Law no good for Indian—nothing no good for Indian. Piute make his
own medicine.”

“Sometime Piute medicine is bad. No good all time,” Johnny argued.
“I make good medicine for you, all the same you tell me.”

Thunder Bird would not unbend. Again and again Johnny tried to make
him speak. The boy’s patience gave out in the end. He knew that in
ten minutes the old Indian could clear up the mystery of Traynor’s
death if he would. But, no; his dignity as a chief had been
assailed, and Thunder Bird was going to avenge the wrong in his own
way. He couldn’t have said it any plainer. And the prospective
victim——Who else but old Aaron?

There could be no doubt of it. Johnny was satisfied that the chief
was pointing to Gallup as the murderer of Crosbie Traynor. But the
Indian had not made a single statement that could be used as
evidence to convict the coroner. His words were all innuendo. A man
had to make his own conclusions.

Johnny knew from experience that threats were idle with Thunder
Bird. He would talk when it pleased him to do so, and not before.
Jumping to the ground he said sharply:

“Chief, you take the team; you go Reservation. I watch Gallup. Best
you no come back. If you see Madeiras tell him I want him come
quick. You fan it now if you want to get back before daylight.”

Johnny trudged to town as the chief drove away. He felt defeated,
held off when success was almost within his grasp. Perhaps the wish
was father to the thought, but it was easy for him to believe that
Gallup had killed Traynor. He reconstructed the happenings of that
tragic night on which they had found the man’s body. He even
recalled some of Gallup’s conversation. Viewed, as the boy was doing
now, it was incriminating.

But what of Kent? The evidence had pointed to him from the start.
There were certain facts which were unalterable even now, but if
Traynor had been killed in the manner Johnny believed, Kent could
not have done it. Hobe had seen him playing cards with Doc Ritter at
the very time the crime must have been committed.

“And yet,” the boy thought, “Gallup’s got somethin’ on Kent.
Absolutely yes!—and he’s got him hard. Every guess I’ve got is weak
some place, even the one about the Indian. If the chief was
Traynor’s friend, and Traynor was tryin’ to square up an old debt,
why did Thunder Bird let the man come into the Rock? The Indian must
have known that Kent was shippin’ from here. And if he didn’t he
knew damn well that Gallup was here.

“Mebbe there was somebody else, too; but the chief would have
knowed. Ain’t likely he’d ’a’ sent a friend up against a stacked
deck. And now that old devil is out to git Gallup. Sure as he does
I’m licked, I’m a bust—a relic. On circumstantial evidence I could
send two or three men to jail, but on the real goods I couldn’t
indict a jackass.”

It was after midnight when Johnny got back to the hotel. Scanlon’s
game was still active. Johnny recognized his fellow players—the two
Faulkner brothers and Tris Bowles. The Faulkners had been freighting
supplies to the Agency.

“Say, Charlie,” Johnny asked the elder of the two, “you didn’t come
in from the Valley today, did yuh?”

“Yeah. Got in ’bout nine o’clock.”

“That so?” Johnny asked, better pleased with himself than he had
been for the last two hours. “Road’s pretty fair, I guess,” he ran
on. “See anybody?”

“No, not until we got just outside of town. That human grub worm,
Tobias Gale, passed us this side of the big hill.”

“Seein’ him wasn’t seein’ anybody.”

“Them’s my sentiments,” the younger Tris announced. “He’s got down
to doin’ Injuns out of their bit now. Had the old chief himself with
him today.”

Johnny Dice immediately lost all interest in the Messrs. Faulkner
and Bowles. Singling out Vinnie, he said to him:

“I got to wake up Tobias for a minute. We got some most important
business to transact. What room did you say he was in?”

“Now, Johnny,” Vin warned, “those man ees just come to leeve in
thees ’otel. He’s goot pay. You mak’ no hell now.”

“Say, you quit scoldin’ me, Vinnie,” Johnny laughed. “You don’t know
me; I’ve reformed. Why the sound of a gun would frighten me to
death.”

Vinnie grinned. Johnny Dice could have had the shirt from his back
if he had asked for it.

For all of his talk Johnny felt of his gun before he knocked on
Tobias’ door. He got no answer, and after waiting a decent interval
he tried the door. It was unlocked. Stepping into the room he struck
a match and held it aloft.

“I’m damned,” he exclaimed. “He’s gone! What can that bird be up to
this time of the night? He’s strictly a to-bed-with-the-chickens
sort of a person. Went out the back way, too, or Vin would ’a’ seen
him.”

Johnny was not long in deciding on what he would do. Going to the
bed he sat down and pulled off his boots.

“I’m goin’ to camp right here,” he said aloud. “When little Tobias
comes back we’re goin’ to make medicine.”




                           CHAPTER XXVII

                            TIME TO ACT


The room was bathed in sunlight when Johnny Dice felt some one
prodding him back to consciousness. Vinnie the Basque stood over
him, his eyes wild with excitement.

“_Dios mio_, Johnny!” the man cried. “How you come here all night?
What you do weeth those man Gale?”

“Search me,” Johnny answered with a yawn. “Did I roost here all
night?”

“How I know that? You come up here last night.”

“Sure! Gale wasn’t here. I took off my boots and lay down to wait
for him. Guess he didn’t come back.”

“You not hurt heem, eh?” Vin inquired anxiously.

“’Course not. I’m too anxious to talk to him to hurt him.”

“Well, plenty trouble come now,” the Basque said sadly. “Roddy,
Gallup, and Kent ees just go ’way. They look for you. Sheriff, hee’s
got warrant for you, Johnny.”

“What?” Johnny pulled on his boots with a savage tug. “What’s he
after me for?”

“Kent say hees daughter ees gone; that you stole her.”

“For the love of God!” the boy cried, his face paling. “It’s a lie.
I was here at midnight. I couldn’t ’a’ got to the ranch and back
since then unless I’d had wings. Just what did Kent say?”

“Say the girl ees gone; room all mussed up; tracks outside the
door.”

“I can’t believe it, Vin. It’s a trap to git me. If Molly’s gone,
they took her themselves. Where is Madeiras? I counted on him to
look after her.”

Vin shook his head as he saw Johnny lash himself into a rage.

“If Gallup is back of this I’ll bust him. Ain’t they tryin’ to find
the girl?”

“_Sí!_ Gallup say she be weeth you. Eef they fin’ you, they fin’
her. They come here look for you. They try fin’ your horse, too.
Horse ees gone, so they think you gone.”

“Where they headin’ for?”

“Elk Valley. Those Faulkner boy say you ees ask las’ night ’bout the
road to the Reservation.”

“This gits pretty close to the showdown with me,” Johnny growled.
“If Roddy ever gits me I’m as good as dead. I’d just have to make a
move to have him shoot me down. ‘Tryin’ to git away’ would be his
answer. They’ll never take me. It’s a pretty mess they’ve cooked up,
ain’t it?”

“Well, what you do now, Johnny?”

“I’m goin’ to do what I should ’a’ done two days ago—go to Jim
Kelsey. If there is any law in this county, he’s it. Vin, Charlie
Paul is campin’ at that spring beyond Stiles’s old place. He’s got
my horse. Go git him for me, will you. Tell him to wait in back of
the hotel. I’ll slip out that way now. No sense gittin’ you or
Scanlon mixed up in this.”

“I go myself,” Vin answered. He stopped at the door and seemed to
hesitate about saying what was on his mind. “Johnny,” he said
haltingly, “you hear all thees bad talk about Madeiras, yet you ask
for heem. What you theenk?”

“Say, Vin,” Johnny said warmly, “he’s my best friend. What he does
is done on my say-so. I don’t know where he is or what he is doin’,
but it’s right with me.”

Johnny could not have said anything which would have pleased the
Basque more. The pride of race was strong in Vin. His people had
been fighting from the day they landed for the respect of the native
sons.

The boy waited until the Basque had gone before he moved. He knew
that he was face to face with trouble. Jim Kelsey held the decision.
If what Johnny had to tell him was convincing enough, the district
attorney could not refuse to act.

Gale’s mysterious absence also was of alarming importance. Having
brought Thunder Bird to face the coroner, it followed, as a matter
of course, that Tobias would endeavor to learn the outcome of that
visit.

“He might ’a’ seen me drivin’ off with the old chief,” the boy
thought. “He stole out of the hotel just as I’m goin’ to do now. You
can bet the cautious Toby wasn’t headed for Aaron’s house.”

Johnny tried to catch sight of Gallup’s party as it rode out of
town. To see the better he opened the trapdoor which led to the roof
of the hotel and crawled out upon it. A mile away he could see four
horsemen riding into the north.

“A buckboard wasn’t fast enough for Gallup today, eh?” Johnny
muttered. “They’ll never git anywhere ridin’ that fast. Aaron’ll be
so sore in an hour or two that he’ll want to ride in a bed.”

Johnny crossed the roof to the side nearest the railroad tracks and
looked down on Gallup’s house.

“My Lord,” he said half aloud, “this would ’a’ been a grand-stand
seat for the doin’s last evenin’. If Toby had crawled up here he
wouldn’t ’a’ missed a thing. And you can just bet your last cookie
that that’s what he did. He’s just about streakin’ it right now for
the Reservation. Him and the old chief are goin’ to have another
powwow. Elk Valley is goin’ to be ’way over-populated before this
day is done. I’ve got a hunch some of the visitors are never goin’
to come back to the Rock—unless Doc brings ’em.”




                           CHAPTER XXVIII

                        JOHNNY TALKS AT LAST


Big Jim greeted Johnny with a laugh. People said that the district
attorney knew more and said less than any one in the county. A look
of almost infinite wisdom was in his eyes as he studied Johnny.

“Well,” he questioned, “you’re goin’ to bust if you don’t talk,
Johnny? Let’s have it.”

“You hit the nail, Jim. Talk—a big order of it—is what I want to git
off my mind.”

“I’ve had my ears open, Johnny,” Kelsey said. “I wondered when you’d
drop in.”

“You hain’t heard _nothin’_. You wait. I’ve found out a-plenty since
I started puttin’ my nose into other people’s business, as Gallup
would say. I’m here to ask for a warrant.”

“So? For whom?”

“For the coroner of this county—for the murder of Crosbie Traynor,
same having occurred on the night of October 4th in a room at the
Palace Hotel. You listen to me and see if I’m crazy or not. I
suppose you heard all the talk that was made the night we found the
body? Well, I won’t waste no time on that, but—I found the dead
man’s horse. I went through the saddlebags and I found a picture.
Later, I got the dead man’s name. I just kept on putting two and two
together until I began to git scared at what I was findin’ out. Git
your pencil and make some notes.”

Kelsey did as Johnny asked, but he made small use of the pencil. His
mind grasped the facts as Johnny unfolded them. From time to time he
stopped the boy to insert a question. Whenever he did so, Johnny’s
answers invariably enabled him to leap ahead to the next move in
this game of life and death.

Sometimes Johnny raised questioning eyes as he wondered if he were
making himself understood. Kelsey merely grunted in the affirmative.
Once he whistled. Traynor’s letter to Molly caused that.

The boy knew his story grasped the man’s mind, for, shrewd as Kelsey
was, he could not keep all emotion from his eyes.

Johnny went on, bit by bit, until he had not only divulged his
information, but had convinced the attorney of the conclusions he
had drawn.

“Can I be wrong, Jim?” Johnny asked when he had finished.

“I don’t think so. But you’ve got a house of cards. One absolutely
provable fact is all you need to make your evidence steel proof. I’m
willin’ to go ahead. I know Roddy, he ought to be recalled. Lord
know’s you’ve got more than enough to arrest them on suspicion, but
I wouldn’t do it that way. Charge Gallup with it. Facts come out in
a trial that you never dream of. We’ll arrest the whole
clique—Gallup, Gale, Kent, and even the Indian.”

“I don’t want Kent charged with murder,” Johnny stated. “Can’t we
scare him into turning on Gallup? Aaron’s the boy at the bottom of
this pile.”

“If you feel that way about it, Johnny, why not wait? Gallup will
trip up if you give him time. Kent may put himself in the clear.”

“No waitin’ now, Jim. Trouble has caught right up with us. Roddy,
Kent, Gallup and some deputy are out gunning for me. They’ve got a
warrant chargin’ me with abductin’ Miss Molly. Havin’ done it once,
they’ve framed me into it again. It’s just a game. They’ve taken the
girl themselves. If Roddy gits a gun on me and I move a finger—good
night—I’m a dead man.”

Kelsey was on his feet. “We’ll go. You get Ritter, maybe Scanlon,
too. I’ll be at the hotel in fifteen minutes at the latest.”

“Come armed,” Johnny warned. “This is goin’ to be a battle. Gale is
no doubt on the Reservation. Gallup will bump him off if he gits a
chance. The same goes for the chief. It’s a nice little way to shut
men’s mouths. If we lose Gale or the Injun, we’re stuck.”

“That is not what I’m afraid of,” Kelsey answered. “Gallup is over
his head in going to Elk Valley. Thunder Bird has more power than
you suspect. Gallup has humiliated and shamed him. It’s the one
thing the old buck won’t overlook. You could put a regiment of
troops in Elk Valley and Gallup would still be in danger. When it
comes to a matter of tribal honor—look out! You can talk all you
want to about civilization and its effect on the poor, downtrodden
Indian; but he’s got a kick left in him still. Four or five men are
all we need.”

“That’ll be you, me, Doc Ritter, Scanlon, and Charlie Paul. We’ll be
ready when you git there.”

It happened, however, that when Kelsey rode up Vin had not returned
with Charlie and Johnny’s horse. A few minutes later, though, they
arrived. The delay had allowed a crowd to form, for, in spite of
Johnny’s demand for secrecy, the news that a posse was being
organized had spread.

Heavily armed, the five men rode out of the Rock. Soon after the
town was left behind, Kelsey held up his hand and brought them to a
stop.

“Men,” said he, “you know what we’re going after. I hope we won’t
have to fire a shot. I hold that shooting that goes unpunished
because it’s within the letter of the law is almost as bad as though
it weren’t. Law ought to mean justice and a square deal to all; when
it’s less than that, I don’t want any of it. Let’s go!”




                            CHAPTER XXIX

                        EVIDENCE TO CONVICT


Johnny was leading the posse two hours later when he signaled to the
other men. “Rig comin’,” he called as they moved within hearing
distance. “Ought to pass it just about where the road forks. Let’s
hit it up a little.”

Riding in close formation, they began rapidly to diminish the
distance between themselves and the oncoming team.

“Driver asleep, him,” the keen-eyed Charlie called to Johnny.

“Sorry, but we’ll have to disturb him,” Johnny answered. “Better
spread out, boys. That team is runnin’.”

In ten minutes the team was almost up with them.

“Whoa, there!” Johnny cried, but the driver paid no attention to the
hail. “Look out!” the boy shouted to Doc Ritter. “I’ll yank ’em as
they go by.”

Whirling his horse, Johnny planted himself in the path of the
galloping team. A mad dive for a bridle strap, and he had the off
horse on its haunches. “Grab the gray, Charlie!” he cried to the
Indian.

Charlie Paul’s hands shot out, and in another second the team was
halted. Johnny took a look at the driver, who had slipped to the
floor of the rig, his face blood-stained; blank, wide-open eyes
staring up at the sky.

“There you are, Jim,” Johnny shouted to Kelsey as he recognized the
blood-smeared face. “It’s Toby Gale! They got him, just as I said
they would.”

“God!” Kelsey moaned. “He’s all banged up, ain’t he? Give me a hand,
and we’ll get him out of the wagon.”

“He’s goin’ to die,” Doc Ritter announced after a hurried
examination, “but he’ll come back for a second or so before he goes.
Somebody give me some whiskey.”

Scanlon obliged, and between them they fanned the man’s dying spark
of life into a smoldering flame. Tobias eyed the five of them in
turn. Johnny held his gaze.

“Can you talk?” the boy asked.

Gale tried to move his lips, but no intelligent sound came from
them.

“Wait, I’ll lift up his head a bit,” Doc volunteered.

Gale licked his lips. Seconds dragged by before he made a sound.
When he did speak it was in flat, lifeless tones. He was looking at
Ritter. “I’m dying, ain’t I, Doc?” he asked.

“You’re pretty bad off,” Doc told him honestly.

Tobias just gazed helplessly at Ritter, searching the doctor’s face
for sign of the truth which he feared. The little man’s eyelids drew
back from the pupils of his eyes as he read his fate.

“Oh, God, Doc, I don’t want to die!” he moaned. “I’m afraid of it. I
can feel it coming on. It’s awful!”

An unearthly sound broke from his lips. Ritter forced more of the
whiskey down his throat. “Tell me what happened,” he demanded. “Who
shot you?”

Tobias shook his head slightly. “Let me talk, Ritter,” he muttered.
“My God, I’ve never talked. Let me have a chance now. You others go
away. I want to speak just to Johnny and Kelsey.”

“Better humor him,” Ritter advised as he got to his feet. “He’ll go
in a few minutes.”

Johnny and the district attorney nodded their heads and got to their
knees beside the dying man.

“What is it, Toby?” Johnny asked.

Toby stared at the boy for an interval before he answered. “You hate
Aaron Gallup even as I do,” he said at last. “That’s why I called
for you. Yes, I do hate him,” he repeated in answer to the question
in the boy’s eyes. “I’ve always hated him—but he’s got me.”

“Gallup shot you?”

“Aaron Gallup—get that straight. Roddy was with him. Roddy didn’t
shoot, though.

“I was going to the Reservation. I’d brought the chief in to see
Gallup last night—I’ll tell you why later. You know they had
trouble. I was on top the hotel. I saw you drive away with the old
Indian. I got a team and started after you about daylight.

“I got just about here when I saw four men coming fast. I thought
they were after me, and I raced the horses. The four of them split
up at the forks. Roddy and Gallup chased me. When I saw it was
Gallup I was afraid to stop. He yelled at me—so did the sheriff, but
I kept on going.

“Gallup fired then. I must have turned around, for I saw his gun
flash again. I fell out of the rig, I remember, because I was on the
ground when I opened my eyes. Gallup was standing over me. ‘Guess
you’ll stop now,’ he said. ‘You can talk your damned head off if you
want to. Won’t be any one to hear you blabbin’ about me.’

“I let him know then that _I_ had brought the chief to see him. Ha,
ha—it was almost worth getting killed to be able to tell him that.
He raised his foot and kicked me in the face, and riddled me again.
He’s got plenty to swing for, Kelsey. Not me alone, either. Johnny
knows I’m right about that. Due to me that man Traynor came to the
Rock. I don’t know how it happened, but Gallup or Kent killed him.”

Johnny and Kelsey flashed a glance at each other.

“Oh, Lord!” Gale moaned. “I can’t breathe. Where’s that bottle?”

“Give him all he wants,” Ritter called to Johnny. “It won’t put him
under.”

Johnny had been staring at the man’s ragged chest, but he had to
turn his head away as the stimulant began to have an effect on
Gale’s heart.

“I got to talk quick, don’t I?” Tobias asked. “Gallup ground me into
the dirt for years. I made up my mind to get square with him some
time. He was too cautious. I knew he had covered up something in his
past. It must have been two years before I got on the trail of what
it was.

“I was on the Reservation one day. Thunder Bird was getting married
again. He was all decked out. Around his neck he had a chain of
beads, and hanging on the middle of it was a piece of a white man’s
silver watch chain. It was Mexican made, I guess—I’d only seen the
like of it once before; Gallup had such a chain, and it always
looked to me as if it had been broken off.

“I asked the chief where he got those links. He was on edge in a
second. I mentioned Gallup’s name. That floored him. I found out
afterward that he had not been in town for years, that he had no
idea of Gallup’s nearness. I made a good friend of the Indian. It
took me a year or more to piece together the story of Gallup’s past;
but I got it. That was three years ago.

“I managed it so that Thunder Bird got a look at Kent and Gallup. He
recognized them at a glance.

“I got busy hunting for Traynor. Took me until a month ago to find
him. When he came I was on the Reservation. I talked to him, and
part of what I’m going to tell you I got from him, the rest from the
chief. Now, for God’s sake don’t let me pass out until I’ve
finished.”

Gale paused for a second or so. “Got to make it short,” he began
again. “It was down in Arizona. Traynor, Kent, and Gallup had a
copper claim in the Painted Desert. Traynor was married. Had a wife
and baby girl living in Flagstaff. All this happened nineteen or
twenty years ago.

“Thunder Bird had skipped from the Reservation—some trouble growing
out of the Mormon raid—he was hiding out down around the Little
Colorado. Traynor hired him to freight supplies to their mine.

“The claim began to look so good that Gallup and Kent decided to get
rid of Traynor. They sent the Indian to town, and as soon as they
were alone the two of them jumped their man, hog-tied him and rolled
him out in the sun to die of thirst. Two days nearly finished him.

“Kent, then, loaded him on a mule and took him out north and left
him for the buzzards. They were in the clear—men dying right along
like that for want of water. They put up a fine show when the Indian
returned. Told him Traynor had been gone two days; that they had
hunted for him until their water gave out.

“It was a pat yarn, but the Indian noticed that broken watch chain
and found the piece Traynor had twisted off in the fight. That night
he stole what water there was in camp and went after the missing
man. He searched for days without finding him. A wandering band of
Shewits had picked up Traynor and carried him off to their village
north of the Virgin. Two months later Thunder Bird found him there.

“Traynor went back to Flagstaff, but Kent and Gallup were gone, also
his wife and child. Six or seven years elapsed before they showed up
in this country. Traynor’s wife had died. Kent claimed the girl for
his daughter.”

“You mean Molly?” Johnny gasped. “She ain’t Kent’s daughter?”

“No. Her right name is Molly Traynor. Traynor combed the West
looking for them. That’s why I couldn’t find him. Gallup had sold
the mine for a good price. Traynor managed to get a little out of
it. I guess that about tells it.

“I didn’t know Kent was shipping from the Rock this year or I would
’a’ warned Traynor. Gallup had left for Salt Lake to be gone a week.
I thought it was all right for the man to come into town.

“But both Gallup and Kent were here. I knew it that night when I got
back. I watched; I was sure there’d be trouble. I didn’t want
Traynor killed. I wanted to break Gallup. He knows how it was done,
Kelsey. Make him tell—make him talk. Promise me you’ll get him.”

“Johnny knows how Traynor was killed,” Kelsey answered. “If it’s any
comfort to you, you can bank on it that we’ll get Mr. Gallup—and
he’ll talk.”




                            CHAPTER XXX

                      MADEIRAS APPEARS AT LAST


Johnny got to his feet in a daze, leaving it to Kelsey to close the
dead man’s eyes. The boy had easily grasped Gale’s dramatic story,
but his brain was so busily engaged in separating the many details
into their proper sequence that it was impossible for him to think
clearly.

Out of the jumble of confused facts one thing came to overwhelm him.
Molly was not Kent’s daughter! That was his big surprise.

In a way, Gale’s story explained things about as Johnny had fancied
them. Beyond question Gallup had been the actual murderer. Kent was
almost equally guilty, though. Johnny realized how impossible it was
going to be to keep the cattleman from spending the rest of his days
in jail.

“Thank God, he ain’t her father!” he said to himself. “He’s guilty,
and he’ll have to pay for it.”

The other men were bunched about Kelsey, and Johnny heard him say:

“Gallup shot him. Gale had so much on the man that Gallup had to
kill him. Johnny had enough on Aaron to satisfy me; Tobias clinched
it. He swore that Jackson Kent and the coroner of this county killed
Crosbie Traynor—it was to hide a crime committed twenty years ago.
It’s a strange story, boys; but the thing to do now is to get going.
We want Kent and Gallup alive—remember that.”

“Best thing to do, I guess, is to unhitch the team, and put Gale
back in the rig and leave him here,” Doc suggested. “Did you notice
this, Jim? Gale’s gun? It’s been shot twice. He must have tried to
get in a lick.”

“No,” Johnny cut in. “They fired it after they’d got him; threw it
in the wagon and gave the horses hell. If it hadn’t been for us
Gale’s body wouldn’t have been found until the team got to town.
That would have looked like suicide to a lot of people.”

“That’s about the way I figure it,” Kelsey agreed. “If you boys are
ready we’ll go.”

Johnny and the district attorney rode abreast as the party started
on.

“Glad you didn’t say anythin’ about the girl,” the boy remarked. “I
want to save her all the misery I can.”

“I know, Johnny; but it’s not going to be possible to keep Kent out
of this. Most of the money he has belongs to her. She will get her
share of Gallup’s pile, too. The best thing to do is to come clean
with the whole story.”

“I don’t want you to do that, Jim—not until you have to. Only for me
there wouldn’t have been a murmur. I nailed Gallup and Kent. Molly’s
happiness is all the reward I want. I’ve got a right to ask for
that, and I’m doin’ it now. I don’t know where she is, but I’ll find
her. In some way I’m goin’ to try and break this thing to her a
little at a time. She’s suffered enough these past weeks.”

“Don’t fret, Johnny. And I want to give you a bit of advice. You can
take it or not. It’s well meant. You’ll find the girl. Kent wouldn’t
harm her. I think I know how things are between you; marry her—_at
once_. Get her down to San Francisco or Santa Cruz. After you’re
there, begin to tell her the truth. And remember this—when you come
back _don’t_ go to the ranch. Get a house down in Winnemucca. Buy a
car, and you’ll be able to get back and forth from the ranch in no
time.”

“That’s sure a gay future you’re paintin’ for me,” Johnny smiled
lugubriously. “All I got to do is to make her see it—takin’ me and
all the rest of it.”

“Well, I’m going to pay you a sincere compliment, Johnny—she
couldn’t pick a better man.”

“Oh, pie!” Johnny exclaimed, ridiculing Kelsey’s words.

“Pie or cream puffs,” the attorney remonstrated, “it’s all the same
with me. I know what I know. When a man will play as hard as you
play, I know he’ll work when the playing days are over. The
Diamond-Bar is a big property. No matter what happens to Kent he’ll
have to give the girl her share. That’ll be a job for you. Preach it
into Miss Molly that she must start a clean slate. Old scenes bring
back old memories, and old memories haunt us. The past is past.”

Kelsey laughed to himself. “That’s the most talking I’ve done in a
right smart bit of time. No charges, either.”

Johnny smiled, too. “Well, at least I’m obliged to you, Jim,” he
drawled. “You’ve got _my_ vote, anyhow.”

Scanlon, who had been riding ahead, drew up his horse and waited for
the others to come abreast him. “We’d better spread out,” he
suggested. “If they see us riding together it’s going to look
suspicious. They don’t know we’re after them. If each man goes it
alone one of us is sure to pick them up. Let the one that does
string along until he meets another man. Between the two of them
they ought to get the drop.”

“You always did know how to draw to a hand, Scanlon,” Johnny
answered approvingly. “I say, break up right here.”

“All right,” Kelsey agreed. “Each of us understands what to do. I’ll
take the eastern cañon; Scanlon, you go straight ahead; Doc and
Johnny and Charlie Paul can spread out to the west and work north.
We’ll meet at the Agency by evening.”

In pursuance of this plan they separated. In half an hour Johnny
found himself alone, crossing a narrowing plain between two broken
ranges. The Indian was on his left, Doc Ritter on his right. By noon
time they were miles apart.

The plain which Johnny had traversed came to an end. Before him
arose giant mountains. It was his intention to scale them and later
on to cross a high plateau to his north, eventually coming to the
trail which led to the post trader’s store.

The boy’s horse made slow progress during the next hour. Every foot
of the way was an uphill climb. On reaching a fairly level basin in
the mountainside Johnny stopped to let his pony get his wind.
Reaching for his tobacco and papers, Johnny began rolling a
cigarette.

The _zing-g-g-g_ of a bullet terminated the operation very abruptly.
With a backward lunge the boy threw himself out of his saddle, and,
hugging the ground, wriggled to the cover of a giant bowlder. Ten
yards away he could see his hat, a neat little hole showing where
the bullet had passed through.

Not more than a second later, it seemed, another shot sounded.
Johnny’s head swung around to find the source of it. As he stared
above him he saw a man rise to his feet, sway for an instant as his
gun dropped from his hands, and sink back out of sight.

“It’s Kent!” Johnny gasped.

A voice called then:

“Hullo—Johnny! Hees all right for stand up. It’s me—Madeiras!”




                            CHAPTER XXXI

                          THE DEATH CHANT


“For God’s sake!” Johnny cried when he reached Madeiras. “What did
you kill him for?”

“Eet’s either you or heem. You t’ink I let heem pump lead into you
like that?”

“Have you been stalkin’ him?”

“I watch heem all right. Thunder Bird and feefty braves ees up
beyond. Gallup and Roddy ees on other side of mountain. You most
t’ink eet was a raid. Gallup die if he come close.”

“We’ve got to stop that, Tony. Gale’s been shot. He confessed.
Gallup killed both him and Traynor. Kelsey and a posse are spread
out in the hills to git him. I been lookin’ my eyes out for you. Who
told you I was alive?”

“The chief. He tell me you want me.”

“You bet! Kent and Gallup have got Molly hidden somewhere. They
swore out a warrant for me, chargin’ I took her.”

Tony smiled very superiorly. “No,” he said. “They ain’t got her; me,
Tony Madeiras, has got the girl!”

“What? You stole her?”

“_Sí!_ I watch Gallup leave town las’ night. I lose time before I
follow, but I go pretty dam’ fas’ when I get started. I t’ink he ees
go to the ranch. I say I tak’ the girl before I let heem have her.
_Por Dios_, that girl hate me. I have fight to tak’ her away.” Tony
shook his head. “Such nice girl, Johnny—sometime I wish you not come
back.”

“Well, where is she now?” Johnny demanded excitedly.

“Don’ worry; she’s safe—she’s in Thunder Bird’s lodge. Hees squaw
ees tak’ good care of her.”

“That’s no place for her, Tony. I don’t want her to know anythin’
about what’s happenin’ today. You git behind me now and we’ll crawl
over to Kent. Look out; he may not be dead. He lost his rifle, but
he may have a pistol on him.”

“No need be afraid,” Tony assured Johnny. “I tak’ good aim.”

When they found Kent he was propped against a rock with a pistol in
his hand, but he was so far gone that he could not lift his arm to
fire. “Go ’way,” he muttered. “Let me die in peace.”

“No, Kent,” answered Johnny. “Too many things have happened today to
go without a word with you. With all your faults I know you love
Molly. I’ve got to talk. Gale has been killed. He told the truth
about you and Gallup and Traynor. There’s a posse surroundin’
Gallup. They’ll git him if Thunder Bird don’t.”

“You lyin’?” the old man questioned.

“I’ll prove that I ain’t,” the boy replied, and he retold part of
Gale’s story.

“You win,” Kent said at last. “I never should have opposed you. But
I ain’t afraid to die. Best that I do, I guess. Molly is against me.
You killed her love for me—and she did love me. Yes, she did! Won’t
you fix it some way, Johnny, so that she won’t know all—that—that
she wasn’t my girl?

“I ain’t taken a penny of her money. In fact, I’ve doubled what I
got out of the mine. It’s all hers. Gallup’s got my notes for thirty
thousand. He won’t be able to collect. That’s good, ain’t it—beatin’
him?

“He shot ‘Cross.’ Got him from the top of one of those box cars
while I was tryin’ to make an alibi for myself by sittin’ in
Ritter’s office. Think of him turnin’ on me after what we’d been
through—tryin’ to take Molly. God, I’m glad she’s free of him! Tell
her you and me made it up, Johnny—that I said I hoped you two’d be
happy. Will you do that?”

The old man tried to lift his arm beseechingly.

“Don’t let her know about me—don’t tell her she wasn’t my child,” he
begged. “I raised her, Johnny—her little baby hands. I can feel
them.”

In spite of Johnny’s efforts Kent forced himself half erect. “You’ve
got to promise me, do you hear?” he went on. “I couldn’t die if I
thought she was goin’ to know. I couldn’t, I tell you—I—I—couldn’t.”

He fell back before the boy could catch him. Madeiras put his ear to
the man’s chest.

“He’s gone,” Johnny whispered to the Basque. “Yes, sir, the old
man’s gone! There’s all that’s left of Jackson Kent. Two months ago
who’d ever have thought it would come to this?”

Johnny got to his feet and walked to a bowlder and sat down. “I got
so I was hatin’ him,” he said to Tony, “and yet it kinda chokes me
up to see him lyin’ there like that. Things used to be pretty
pleasant in the old days on the range.”

Johnny’s words and the look on his face caused Madeiras more concern
than the sight of Kent’s lifeless body. Going to the boy’s side, he
placed his arm around his shoulders.

“Never min’, Johnny,” he said. “Kent try dam’ hard do ever’t’ing bad
for you. No reason for you mak’ me feel all bus’ up.”

“No, I don’t suppose there is; but I’m goin’ to try and do as he
wished. If the old man had been all bad he would have put Molly into
some institution and forgot her. Whatever he did that was wrong—he
was good to her. So don’t talk, Tony. These things square themselves
in time.”

Johnny got up and covered Kent’s face.

“Where’s his horse?” the boy asked.

“Back where I lef’ mine,” Madeiras answered, pointing to a little
park of stunted cedars.

“No matter,” Johnny went on, “we got to leave him here or—say! We’ll
throw him on my horse and tote him to the trees. We can tie him up
between some of those cedars so the coyotes won’t be able to git at
him. Give me a hand; we got to git movin’.”

When they arrived at the trees they put a rope around Kent’s body,
and passed the end of it through a noose in another rope which they
had looped over the top of one of the trees. By this arrangement
they were able to lift the body from the ground and raise it to a
place of safety.

Johnny had knotted the ropes when he suddenly came to attention.
Madeiras glanced at him sharply.

“What ees eet?” the Basque asked.

Johnny had his hands cupped to his ears. “Listen,” he whispered.

Faint, far off, came the measured, significant sound which had
alarmed the boy. The Basque’s expression showed that he, too, heard
it.

“Do you get it?” Johnny asked. “_Tum, tum, tu-um, tum, tum_—it’s a
finger drum.”

“_Sí_,” Tony nodded, his voice dry, his hand keeping time with the
beat. “Eet’s the death chant. Old——”

“Thunder Bird’s got Gallup!” Johnny finished for the Basque.
“_That’s_ what is waitin’ for us on the top of this mountain! All we
got to do is to go into that Piute camp and take Gallup away from
them. And we’ve got to do it with gab. I know Injuns. Every minute
we wait here only makes our chances slimmer. Believe me, if we’re
goin’ to save Gallup—we’ve got to travel.”




                           CHAPTER XXXII

                          THE DEBT IS PAID


A strange sight awaited Johnny and the Basque. Thunder Bird’s braves
had surprised Gallup and captured him. Roddy, his deputy—Sol
Ahrens—and Kent had bolted. So, without a shot having been fired,
old Aaron had been marched to the camp at the top of the mountain.

The rock formation looked very much as if it was of volcanic origin,
a huge crater or bowl having been carved out where the peak of the
mountain must once have risen. In this bowl was the Piute camp.

Johnny and Madeiras, from the point they had gained above the
Indians, were able to see what went on. Gallup was tied to a stake.
Thunder Bird sat facing him, and squatting in a circle about the
doomed man were at least fifty Indians. Two or three squaws moved
around in back of the circle, gathering rocks and depositing them in
piles within reach of their lords.

“They’re goin’ to stone him,” Johnny told the Basque. “It’s a good
old Piute trick.”

Gallup’s voice rose above the throbbing of the drum, but what he
said was not intelligible to the two men watching him. Thunder Bird
sat unmoved, gloating over the man before him, Aaron’s torrent of
words only adding to his enjoyment.

At a signal from one of the chief’s sons the squaws left their
gathering of rocks and approached the single lodge which had been
erected. A brief wrangling, and Johnny saw Molly step forth from the
tent’s folds. Ten seconds later the chief’s lodge fell in the dust.
A brief moment of labor and the Indian women had it strapped on a
pony.

Johnny saw Thunder Bird raise his hand as Molly approached him.
Plainly he was exhibiting her to Gallup. The Indian’s sense of the
dramatic was superb. He intended that Aaron should think that he had
stolen her.

Gallup turned his entreaties to Molly, but she seemed deaf to them.
Johnny saw her pick up a rock from the piles which the squaws had
made. She held it out questioningly toward old Thunder Bird. Rapid
words followed, the chief continuing to shake his head negatively.

Molly’s actions became vehement. The chief held up his hand to his
women. It ended the argument, for the next second Molly was being
led toward the distant crest of the large bowl.

“He wouldn’t listen to her,” thought the boy. “She savvied those
piles of rock.” Aloud, then, he added:

“They’re sendin’ her away. It’s pretty refined of the old chief not
to make her witness what’s comin’ off.”

“Well, what we do now?” Tony asked. “You t’ink she’s any good for go
down there?”

“I’m goin’ to try it,” Johnny answered. “You stay here. Maybe they
won’t let me come in to camp. If they do I’ll palaver and stall as
long as I can. Kelsey and the others will be showin’ up before long.
They can’t be asleep at the Agency to what is goin’ on. Ames is
Injunwise. If these braves git started the top is likely to blow off
before they’re calmed down again.”

“Bes’, I t’ink, to stay right here,” Tony stated firmly.

“And fail—after all my talkin’? Not on your life. I’m goin’ to git
Gallup, as I said I would. My luck ain’t so bad. Say, where’d you
get that trinket on the hat? That’s Traynor’s, ain’t it?”

“_Sí_. I get heem out of Gallup’s purse when he geeve eet to me for
keel you. That’s why I mak’ so much excitement. Maybe you tak’ eet.”

Tony offered the gold snake to Johnny, but the boy waved it back.

“No—I’ll play my own stuff. You watch me when I git down there. If I
hold up my hand, you shoot—fire two or three times. I’ll be tellin’
’em how many men I got around the rim. If the others arrive in time,
maybe they’ll understand, too.”

They shook hands, and Johnny moved away, Madeiras’s eyes following
him. When the boy was within two hundred yards of the camp the
Basque saw him raise his right hand, palm flat, above his head, his
left hand, palm pointing downward, dropping until it hung below his
waist. It was the Piute sign for a parley.

Johnny avoided any cover, lest it be thought that he stole up on
them. A few seconds later he was seen.

Contrary to the white man’s nice little laws, these Indians were
armed. Johnny caught the flash of the sun’s rays on the polished
barrels, but he continued to walk toward them. Thunder Bird turned
his head in the boy’s direction as he advanced.

Gallup had recognized Johnny, and he cursed him. Johnny ignored
Aaron. When he reached the chief’s side, the boy’s hands moved until
the tips of his fingers rested against his forehead. It was the sign
of friendship. The chief answered and motioned to Johnny to sit
down.

Instead of complying, Johnny took the drum from the player’s hands,
and, holding it before Thunder Bird, dropped a handful of dust upon
it. It was symbolic—the omen of disaster. A murmur passed around the
circle of squatting Indians.

The old chief caught the boy’s meaning. “Nah!” he grunted angrily.

“My tongue speaks no lie,” Johnny answered flatly. “It is the drum
of death! Many men are in the hills. They are near. They no ask
question—just shoot.”

Thunder Bird’s head moved back and forth assuredly. A sarcastic,
mocking grunt broke from his lips. “White men run,” he announced.
“All gone.”

He referred to the other members of Gallup’s party. Not knowing
this, Johnny wondered if his play was doomed.

“Some go, many more come, chief,” he went on without a sign of
wavering. “Piute women rub ashes in their hair tonight. Me good
friend with you, Thunder Bird. Me tell um you, no take Gallup—white
man want him. Man Gale, he is dead; man Kent, he dead, too. Make
talk—plenty talk. Big Jim come. Many guns come with him. Mebbe so
you remember Mormon fight? Plenty Injun die; no fires in the lodges.
Now come so happen again.”

And Johnny stooped and threw a handful of dust into his own face;
from his lips came the doleful notes of the chant for the dead.

Thunder Bird stirred uneasily. The boy, wisely, had made no demands.
What he had said had been only the airing of his sadness over the
calamity facing the tribe. His talk held truths as Thunder Bird
knew—the Mormon raid, for instance. Doubts for the safety of his
band began to assail the chief. He saw his braves staring at Johnny.

That individual was keenly alive to the fact that the issue hung in
the balance right now. If his bluff were called he would be in for
it.

Bluff was one of Thunder Bird’s weapons also. He availed himself of
it now. “We keep Gallup,” he said. “No take away him. Men not come.
If men come, where they be?”

Johnny’s hand was being called. He did not flinch. With a look that
said a thousand men surrounded them he lifted his hand and began
sweeping it around the edge of the bowl. “They are there,” he said.

His hand pointed toward the spot where Madeiras lay. _Bang, bang,
bang_, came the sound of the Basque’s gun.

“There are many,” Johnny paused to say cautiously before his hand
moved onward. Was there any one else up there to answer him—Scanlon,
Doc, Kelsey? God help him if there was not. An eternity passed for
the boy as his hand started again and moved a foot without receiving
an answer. Johnny knew that he was taking the supreme gamble of his
life. Another few inches his hand moved, and then _bang, bang, bang_
came the report of a gun.

“Good old Doc Ritter,” Johnny murmured to himself, thinking he
recognized the sound of Doc’s heavy calibered weapon.

Johnny’s hand was sweeping along. Another series of shots rang out.
A pause then until his hand pointed in the very direction in which
Molly had gone. The next instant a fusillade of shots echoed in the
basin. Over the crest came a band of men—twenty-five or thirty of
them.

“It is Ames and the agent!” Johnny cried aloud. “Thank God!” The boy
had no need to fear that his words had been overheard. The Indians
were in a panic. Only old Thunder Bird sat unmoved.

Johnny ran toward the oncoming men, his hands raised as he shouted
to them to put down their guns. By the time they met, Kelsey and
Scanlon were running down to them. A minute more and Ritter and
Madeiras appeared.

Ames had organized the party.

“What’s it all about, Johnny?” Ames asked. “I shore thought they wuz
out to raise ha’r.”

“They just wanted Gallup. He’s treated the chief as though he was a
water boy. When you hurt his dignity you’re hurtin’ somethin’.”

“Wal, you’d better untie Gallup,” Ames suggested. “He don’t look
happy.”

“I’ll take care of him,” Kelsey announced. “I want him for murder.”

This statement caused some excitement among the trader’s party.
Kelsey explained briefly. “We’ll take him back to town,” he went on.
“Maybe you can find a horse for the old chief. Patch it up with him.
I’ll want him for a witness when this case comes to trial.”

Gallup had a tirade ready for Kelsey and the others as they
approached him. “’Bout time some one came,” he growled. “Injuns do
about as they please on the Reservation nowadays.”

“Aaron Gallup,” Kelsey interrupted, “I’ve got a warrant for your
arrest. You’re wanted for the murder of Crosbie Traynor.”

Gallup winced as if he had been shot. “Like hell I am,” he roared
when he recovered his breath. “That whipper-snapper there is at the
bottom of this!” And he hurled an oath at Johnny.

“That’s enough out of you, Gallup,” Kelsey snapped. “The boy got
you, all right. We’ve had Gale’s story also.”

“And Kent’s,” Johnny added. “He’s dead,” he continued in answer to
Jim’s question. “He tried to plug me; Tony stopped him. It was just
as we had it figured. Gallup shot Traynor from the top of a box
car.”

“That’s goin’ to be right hard on the girl,” the trader exclaimed.
“Losin’ her paw thata-way. I took her and sent her down to my house
just a while back. The Injuns had her.”

“You’ll get her now,” Gallup sneered at Johnny, “You’re welcome to
her. What is she, anyhow? You think she’s——”

Madeiras had plucked a glowing faggot from a little “squaw” fire
which the Indians had made. He pressed it against Gallup’s mouth.
“Wan more word, Gallup,” he dared, “and I shove thees down your
dam’, no-good t’roat!”

Thunder Bird broke his silence long enough to grunt his approval of
this proposed action.

“You and Tony will be going with Ames,” Kelsey stated. “Our party
will go back the way you came, Johnny. Guess we’d better take Kent’s
body with us. Where’ll we find it?”

“In that little park of cedars soon after you start downhill.”

“Wal, we’ll git goin’ out of hyar,” Ames announced. “What about you,
chief? Better trail along.”

Thunder Bird shook his head.

“Suit yoreself. So-long, boys.”

Gallup, gloomy and sullen, got to his feet; the parties separated
and soon lost sight of each other.

“Never seen trouble come yit when the agent wuz home,” the trader
grumbled as they mounted their horses. “Reckon this is about Thunder
Bird’s last good time.”




                           CHAPTER XXXIII

                            FULFILLMENT


Johnny found Molly sitting on the steps of the trader’s house when
he arrived at the Agency. Her face was proof enough of the worry and
excitement she had undergone. The boy’s heart sank as he realized
that he had to hurt her still more by the news he carried. Delay the
telling as long as he might, the truth had to be faced.

Johnny might have spared himself this misery, for Molly knew more
than he suspected, and explanations, which Johnny dreaded, were to
be spared him.

She ran toward him, arms outstretched, as he jumped down from his
horse. “Oh, Johnny,” she said sadly, “it’s been a terrible day. I
think I’ll break down completely if you don’t get me home at once. I
was on the ridge with Mr. Ames when you walked into Thunder Bird’s
camp. I wasn’t afraid for you. The chief had told me so many things
this day that I knew he was your friend. What did they do with
Gallup?”

“They arrested him for the Traynor murder. Aaron shot Gale this
mornin’, and Toby confessed before he died.”

“It didn’t need that, though, from what I’ve been told, to convict
him. You proved your case against him. What a beast he has been.
And—him—what have they done with him?”

Although he suspected she referred to Kent, Johnny stared blankly at
Molly.

“I—I mean Kent,” she went on. “He was with Gallup this morning.”

“Why—er—he’s pretty bad off, I—er——”

“Is he dead, Johnny? Tell me the truth.”

Johnny nodded his head slowly. “Yes,” he muttered, “he’s dead. He
tried to kill me. Tony got him.”

Molly bit her lip in a vain effort to keep the tears back.

“I didn’t want you to know about your father, Molly,” the boy
mumbled.

“No, Johnny,” Molly told him frankly. “There’s no need for you to
fool me longer. Thunder Bird told me. Crosbie Traynor was my father.
No wonder that I felt the call within me when I received his note.”

Johnny caught her as a sob broke from her lips. “Oh, Johnny,” she
cried. “Take me into your arms and pet me. I haven’t any one but you
now!”

“I’ll git you away from here, Molly,” the boy told her. “We’re goin’
to git married. You take some clothes and we’ll go down to
California for two or three months. Kelsey and Hobe will look after
things; and Tony, too, if you’ll let him. He’s blackened his good
name and made you hate him to help me. Don’t worry about tomorrow.
They’ll keep on comin’ just as regular as if nothin’ had ever
happened. Time fixes up these hurts.”

It was even as Johnny said. Three months later, basking in the
sunshine of old Santa Cruz, Molly and Johnny agreed that happiness
was just beginning for them.

They had tried to keep their romance a secret, but the San Francisco
newspapers found them out. Although the young couple acted sedately
around the hotel, they realized, as brides and grooms always do,
that people knew they were honeymooners.

Johnny was sitting alone on the beach one evening, watching the
silver-tipped waves breaking over the wide sands of Monterey Bay,
when Molly stole up behind him and slipped her arms about his neck.
He caught her and held her until she paid a proper forfeit with her
lips.

“Nice people do not kiss in public,” Molly said, teasingly.

“Well, you knew my past before you married me,” Johnny retorted with
a mischievous grin.

“Oh, did I—there!” And Molly kissed him again. “I’ve just received a
wonderful letter from Jim Kelsey. It’s full of good things about
you. Jim says he’s sorry he advised you to move out of the county.
Folks want to elect you to something or other.”

Johnny held up his hands in mock horror.

“No, sir, never again!” he declared. “I’ve got the job I was after.
Nevada will have to look out for herself.”

                              THE END





End of Project Gutenberg's Smoke of the .45, by Harry Sinclair Drago