The Max Brand Megapack (334 page)

“Would have been crazy, sheriff,” asserted Red Chalmers.

“I dunno,” sighed Arizona, patting his fat stomach reminiscently. “I dunno. I guess you was right, Kern.”

The others glared at him, and the sheriff became purple.

“So I come back and figured that I’d best get together the handiest little bunch of fighting men I could lay hands on. That’s why I sent for you four.”

Clumsily they made their acknowledgements.

“Because,” said Kern, “it don’t take no senator to see that something has got to be done. Sour Creek is after Gaspar, and now it’ll be after Sinclair, too. But they got clear of me, and I’m the sheriff of Woodville. It’s up to Woodville to get ’em back. Am I right?”

Again they nodded, and the sheriff, growing warmer as he talked, snatched off a glove and mopped his forehead. As his arm fell, he noted that Arizona had seen something which fascinated him. His eyes followed every gesture of the sheriff’s hand.

“Is that the whole story?” asked Arizona.

“The whole thing,” declared Kern stoutly, and he glared at the man from the southland.

“Because if it’s anything worse,” said Arizona innocently, “we’d ought to know it. The honor of Woodville is at stake.”

“Oh, it’s bad enough this way,” grumbled Joe Stockton, and the sheriff, hastily restoring his glove, grunted assent.

“Now, boys, let’s hear some plans.”

“First thing,” said Red Chalmers, rising, “is for each of us to pick out the best hoss in his string, and then we’ll all ride over to the place where they left and pick up the trail.”

“Not a bad idea,” approved Kern.

There was a general rising.

“Sit down,” said Arizona, who alone had not budged in his chair.

Without obeying, they turned to him.

“Was that the Morris trail, Kern?” asked Arizona.

“Sure.”

“Well, you ain’t got a chance of picking up the trail of two hosses out of two hundred.”

In silence they received the truth of this assertion. Then Joe Stockton spoke. He was not exactly a troublemaker, but he took advantage of every disturbance that came his way and improved it to the last scruple.

“Sinclair comes from Colma, according to Bill, and Colma is north. Ride north, Kern, and the north trail will keep us tolerable close to Sinclair. We can tend to Gaspar later on—unless he’s a pile more dangerous’n he looks.”

“Yes, Sinclair is the main one,” said the sheriff. “He’s more’n a hundred Gaspars. Boys, the north trail looks good to me. We can pick up Gaspar later on, as Joe Stockton says. Straight for Colma, that’s where we’ll strike.”

“Hold on,” cut in Arizona.

Patently they regarded him with disfavor. There was something blandly superior in Arizona’s demeanor. He had a way of putting forth his opinions as though it were not the slightest effort for him to penetrate truths which were securely veiled from the eyes of ordinary men.

Now he looked calmly, almost contemptuously upon the sheriff and the rest of the posse.

“Gents, has any of you ever seen this Jig you talk about ride a hoss?”

“Me, of course,” said the sheriff.

“Anything about him strike you when he was in a saddle?”

“Sure! Got a funny arm motion.”

“Like he was fanning his ribs with his elbows to keep cool?” went on Arizona, grinning.

The sheriff chuckled.

“Would you pick him for a good hand on a long trail?”

“Never in a million years,” said the sheriff. “Is he?”

Kern seemed to admit his inferiority by asking this question. He bit his lip and was about to go on and answer himself when Arizona cut in with: “Never in a million years, sheriff. He couldn’t do twenty miles in a day without being laid up.”

“What’s the point of all this, Arizona?”

“I’ll show you pronto. Let’s go back to Sinclair. The other day he was one of a bunch that pretty near got Gaspar hung, eh?”

“Yep.”

“But at the last minute he saved Jig?”

“Sure. I just been telling you that.”

Their inability to follow Arizona’s train of thought irritated the others. He literally held them in the palm of his hand as he developed his argument.

“Why did he save Jig?” he went on. “Because when Gaspar was about to swing, they was something about him that struck Sinclair. What was it? I dunno, except that Jig is tolerable young looking and pretty helpless, even though you say he killed Quade.”

“Say he killed him?” burst put the sheriff. “It was plumb proved on him.”

“I’d sure like to see that proof,” said the man from the southland. “The point is that Sinclair took pity on him and kept him from the noose. Then he stays that night guarding him and gets more and more interested. This Jig has got a pile of education. I’ve heard him talk. Today you come over the hills. Sinclair sees Woodville, figures that’s the place where Jig’ll be hung, and he loses his nerve. He sticks you up and gets Jig free. All right! D’you think he’ll stop at that? Don’t he know that Jig’s plumb helpless on the trail? And knowing that, d’you think he’ll split with Jig and leave the schoolteacher to be picked up the first thing? No, sir, he’ll stick with Jig and see him through.”

“Well, all the better,” snapped the sheriff. “That’s going to make our trail shorter—if what you say turns out true.”

“It’s true, well enough. Sinclair right now is camping somewhere in the hills near Sour Creek, waiting for things to quiet down before he hits the out-trail with this Gaspar.”

“He wouldn’t be fool enough for that,” grumbled the sheriff.

“Fool? Has any one of you professional man hunters figured yet on hunting for ’em near Sour Creek? Ain’t you-all been talking long trails—Colma, and what not?”

They were crushed.

“All you say is true, if Sinclair saddles himself with the tenderfoot. Might as well tie so much lead around his neck.”

“He’ll do it, though,” said Arizona carelessly. “I know him.”

It caused a new focusing of attention upon him, and this time Arizona seemed to regret that he stood in the limelight.

“You know him?” asked Joe Stockton softly.

The bright black eyes of the fat man glittered and flickered from face to face. He seemed to be gauging them and deciding how much he could say—or how little.

“Sure, I drifted up to this country one season and rode there. I heard a pile about this Sinclair and seen him a couple of times.”

“How good a man d’you figure him to be with a gun?” asked the sheriff without apparent interest.

“Good enough,” sighed Arizona. “Good enough, partner!”

Presently the sheriff showed that he was a man capable of taking good advice, even though he could not stamp it as his own original device.

“Boys,” he said, “I figure that what Arizona has said is tolerable sound. Arizona, what d’you advise next?”

“That we go to Sour Creek pronto—and sit down and wait!”

A chorus of exclamations arose.

Arizona grew impatient with such stupidity. “Sinclair come to Sour Creek to do something. I dunno what he wants, but what he wants he ain’t got yet, and he’s the sort that’ll stay till he does his work.”

“I’ve got in touch with the authorities higher up, boys,” declared Kern. “Sinclair and Gaspar is both outlawed, with a price on their heads. Won’t that change Sinclair’s mind and make him move on?”

“You don’t know Sinclair,” persisted Arizona. “You don’t know him at all, sheriff.”

“Grab your hosses, boys. I’m following Arizona’s lead.”

Pouring out of the door in silence, the omniscience of Arizona lay heavily upon their minds. Inside, the sheriff lingered with the wise man from the southland.

“If I was to get in touch with Colma, Fatty, what d’you think they’d be able to tell me about your record up there?”

The olive skin of Arizona became a bleached drab.

“I dunno,” he said rather thickly, and all the while his little black eyes were glittering and shifting. “Nothing much, Kern.”

His glance steadied. “By the way, when you had your glove off a while ago I seen something on your wrist that looked like a rope gall, Kern. If I was to tell the boys that, what d’you figure they’d think about their sheriff?”

It was Kern’s turn to change color. For a moment he hesitated, and then he dropped a hand lightly on Arizona’s shoulder.

“Look here, Arizona,” he muttered in the ear of the fat man, “what you been before you hit Woodville I dunno, and I don’t care. I figure we come to a place where we’d both best keep our mouths shut. Eh?”

“Shake,” said Arizona, and they went out the door, almost arm in arm.

CHAPTER 19

For Jude Cartwright the world was gone mad, as he spurred down the hills away from Sinclair and the girl. It was really only the second time in his life that he had been thwarted in an important matter. To be sure he had been raised roughly among rough men, but among the roughest of them, the repute of his family and the awe of his father’s wide authority had served him as a shield in more ways than Jude himself could realize. He had grown very much accustomed to having his way.

All things were made smooth for him; and when he reached the age when he began to think of marriage, and was tentatively courting half a dozen girls of the district, unhoped-for great fortune had fairly dropped into his path.

The close acquaintance with old Mervin in that hunting trip had been entirely accidental, and he had been astounded by the marriage contract which Mervin shortly after proposed between the two families. Ordinarily even Jude Cartwright, with all his self-esteem, would never have aspired to a star so remote as Mervin’s daughter. The miracle, however, happened. He saw himself in the way to be the richest man on the range, the possessor of the most lovely wife.

That dream was first pricked by the inexplicable disappearance of the girl on their marriage day. He had laid that disappearance to foul play. That she could have left him through any personal aversion never entered his complacent young head.

He went out on the quest after the neighboring district had been combed for his wife, and he had spent the intervening months in a ceaseless search, which grew more and more disheartening. It was only by chance that he remembered that Mervin had lived for some time in Sour Creek, and only with the faintest hope of finding a clue that he decided to visit that place. In his heart he was convinced that the girl was dead, but if she were really hiding it was quite possible that she might have remembered the town where her father had made his first success with cattle.

Now the coincidence that had brought him face to face with her, stunned him. He was still only gradually recovering from it. It was totally incredible that she should have fled at all. And it was entirely beyond the range of credence that modest Elizabeth Mervin should have donned the clothes of a man and should be wandering through the hills with a male companion.

But when his wonder died away, he felt little or no pity for his wife. The pang that he felt was the torture of offended pride. Indeed, the fact that he had lost his wife meant less to him than that his wife had seen him physically beaten by another man. He writhed in his saddle at the memory.

Instantly his mind flashed back to the details of the scene. He rehearsed it with himself in a different role, beating the cowpuncher to a helpless pulp of bruised muscle, snatching away his wife. But even if he had been able to do that, what would the outcome be? He could not let the world know the truth—that his wife had fled from him in horror on their marriage day, that she had wondered about in the clothes of a man, that she was the companion of another man. And if he brought her back, certainly all these facts would come to light. The close-cropped hair alone would be damning evidence.

He framed a wild tale of abduction by villains, of an injury, a sickness, a fever that forced a doctor to cut her hair short. He had no sooner framed the story than he threw it away as useless. With all his soul he began to wish for the only possible solution which would save the remnants of his ruined self-respect and keep him from the peril of discovery. The girl must indubitably die!

By the time he came to this conclusion, he had struck out of the hills, and, as his horse hit the level going and picked up speed, the heart of Jude Cartwright became lighter. He would get weapons and the finest horse money could buy in Sour Creek, trail the pair, take them by surprise, and kill them both. Then back to the homeland and a new life!

Already he saw himself in it, his name surrounded with a glamour of pathetic romance, as the sad widower with a mystery darkening his past and future. It was an agreeable gloom into which he fell. Self-pity warmed him and loosened his fierceness. He sighed with regret for his own misfortunes.

In this frame of mind he reached Sour Creek and its hotel. While he wrote his name in the yellowed register he over-heard loud conversation in the farther end of the room. Two men had been outlawed that day—John Gaspar, the schoolteacher who killed Quade, and Riley Sinclair, a stranger from the North.

Paying no further attention to the talk, he passed on into the generalmerchandise store which filled most of the lower story of the hotel. There he found the hardware department, and prominent among the hardware were the gun racks. He went over the Colts and with an expert hand took up the guns, while the gray-headed storekeeper advanced an eulogium upon each weapon. His attention was distracted by the entrance of a tall, painfully thin man who seemed in great haste.

“What’s all this about Cold Feet, Whitey?” he asked. “Cold Feet and Sinclair?”

“I dunno, Sandersen, except that word come in from Woodville that Sinclair stuck up the sheriff on his way in with Jig, and Sinclair got clean away. What could have been in his head to grab Jig?”

“I dunno,” said Sandersen, apparently much perturbed. “They outlawed ’em both, Whitey?”

There was an eagerness in this question so poorly concealed that Cartwright jerked up his head and regarded Sandersen with interest.

“Both,” replied Whitey. “You seem sort of pleased, Sandersen?”

“I knowed that Sinclair would come to a bad end,” said Sandersen more soberly.

“Why, I thought they said you cottoned to him when the boys was figuring he might have had something to do with Quade?”