CHAPTER XXVI

THE FRAME-UP

Thornton returned to his cabin long before the first faint streak of daylight, and not once during the night did he think of sleep. At his little table in the light of his coal-oil lamp he read over and over the hurried words which Winifred Waverly had been driven to put on paper for him. At first his look was merely charged with perplexity; then there came into it incredulity and finally sheer amazement.

"The pack of hounds!" he cried softly when he had done, his fist striking hard upon his table. "The pack of low down, dirty hounds!"

For now, in a flash, he saw and understood beyond the limits to which the girl's vision had gone, grasping explanations denied to her. She had told him everything which she knew or suspected, saying somewhere in her account, "I know now that my first judgment of you, before I was deceived into thinking Ben Broderick you, was right. I know that you are a man and a gentleman. I know that you are 'square.' So now, if you think that you owe me anything for what I am doing for you, I want you to remember that Henry Pollard is my uncle, my dead mother's brother, and to make things no harder for him than he has made them for himself."

With no other reference to her relation to the man, with no further hint of a plea for herself, she went on to tell what she knew of Pollard and Broderick, of their meetings with Dalton whom, she thought, they had completely deceived, of the talk she had overheard that night at the schoolhouse. She said nothing of her own precarious position at Pollard's house. When he finished reading Buck Thornton's eyes were very bright.

"A real woman," he muttered. "A real man's sort of girl! I doped her up right at the first jump, and then I went and insulted her by thinking that she was like 'Rattlesnake' Pollard! Lord, Lordy! What a difference!" And then, very gently, his eyes clouding a little, he muttered over and over, under his breath: "Poor little kid!"

But ever his thoughts came back to the tangle into which day by day he himself had been moving deeper and deeper. He saw how simple the whole matter had been, how seemingly sure of success. Broderick was close enough to him in size and form to make the scheme eminently practicable.

It was easy for Broderick to dress himself as Thornton dressed, boots, chaps old and worn, big black hat and grey neck handkerchief. It was simple enough for Broderick, here in this land of cattle and horses, to find a horse that would be a fair match for any horse which Thornton rode. He would allow himself to be seen only at a distance, as upon the day Winifred Waverly had seen him, or indistinctly at night, and when the time came and the arrest was made there would rise up many men to swear to Buck Thornton.... Broderick himself had already said that he had been robbed of a can of gold dust. He would be ready to swear that Thornton had robbed him. Pollard would add his word....

One by one he remembered episodes which until now had meant nothing.

Cattle had been stolen from the ranges all about him; no single cow was missing from the Poison Hole. He had thought that this had been because of his own great vigilance, his night-riding over his herds. But what would a jury say? He remembered that the last time he had seen old man King, just a few days ago, when King had remarked drily upon the fact that no cattle were missing from Thornton's range, there had been a swift look of suspicion in the old cattle man's shrewd eyes. Already he was suspected. How many men besides King were ready to believe the worst of Buck Thornton, a man who had been in their midst only a year?

There were many days in the life of Buck Thornton as in the lives of other cattle men hereabouts when he was absolutely alone with his horse, when he rode far out day and night upon some range errand, when, perhaps, he went two or three days together and saw no other man.

Thornton remembered suddenly that when he had first heard of the murder of Bill Varney, the stage driver, he had just returned from such a lonely ride, a three days' trip into the mountains to look for new pasture lands. If these men planned to commit these crimes and then to throw the burden upon him, he saw how simple a matter it would be for them to select some such occasion as this when he could not prove an alibi.

"They've come mighty close to getting me," he muttered sternly. "Mighty d.a.m.ned uncomfortably close!"

He saw further. Winifred Waverly had said frankly that she had sworn to the sheriff that she knew it was Buck Thornton who had robbed her. They were managing to hold Cole Dalton off, and they had a reason. What?

Perhaps to work their game as long as they dared, to make a last big haul, or to have their chain of evidence welded so strongly link by link that Thornton could not free himself from it and that no faintest breath of suspicion might reach them. Pollard would be in a position to prove that Thornton had paid him this five thousand only to take it back; it would give him a chance to break the contract, to regain possession of the Poison Hole and to keep the other ten thousand dollars already paid in as forfeited....

Why had they chosen him to bear the brunt of their manifold crimes?

That, too, was clear to him. With him in the penitentiary or gone to the gallows the whole episode would be closed, the men who had put through the monumental scheme would be in a position to enjoy their boldly acquired profits with no fear of the law so much as searching for them.

It was necessary to them that some man suffer for their wrong doing.

Now: why Buck Thornton in particular? The reasons were forthcoming, logical and in order: he was a man whom Pollard hated; already Pollard regretted having sold the Poison Hole ranch for twenty thousand dollars; he wanted it back; Thornton happened to be a new man in the country and new men are always open to suspicion; he happened to be close enough to Ben Broderick in size and form and carriage to make the deception easy.

And, thought Thornton, there was one other reason:

The undertaking of these men had already grown too big, the work too extensive, for it to be handled by two men alone. They had confederates; that was inevitable. Blackie, the saloon keeper in Dry Town, was one of them, he felt sure. The Bedloe boys, always ready for deeds of wildness and lawlessness, were others. The Bedloe boys hated him as keenly as did Pollard, and they were not the kind to miss an opportunity like this to "break even" with him. It was noteworthy that he had had no trouble with them since he had shot the Kid's revolvers out of his hands at John Smith's place last winter; they had left him entirely unmolested; the three of them who he knew were fearless and hard and vengeful, had not sought in any way to punish him. Here was the reason.

He went back to Winifred Waverly's letter. She had ended by saying,

"I know that Henry Pollard suspects me of knowing more than I have admitted to him; I suppose I did not entirely deceive him about that yellow envelope. He is watching me all the time. That is why I have written this to be ready to give it to you if I get the chance, if I dare not talk with you. Don't try to see me. I am in no danger now, but if you came, if he knew that we were seeing each other.... I don't know."

At last when Thornton got up and went to his door day was breaking. He returned to his table where his lamplight was growing a sickly, pale yellow in the dawn, and holding Winifred's letter over the chimney burned it. He took her other little note from his pocket and let the yellow flame lick it up. Then, grinding the ashes under his heel, he put out the light and went again to the door.

The recent shooting at the Here's How Saloon by some man who had stood almost at the cowboy's elbow, he had for a little forgotten as he pondered on his own personal danger and admitted that the case was going to look bad against him in spite of what he might do. But now, for a moment, he forgot his own predicament to become lost in frowning speculation upon the night's crime.

He knew that men like the Bedloes, hard men living hard lives, have many enemies. There were the men whom they had cheated at cards, and who had cheated them, with whom they had drunk and quarrelled. It was clear to him that any one of a dozen men, bearing a grudge against Charley Bedloe, but afraid to attack in the open any one of these three brothers who fought like tigers and who took up one another's quarrels with no thought of the right and the wrong of it, might have chosen this method.

Yes, this was clear. But one thing was not. The night had pa.s.sed and neither the Kid nor Ed Bedloe had called to square with him. He did not understand this. For he did not believe that even their affiliation with Broderick and Pollard would have held the Kid and Ed back from their vengeance now. It was patent that the Kid had leaped to the natural conclusion that he had killed Charley Bedloe; he understood the emotion which he had seen depicted in the Kid's twisted face as Charley staggered and fell at his brother's feet. It was a great, blind grief, unutterable, wrathful, terrible, like the unreasoning, tempestuous grief of a wild thing, of a mother bear whose cubs had been shot before her eyes. For the one thing which it seemed G.o.d had put into the natures of these men was love, the love which led them to seek no wife, no friend, no confidante outside their own close fraternity. And yet the night had pa.s.sed and neither the Kid nor Ed had come.

"Something happened to stop them," mused Thornton. "For a few hours only. They'll come. And I'd give a hundred dollars to know who the jasper was that put that bullet into Charley."

He went back into his cabin, put his two guns on the table, threw out the cartridges, and for fifteen minutes oiled and cleaned. Then, with a careful eye to every sh.e.l.l, he loaded them again. When he once more threw his door open and went outside his eyes were a little regretful but very, very hard.

He was inclined to believe that Winifred was mistaken in judging Ben Broderick's to be the brains of this thing. He thought that he saw Pollard's hand directing. Until now he had fully expected to go to Dry Town, to raise the four thousand five hundred dollars with which to make his last payment upon the Poison Hole ranch. Now he more than suspected that this was but a play of Pollard's to get him out of the way while the last crime be perpetrated, to have him out upon one of his lonely rides so that he could prove no alibi, perhaps even to rob him of the four thousand five hundred dollars before he could come with it to Hill's Corners. Now he made up his mind that he was not going to give Pollard this one last chance he wanted. For, he felt convinced, if he did succeed in getting through with the money without a bullet in the back, and if he actually brought it to Pollard the latter would tell him that he had changed his mind, and so the rash act would have been done uselessly. Having no way of holding Pollard to his bargain he had little wish to make the long ride to Dry Town and back.

Thornton for several days had planned to ride out to the borders of his range and see his cowboys, giving them full instructions for work to be done during the week which followed in case he should not be able to give more time to them. Now, with a great deal to think about, he was not averse to a solitary day in the saddle.

Of late he had noted how the cinch of his working saddle was weakening; some of the strands had parted even. He should mend it now, but he had no time to lose, and he did have another saddle, which he did not use twice during the year and which for months now he had not even seen. He had put it out of the way, high up in the loft. He went down to the barn meaning to get it and make the exchange. If he was going to have some hard riding during the coming days it was as well if he used this saddle, the best he had ever seen. Rather too ornate with its profuse silver chasings and carved leather for every day's use, a heavy Mexican affair which he had won in a bronco "busting" compet.i.tion down in Texas four years ago.

He came up into the loft, half filled with hay, and went to the far end where the saddle had hung upon its peg. It was gone. He stood staring at the peg in surprise. Surely he had left it here, surely he had not removed it. He tried to think when he had seen it last. And he remembered. It had been two or three months ago, and he knew that he had left it here, he even remembered the trouble he had had in drawing it up after him through the small trap door. Now where was it?

His first suspicion was that one of his men had been using it. But he knew that that was impossible. He would have seen it, and moreover one man does not take another man's saddle without saying by your leave.

"The thing is worth three hundred dollars, easy," he muttered. "It would be funny...."

He went to the loose hay heaped at the wall and began to kick it about, half expecting to have his boot strike against the silver tipped horn or the heavy tapaderos. And then at last did the swift, certain suspicion of the truth flash upon him. He came upon a small soap box hidden far under the loose hay. He drew it out, whisking away the straw which half filled it. After the first start of amazement and a swift examination of the contents, he understood.

"A plant!" he cried angrily. "A d.a.m.ned cowardly plant! Lord, Lordy, but they're making a clean job of this!"

Upon the top of the pile, the first thing he took into his hands, was a heavy silver watch. It bore a name, scratched within the case, and the name was that of Jed MacIntosh, the man who, Blackie had told him, had been "cleaned out" in Dry Town. There were two bank notes, one for ten dollars, one for twenty, and both were soiled with dark smears that told of dry blood. There was a little, much worn memorandum book, with many pencil-scribbled entries in it, and upon the fly leaf it bore the name of Seth Powers, the man who had been robbed in Gold Run and who had been found beaten into unconsciousness. There was a small tin can; in the bottom of it some pine pitch, and adhering to the pitch a fine sifting of gold dust. A can, he knew, Ben Broderick would identify as the one of which he had been robbed! There were other articles, two more watches, a revolver, an empty purse, which he could not identify but which he realized keenly would be identified when the time came.

Suppose that the time came now! Suppose that he should hear the sheriff's voice calling upon him, that a posse should come upon him and find him with this box in his possession! What chance would he have?

His face went white with the anger which surged up within him and the desire leaped up, strong and bitter, to get in his two hands the man who had framed him and to choke the treacherous life out of him. Then, suddenly, he was cool again, seeing the present danger and the urgent need of prompt action.

First he made certain that there was no other d.a.m.ning bit of false evidence concealed in the hay or any where in the loft. Then, taking the box under his arm, he went down into the stable. Here again he made careful search, spending an hour in a stubborn search. Then leaving the box in a manger, straw-covered, he went back to the cabin on the top of the knoll. His eyes, running to the four points of the compa.s.s, told him that there was no other man within sight.

Taking off his boots and socks he waded out into the middle of Big Little River, carrying a shovel and the box. In the soft, sandy soil he made a hole deep enough to hold the box which he put into it. Swiftly he filled it with stones, placed a big, flat rock over it, saw that there was no sign of his work as the sand and mud drifted in to fill the little hollow, and then went back for his boots. The shovel he put again against the bunk house wall.

When, at last, he had mended his cinch and rode Comet out towards the east and the mountains upon the flank of the Poison Hole, he had made up his mind what he was going to do.

"It's a gamble," he told himself coolly. "But I guess I've got to gamble now. And I'm going to play it heavy."

CHAPTER XXVII

JIMMIE SQUARES HIMSELF

A horseman was riding toward him upon the far bank of the Big Little River where it straightened out beyond the cabin. He recognized the horse and a moment later the rider now waving his hat to him, and knew that it was Two-Hand Billy Comstock returning. He turned and rode slowly to meet the officer.

"Back already, Comstock?" he called carelessly. "What luck?"

"Bully luck," grinned Comstock, replacing his hat and looking as fresh and well groomed as though he were but this minute up from bed and a long sleep. "First let me tell you the news." He slipped his hand into his breast pocket and took out an envelope. "More mail for you, Thornton! You're doing a big correspondence, it seems to me!"