Brand Blotters Part 23

Melissy threw up her cards. "How did you find out?" she asked hoa.r.s.ely.

The deputy forced her to commit herself more definitely. "Find out what?"

"Where I put the box."

"I'll go back and answer some of those other questions first. I might as well own up that I knew all the time your father didn't hold up the stage."

"You did?"

"He's no fool. He wouldn't leave his tracks all over the place where he had just held up a stage. He might jest as well have left a signed note saying he had done it. No, that didn't look like Champ Lee to me. It seemed more likely he'd arrived after the show than before. It wouldn't be like him, either, to go plowing up the side of the ditch, with his partner on the other side, making a trail that a blind man could follow in the night. Soon as I knew Lee and Boone made those tracks, I had it cinched that they were following the lateral to see where the robber was going.

They had come to the same conclusion I had, that there wasn't any way of escape _except by that empty lateral_, _a.s.suming it had been empty_. The only point was to find out where the hold-up left the lateral. That's why they rode one on each side of it. They weren't missing any bets, you see."

"And that's why they drove the sheep down to water--to hide the wheel-tracks. I couldn't understand that."

"I must 'a' been right on their heels, for they were jest getting the trotters out of the corral when I reached the place where your rig left the water. 'Course I fell back into the brush and circled around so as to hit the store in front."

"But if dad knew all the time, I don't see--surely, he wouldn't have come right after me and made plain the way I escaped."

"That's the point. He didn't know. I reckon he was sort of guessing around in the dark, plumb puzzled; couldn't find the switch at all at first. Then it come to him, and he thought of the sheep to blind the trail. If I'd been half a hour later he would have got away with it too. No, if he had guessed that you were in the hold-up, him and Boone would have hiked right out on a false trail and led us into the Galiuros. Having no notion of it at first, he trails you down."

"And the gold--how did you find that?"

"I knew it was either right around the place or else you had taken it on with you when you went to the head-gates and buried it up there somewhere.

Next day I followed your tracks and couldn't find any place where you might have left it. I knew how clever you were by the way you planned your getaway. Struck me as mighty likely that you had left it lying around in plain view somewhere. If you had dumped it out of the box into a sack, the box must be somewhere. You hadn't had time to burn it before the stage got back. I drifted back to your kindling pile, where all the old boxes from the store are lying. I happened to notice a bra.s.s tack in one near the end; then the marks of the tack heads where they had pressed against the wood. I figured you might have subst.i.tuted one box for another, and inside of ten minutes I stumbled against your wash-stand and didn't budge it.

Then I didn't have to look any further."

"I've been trying to get a chance to move it and haven't ever found one.

You were always coming around the corner on me," she explained.

"Sorry I incommoded you," he laughed. "But it's too heavy for a lady to lift alone, anyhow. I don't see how you managed it this far."

"I'm pretty strong," she said quietly.

She had no hope of escape from the net of evidence in which he had entangled her. It was characteristic of her that she would not stoop to tricks to stir his pity. Deep in her heart she knew now that she had wronged him when she had suspected him of being a rustler. He _could_ not be. It was not in the man's character. But she would ask no mercy of him.

All her pride rose to meet his. She would show him how game she could be.

What she had sown she would reap. Nor would it have been any use to beseech him to spare her. He was a hard man, she told herself. Not even a fool could have read any weakness in the quiet gray eyes that looked so steadily into hers. In his voice and movements there was a certain deliberation, but this had nothing to do with indecision of character. He would do his duty as he saw it, regardless of whom it might affect.

Melissy stood before him in the unconscious att.i.tude of distinction she often fell into when she was moved, head thrown back so as to bare the rounded throat column, brown little hands folded in front of her, erectly graceful in all her slender lines.

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked.

His stone-cold eyes met hers steadily. "It ain't my say-so. I'm going to put it up to Bellamy. I don't know what he'll do."

But, cold as his manner was, the heart of the man leaped to her courage.

He saw her worn out, pathetically fearful, but she could face him with that still little smile of hers. He longed to take her in his arms, to tell her it would be all right--all right.

"There's one thing that troubles me. I don't know how father will take this. You know how quick-tempered he is. I'm afraid he'll shoot somebody or do something rash when he finds out. You must let me be alone with him when I tell him."

He nodded. "I been thinking of that myself. It ain't going to do him any good to make a gun-play. I have a notion mebbe this thing will unravel itself if we give it time. It will only make things worse for him to go off half-c.o.c.ked."

"How do you mean it may unravel itself?" she asked.

"Bellamy is a whole lot better man than folks give him credit for being.

I expect he won't be hard on you when he knows why you did it."

"And why did I do it?" she asked quietly.

"Sho! I know why you did it. Jim Budd told you what he had heard, and you figured you could save your father from doing it. You meant to give the money back, didn't you?"

"Yes, but I can't prove that either in court or to Mr. Bellamy."

"You don't need to prove it to me. If you say so, that's enough," he said in his unenthusiastic voice.

"But you're not judge and jury, and you're certainly not Mr. Bellamy."

"Sc.r.a.pe Arizona with a fine-tooth comb and you couldn't get a jury to convict when it's up against the facts in this case."

At this she brightened. "Thank you, Mr. Flatray." And navely she added with a little laugh: "Are you ready to put the handcuffs on me yet?"

He looked with a smile at her outstretched hands. "They wouldn't stay on."

"Don't you carry them in sizes to fit all criminals?"

"I'll have to put you on parole."

"I'll break it and climb out the window. Then I'll run off with this."

She indicated the box of treasure.

"I need that wash-stand in my room. I'm going to take it up there to-night," he said.

"This _isn't_ a very good safety deposit vault," she answered, and, nodding a careless good-night, she walked away in her slow-limbed, graceful Southern fashion.

She had carried it off to the last without breaking down, but, once in her own room, the girl's face showed haggard in the moonlight. It was one thing to jest about it with him; it was another to face the facts as they stood. She was in the power of her father's enemy, the man whose proffer of friendship they had rejected with scorn. Her pride cried out that she could not endure mercy from him even if he wished to extend it. Surely there must be some other way out than the humiliation of begging him not to prosecute. She could see none but one, and that was infinitely worse.

Yet she knew it would be her father's first impulsive instinct to seek to fight her out of her trouble, the more because it was through him that it had fallen upon her. At all hazards she must prevent this.

CHAPTER XI

A CONVERSATION

Not five minutes after Melissy had left the deputy sheriff, another rider galloped up the road. Jack, returning from his room, where he had left the box of gold locked up, waited on the porch to see who this might be.

The horseman proved to be the man Norris, or Boone, and in a thoroughly bad temper, as Jack soon found out.

"Have you see anything of 'Lissie Lee?" he demanded immediately.