Bucky O'Connor Part 9

"It's contributory evidence, seh. Your friend could have slipped the chain from her neck any day, or he could have opened the locket and taken the map. No need for him to steal in at night. Do you happen to remember whether your little girl had any particular aversion to the cook?"

The cattleman's forehead frowned in thought. "I do remember, now, that she was afraid of him. She always ran screaming to her mother when he tried to be friendly with her. He was a sour sort of fellow."

"That helps out the case a heap, for it shows that he wanted to make friends with her and she refused. He was thus forced to take the chain when she was asleep instead of playing with her till he had discovered the spring and could simply take the map."

"But he didn't know anything about the map. He was not in our confidence."

"You and your friend talked it over evenings when he was at the ranch, and other places, too, I expect."

"Yes, our talk kind of gravitated that way whenever we got together."

"Well, this fellow overheard you. That's probable, at least."

"But you're ignoring the important fact. Dave disappeared too that night, with my little girl."

Bucky cut in sharply with a question. "Did he? How do you know he disappeared WITH her? Why not AFTER? That's the theory my mind is groping on just now."

"That's a blind trail to me. Why AFTER? And what difference does it make?"

"All the difference in the world. If he left after the cook, you have been doing him an injustice for fifteen years, seh."

Mackenzie leaned forward, excitement burning in his eyes. "Prove that, young man, and I'll thank you to the last day of my life. It's for my wife's sake more than my own I want my little girl back. She jes' pines for her every day of her life. But for my friend--if you can give me back the clean memory of Dave you'll have done a big thing for me, Mr.

O'Connor."

"It's only a working theory, but this is what I'm getting at. You and Henderson had arranged to take an early start on a two days' deer hunt next mo'ning. That's what you told me, isn't it?"

"We were to start about four. Yes, sir."

"Well, let's suppose a case. Along comes Dave before daybreak, when the first hooters were beginning to call. Just as he reaches your ranch he notices a horse slipping away in the darkness. Perhaps he hears the little girl cry out. Anyhow, instead of turning in at the gate, he decides to follow. Probably he isn't sure there's anything wrong, but when he finds out how the horse he's after is burning the wind his suspicions grow stronger. He settles down to a long chase. In the darkness, we'll say, he loses his man, but when it gets lighter he picks up the trail again. The tracks lead south, across the line into Mexico.

Still he keeps plodding on. The man in front sees him behind and gets scared because he can't shake him off. Very likely he thinks it is you on his track. Anyhow, while the child is asleep he waits in ambush, and when Henderson rides up he shoots him down. Then he pushes on deeper into Chihuahua, and proceeds to lose himself there by changing his name."

"You think he murdered Dave?" The cattleman got up and began to pace up and down the floor.

"I think it possible."

Webb Mackenzie's face was pallid, but there was a new light of hope in it. "I believe you're right. G.o.d knows I hope so. That may sound a horrible thing to say of my best friend, but if it has got to be one or the other--if it is certain that my old bunkie came to his death foully in Chihuahua while trying to save my baby, or is alive to-day, a skulking coward and villain--with all my heart I hope he is dead." He spoke with a pa.s.sionate intensity which showed how much he had cared for his early friend, and how much the latter's apparent treachery had cut him. "I hope you'll never have a friend go back on you, Mr. O'Connor, the one friend you would have banked on to a finish. Why, Dave Henderson saved my life from a bunch of Apaches once when it was dollars to doughnuts he would lose his own if he tried it. We were prospecting in the Galiuros together, and one mo'ning when he went down to the creek to water the hawsses he sighted three of the red devils edging up toward the cabin. There might have been fifty of them there for all he knew, and he had a clear run to the plains if he wanted to back one of the ponies and take it. Most any man would have saved his own skin, but not Dave. He hoofed it back to the cabin, under fire every foot of the way, and together we made it so hot for them that they finally gave up getting us. We were in the Texas Rangers together, and pulled each other through a lot of close places. And then at the end--Why, it hurt me more than it did losing my own little girl."

Bucky nodded. Since he was a man and not a father, he could understand how the hurt would rankle year after year at the defalcation of his comrade.

"That's another kink we have got to unravel in this tangle. First off, there's your little girl, to find if she is still alive. Second, we must locate Dave Henderson or his grave. Third, there's something due the scoundrel who is responsible for this. Fourthly, brethren, there's that map section to find. And lastly, we've got to find just how this story you've told me got mixed with the story of the holdup of the Limited.

For it ce'tainly looks as if the two hang together. I take it that the thing to do is to run down the gang that held up the Limited. Once we do that, we ought to find the key to the mystery of your little girl's disappearance. Or, at least, there is a chance we shall. And it's chances we've got to gamble on in this thing."

"Good enough. I like the way you go at this. Already I feel a heap better than I did."

"If the cards fall our way you're going to get this thing settled once for all. I can't promise my news will be good news when I get it, but anything will be better than the uncertainty you've been in, I take it,"

said Bucky, rising from his chair.

"You're right there. But, wait a moment. Let's drink to your success."

"I'm not much of a sport," Bucky smiled. "Fact is, I never drink, seh."

"Of course. I remember, now. You're the good bad man of the West,"

Mackenzie answered amiably. "Well, I drink to you. Here's good hunting, lieutenant."

"Thank you."

"I suppose you'll get right at this thing?"

"I've got to take that kid in the next room out to my ranch first. I won't stand for that knife thrower making a slave of him."

"What's the matter with me taking the boy out to the Rocking Chair with me? My wife and I will see he's looked after till you return."

"That would be the best plan, if it won't trouble you too much. We'd better keep his whereabouts quiet till this fellow Hardman is out of the country."

"Yes, though I hardly think he'd be fool enough to show up at the Rocking Chair. If my vaqueros met up with him prowling around they might show him as warm a welcome as you did half an hour ago."

"A chapping would sure do him a heap of good," grinned Bucky, and so dismissed the Champion of the World from his mind.

CHAPTER 5. BUCKY ENTERTAINS

Bucky began at once to tap the underground wires his official position made accessible to him. These ran over Southern Arizona, Sonora, and Chihuahua. All the places to which criminals or frontiersmen with money were wont to resort were reported upon. For the ranger's experience had taught him that since the men he wanted had money in their pockets to burn gregarious impulse would drive them from the far silent places of the desert to the roulette and faro tables where the wolf and the lamb disport themselves together.

The photograph from Webb Mackenzie of the cook Anderson reached him at Tucson the third day after his interview with that gentleman, at the same time that Collins dropped in on him to inquire what progress he was making.

O'Connor told him of the Aravaipa episode, and tossed across the table to him the photograph he had just received.

"If we could discover the gent that sat for this photo it might help us.

You don't by any chance know him, do you, Val?"

The sheriff shook his head. "Not in my rogues' gallery, Bucky."

The ranger again examined the faded picture. A resemblance in it to somebody he had met recently haunted vaguely his memory. As he looked the indefinite suggestion grew sharp and clear. It was a photograph of the showman who had called himself Hardman. All the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs were lacking, to be sure--the fierce mustache, the long hair, the buckskin trappings, none of them were here. But beyond a doubt it was the same shifty-eyed villain. Nor did it shake Bucky's confidence that Mackenzie had seen him and failed to recognize the man as his old cook. The fellow was thoroughly disguised, but the camera had happened to catch that curious furtive glance of his. But for that O'Connor would never have known the two to be the same.

Bucky was at the telephone half an hour. In the middle of the next afternoon his reward came in the form of a Western Union billet. It read:

"Eastern man says you don't want what is salable here."

The lieutenant cut out every other word and garnered the wheat of the message:

"Man you want is here."

The telegram was marked from Epitaph, and for that town the ranger and the sheriff entrained immediately.

Bucky's eye searched in vain the platform of the Epitaph depot for Malloy, of the Rangers, whose wire had brought him here. The cause of the latter's absence was soon made clear to him in a note he found waiting for him at the hotel:

"The old man has just sent me out on hurry-up orders. Don't know when I'll get back. Suggest you take in the show at the opera house to-night to pa.s.s the time."